Q Unit Goes Platinum (4231)

Okay.

Oh, I've not written an intro.

Never mind.

Okay, we'll just riff it out.

Hi, I'm Andy Zaltzman.

It works well.

That's a good start.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers.

Welcome to issue 4231 of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world i am andy zaltzman here in london and joining me from three feet away across my dining room table i'm delighted to say i have both alice fraser and anuvab pal uh hello both of you it's it's it's wonderful to have Three people in the same place.

It feels like quite a long time since the bugle has been done in this way.

Welcome.

It feels really nice to be human again once more because I've been you know on the far end of the world with all of this excitement going on.

I'm so excited to be back in London.

The Millennium Dome,

the Magic Eye,

the Tate Modern, or you don't call it the Tate Modern, you call it the Potato Modern.

It's good to be back.

We should say, Alice, you just arrived from Australia yesterday.

Yes.

So you are in the wrong time of day, essentially.

Yes, I said, Andy, can I come stay with you for a couple of days when I I land?

And you said, Yes, do you want to do a bugle on the Monday?

And I said, Yes, thinking, you know, I've done, I've backed up after a 24-hour flight before.

You know, I've done that before.

I'm completely capable of doing a 24-hour flight.

And then the next day, you know, writing some comedy.

What I had not factored in is my seven-month-old baby

who makes a 24-hour flight.

It just feels like so much more quality time.

Look, you know, I was honestly never hoping to see the two of you again.

I thought the way the pandemic was going, I was going to record in a little room in India.

And I have to say, sitting in your house, Andy, this feels like a bit of India.

There's a lot of cricket in this house.

I don't feel out of place at all.

I feel very comfortable.

But

it is a little uncomfortable because I really was hoping to see both of you in a little box for the rest of my life.

It's very sad.

I'm sure that can be arranged.

We're all in a sort of, it's essentially a kind of global Stockholm syndrome we're in at the the moment, trying to work through it.

I should say behind Annivab's head at the moment is a sculpture of me, which we will post a picture of, done by my sculptor father, when I was about seven years old.

And how would you describe this?

Do you think it captures what I am?

I think I was quite a serious child.

Was it meant to be a vision into the future, or was it meant to be of you as a seven-year-old child?

I've no idea, really.

Because if it's prophetic, then it's sort of accurate.

But

if that's meant to be a picture of a seven-year-old child, it's not very accurate.

But also, it confirms what I've always believed, which is that behind every great man, there's a creepy statue of Andy's ultimate.

Andy, if I saw this in a museum, the statue would be called Boy Who Misses Catch 7.

That would be very accurate indeed.

I missed a lot of catches.

One of my earliest memories of playing sport at school, I was about eight years old, and we did catching practice and to catch a tennis ball and throw it back to the teacher.

It's the kind of early journey into cricket.

And I dropped the catch and had a really feeble throw and the teacher said, Zoltzmann, I am ashamed of you.

but did not then tell me what I should be doing better.

And that has stung me for almost 40 years.

Is that a fair summary of British education?

Yes, it is.

Yes.

Yes, it is.

Admonishing without any ways to improve.

And that is why we are the glorious nation we are today.

Yeah.

Because we have been browbeaten.

You plant seeds like that and you just stew on them for 40 years and then go conquer somewhere.

It's never let us down.

Why change your winning formula?

Anyway, we are recording on the 30th of May 2022.

On this day in 1431,

Joan of Arc

became a well unwilling

barbecue sausage in another classic piece of British justice.

On the 2nd of June in 455

the vandals entered Rome and plundered Rome for two entire weeks and they haven't entirely got around to fixing it since then.

If I remember my delightful trips to Rome in the past,

a few new ice cream shops, not a lot else.

A lot of missing penises in Rome.

Yes.

But present-day Rome or Imperial Rome?

Yeah, no,

present-day Rome.

Every statue.

I mean, like...

Well, how do you know that wasn't accurate at the time?

And the penis maybe did not evolve until post-Rome.

Post-Rome.

That's why they got so much done.

I've just taken the wrong tours of the city.

Yeah, I mean, the sack of Rome is that's taking on a different meaning now, isn't it?

Can we all grow up, please?

In the year 1098.

Family show, Andy.

In the year 1098?

The first siege of Antioch ended.

That was part of the first crusade.

The second siege of Antioch began five days later.

Now, that shows the stamina that professional siege stars had back then.

Nowadays, they'd be wanting at least six months off to rest, recuperate, analyse on the video what happened in the first siege, plus build up the anticipation in the media, get the hype going, and sell more pay-per-view tickets for the second siege.

We're not back in 1098.

You just did your siege, you had five days off to check whether you're alive, dead, or in between, shake off the odd bat of plague or dysentery and then get back to business.

Have we moved on as a species?

I'll let you be the judge of that.

That's incredible.

So much antioch and only five days of pro-och.

Well, that's typical of the

negative mindset of the late 11th century, Alice.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, those are the only two things that ever happened on the 2nd of June before the year 1600.

Really?

Yeah.

There was a lot of years before then, between 5,600 and 13 billion, depending on which version of the history of the universe you believe.

So it was a pretty quiet day all round.

Maybe it was a bank holiday.

It's quite possible.

Yeah.

I guess we'll never know.

What's the difference between just a war and a crusade?

Does it have to be religious for it to be a crusade?

Oh, I don't know, etymologically.

I think the difference between a war and a crusade is the same, you know, like, because

sadism comes from pain, so that's kind of war-related.

Yeah, so it's the difference between a war and a crusade is the difference between a ship and a cruise ship.

So, like, they're basically the same thing, but more angry old people, I think.

Yeah, that's fair enough, yeah.

Because, could you have a general in a crusade saying, this is just turning into a shitty little war?

As always, a sex movement with Bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week we have a special puzzle for you.

Now, Vladimir Putin has been accused of exacerbating a global feed food crisis by stealing grain from the ukraine now for all bugle listeners we have a special bugle brain teaser you've got a rowing boat there is a bag of grain vladimir putin who is as previously discussed a chicken and a fox how do you get them all safely across the lake to the international criminal court Bearing in mind that the fox is Edward Fox, the actor, in his role as an assassin from the day of the jackal.

Please send your answers by surface mail mail to an address of your choosing and mark your envelope.

Will we never learn?

Total societal collapse news now, and the United Nations has warned that global collapse is becoming more likely in a new report.

A report in which some have claimed was actually watered down before being published, but still warns of total societal collapse.

Now, Alice, as our entitle Apps of Human Civilization correspondent, a role which you've fulfilled with great dignity over recent years,

I mean, is this really the kind of language that's going to grab people's attention?

Warning of total societal collapse, rather than, for example, you know, a long-term internet outage?

Is that not more likely to get people to?

Look,

I think what you need to do is remember the first rule of writing and show, don't tell.

So, what you need to do is have a total civilizational collapse, and then people will will

get on board with it as a news item.

That not a single major newspaper picked up on the total civilizational collapse bit

of

the UN report.

They instead focused on a bunch of other parts of the report, including, you know, yeah, keep spending money and building up your economies, which is sort of the bit that I don't think we really should be doing.

I haven't been this disappointed since I found out that the art of war wasn't one of those expensive coffee table picture books.

But the report notes that at least four of the nine planetary boundaries are outside of the safe operating space for temperature.

Oh, that's still five out of nine that are fine, then.

I mean, that's that's a majority, so we're still winning, essentially.

Yes, yes, we are winning, except all of the people in those dangerous places are heading to the places that aren't quite as dangerous, which will make those places more dangerous, civilizationally speaking.

The report lists a bunch of cities that will be underwater by 2050.

And both where my parents live and where I live

are the first five on that list.

And the only happiness there for me is that I'll hopefully be dead by 2050.

But it's Mumbai and Calcutta are right up there.

One because it's in the Ganges Delta and the other because

the Arabian Sea is going to go batshit crazy.

It already has four cyclones in off-season.

So I have chosen well, Andy, in where to live, because they won't exist as places.

Well, I guess if the whole planet's going to have societal collapse, then it doesn't really matter whether you've got anywhere to live or not.

So let's look at the positive side.

I just want to say it varies for person to person because lately I've been in this country now for a month and a lot of people have been complaining

about like a complete societal collapse.

And it varies because for one person, it was the fact that he couldn't get Brussels sprouts at the local co-op.

And he said in the local paper, society is collapsing.

And another person I read in the paper missed his flight from Manchester to Austria because there was a six-hour wait at Manchester airport.

Apparently, there are no people, so there are queues outside the airport.

And he said, civilization has ended because he wasn't getting a refund.

So it is very personal.

And I'm going to lose...

both the towns I grew up in because they'll be under the sea.

One guy missed a flight and one guy can't get Brussels sprouts.

So I think it varies.

It manifests itself in many different forms.

Fortunately, here in Britain, we don't need to worry about total societal collapse, either in this country or indeed the rest of the world, because

this week we have a jubilee

marking 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II

being on the throne, reigning gloriously,

happily and victoriously, I think, if I recall the national anthem, which I'm a bit rusty on.

The

alarming news, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been ruled out of jubileeing

due to COVID.

So I don't know if they're going to get the leader of another major religion to step in, which could liven things up a bit.

I mean it's

it's just so wonderful at the moment.

I'm not sure we've ever needed a jubilee quite as much as we do now.

Not only is there the total societal collapse of the entire world, but also the absolute devastation of British politics as a functioning entity as manifested by by the

current Prime Minister, the various reports into him and the fact that he is still the current Prime Minister and not the formal Prime Minister.

But I mean it's wonderful that you're both here for this Jubilee.

The only reason I came, Andy.

Yeah, I mean it's a very exciting time.

The latest tributes include that the DNA of all British citizens is to be rebranded as ENA, standing for Elizabetho's nucleic acid, to pay tribute to the role that the Queen has played in defining exactly how British we all are and possible the government's going to change the

entry requirements for people wishing to move to this country.

They must have at least 50% of the same DNA as the Queen.

Of course, natural-born Brits have a solid 80 to 85% just by birth, whereas various non-Brits at large roaming the un-Elizabeth, the seconded world, carry a maximum of 3% of

the Queen's DNA.

A course of injections over a couple of decade can actually turn a non-Brit into a perfectly serviceable Brit if they sing the national anthem in the shower every morning during that time and wear union jack underpants on birthdays christmases and all days of royal significance so you know i think that shows what an open-minded nation that we have become and if a mere porn walks from one side of the uk to the other one step at a time when they reach the other side they turn into the queen yes yeah they become a queen yeah you often hear talks of people walking from land's end to john o' groats

from you know the tip of corn all to the tip of scotland um but if you come the other way you that that that that legislation win.

Can I just say, you know, I'm a big fan of the monarchy, always have been, but I've lost a bit of interest in the monarchy when a couple of things happened.

One, since they lost their power to behead people,

it was far more interesting to be in front of a monarch who had absolute power to behead you, as opposed to a monarch.

Well, I think that is one of the reasons we voted for Brexit, to get those traditional British freedoms back.

And secondly, as an Indian subject of the empire, it is now voluntary for me to come and pay tribute to the Queen.

Highly uninteresting.

Not compulsory.

George V,

you know, if he showed up in India, it was compulsory for an Indian prince to show up and pay obeisance.

I think that's a word that came out of the empire.

We just had to bow and say, you know, don't take away my kingdom.

You can charge whatever tax you want.

Give me the security of the British Army.

They had to do all that.

You know, by force, you had to show up.

Now it's like, do you want to come?

Do you know what?

It's fine.

It's very, I don't know if I like this monarchy.

Right, okay.

But just too much choice.

It's interesting to hear that rare argument in favor of the full re-establishment of

the British Raj, Anavad.

But thanks.

But on the bugle, we like to put alternative viewpoints.

Yeah.

I mean, even if not the Raj as a whole, but just the power of the monarchy.

Right, okay.

You know, just

the rabbit.

You know, just get the beheadings back and get some power back, like at least to put you in shackles or something.

So I'm like, my God, man, this is the Queen.

Yeah.

Well, I think, I mean,

she's 96 now, and

she's been restricted as a monarch for pretty much all the 70 years she's been

professionally monarching.

So, you know, maybe, I think she's earned the right to

bring back some of those old techniques.

Just recently, a space project has been announced by the British government to project a hologram of the Queen's beatifically smiling face permanently onto the skies above Britain.

It will cost only £7 billion a month, which seems like a bargain for what it is.

Cynics have pointed out that the giant Space Queen face may not be visible when it's cloudy, which it sometimes is in Britain, despite Her Majesty's presence and all her selfless work over the last 70 years.

But the knowledge that it is there could boost the economy by up to 287%,

according to a visibly emotional Framston Half-Breath, the Minister for Boosting Britishness and Public Joy.

So a lot of exciting things happening right now.

I am just so happy to be here for Stonehenge, you know, for Stonehenge to fully reach its absolute potential.

We've wondered for thousands of years what this mysterious henge was for and now we know it was for hosting eight projected pictures of the Queen at various ages.

I've never seen such a noble monument so ennobled.

Well what's interesting that because Stonehenge traditionally only works at midsummer as a henge.

But what this suggests is that because these pictures of the queen have been projected on Stonehenge now, that we are at the exact midpoint of her reign.

So we're 70 years into the 140 years of gloriousness.

I mean, do you guys feel enough is being done for the Jubilee?

Like, they're planning parties and so on.

People are drinking.

But, for example, I recently saw there was a show in London where the various members of ABBA are coming back to life in a sort of 3D simulated kind of show where they'll be

what is that word where you that's projected projected thank you yes yeah so the the but the most important part was that this show was created by the members of ABBA yes so it's it's sort of very highly technological version of hey remember when we used to that's

yeah and then they'll be in concert in 3D doing that now Couldn't somebody just bring all the old British monarchs back to congratulate the queen?

I mean, I know you have a favourite, Charles I.

You had done a show near a place where he was tried and beheaded.

I did.

I did a show in the room outside which Charles I was executed in 1649.

Yeah.

And I think it's called the Banqueting Hall on Whitehall.

And it was this huge, great, echoey room.

Yes.

And he was executed on the balcony outside.

And it led me to think that...

The last thing that went through his head, because this room behind him was so echoey, was the echo of himself saying ow, which must have been galling at best but yes i did yeah i'm not to make him my favorite monarch but you know

you've been in the same room as he

yeah see this is what i mean there's a little henry the eighth pat on the back to elizabeth ii yeah we'd like to see all of them back in concert at the o2 i think i think that could always you should say that because um as part of the uh the the jubilee celebrations all of shakespeare's history plays featuring british monarchs will now feature a pre-show warning for audiences that not all monarchs have been quite as flawless as our current and eternal future queen.

There's also a special edition of Richard III, which is going to be performed at the even more royal Shakespeare Company, as it's been renamed, in which Queen Elizabeth II appears on the battlefield at Bosworth at the climactic moment, the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses, and formulates a truce between the Yorkists and the Lanky, Lanky, Lanky, Lanky, Lancastrians

that result in Richard III not being kebabbed to death or swapping the nation for a horsey or getting a lift back to the car park.

And then she reigns over us for the next 537 years to date and counting.

So these are, I mean, it's all

tremendously.

So she would be Elizabeth I and I together.

Yeah.

Elizabeth one and a half.

I don't know if that makes her one and a half or three.

Do you average it out or do you add it together?

I think you add it together.

Maybe multiply it and then she's still Elizabeth II, which might be easier for her

reprinting the currency.

I mean, if she takes after her father as Elizabeth I,

King Henry VIII was not big on minimalism, so let's make it three.

Three, okay.

Also, Also, have you read up on the events that are happening in the Jubilee?

They're just absolutely

wildly specific and pointless.

There's this parade constituted of all these people, a lot of people operating puppets symbolising things, and then they're from sort of like a choir of left-handed school children from a small town outside Brighton operating an 18-foot puppet of a hand that will do the distinctive QE2 wave to symbolise her stalwart contribution to England's proud tradition of being patronising.

It's all that kind of thing and you sort of need

a

manual to know what's going past you because it's just going to look like a bunch of going for a walk.

She's absolutely right.

Is she going to be the longest reigning monarch of all time ever ever ever recorded?

I think she's about two years away from breaking the all-time record for any monarch anywhere.

Comes to be already the British champion, longest reigning monarch.

Plus, you know, if she gets awarded extra years as a because Because often if you're in a job for a long time, you get a bonus, don't you?

A bonus, yeah.

You think maybe they'd just tag on another 20.

So actually, she's not.

You're not counting the ones who are the direct personification of God, who's obviously eternal.

That doesn't.

How many jubilees does it?

There's been a number of pretty low-quality monarchs that maybe she could be reattributed, like

King John.

Yeah.

I think he had, what, 16 years as king, so we can tag them on

that would improve life for British people in the early 13th century and mean that the Queen is now way out on her own as the longest-serving monarch.

I think I've solved the equation of the Jubilee, which is it's representative group plus

large pointless thing

equals metaphor for something.

Right.

That's a very complex mathematical equation you've thrown in the state.

Yeah,

but that is what they think.

It's quite impressive to come up with that level of maths the day after a 24-hour flight.

I thought about it the whole way.

And a good summary of the nation.

And I think Jubilee celebrations have calmed down a little bit.

I was doing a bit of research on long Indian emperors.

And the longest we had was Emperor Akbar, 50 years.

And he celebrated it by smashing the heads of rival,

basically rival tribes who were up against him

with elephants.

So he brought in elephants and he smashed the heads of rival prisoners he'd taken at war.

And there was a big celebration.

People ate and drank.

To clarify, were the elephants on the ends of mallets?

Or were they?

I don't know.

I wasn't there.

It was 15, 12.

But I can check.

I could ask a friend who attended.

He had a pass.

But clearly, celebrations have calmed down a lot.

I mean, now it's capuera, flavving, gin and tonic, campari.

It's very different now.

Well, that's because of the woke lobby.

They won't crush people's heads with elephants anymore.

Now, I know.

I want to talk about the elephant in the room, speaking of which, which is that there will be a cascade of pensioners in mobility scooters dressed as flamingos.

That's good.

Right.

Will they be literally cascading over a cliff into the sea?

I hope so.

Nothing I hate more than old people.

No.

Old people dressed as flamingos.

Old people dressed as flamingos.

No,

it's a terrible thing for me because I'm a big fan of old people.

They've beaten the odds at least.

And not such a fan of flamingos.

So sort of a singularity of contradiction in place right there.

This is an actual event?

Yes.

Oh, this is part of the Jubilee parade, which is why I feel like I have to address it because I know that there will be listeners who have the Jubilee program out eagerly in front of them with that bit circled, waiting pantingly to hear what I have to say about it, which is that it's shit.

It's a shit idea and it'll be badly executed.

I don't like it, and I hope their scooters break down.

See, this is the thing.

Some of the events, I don't even know if they're ironic or real.

Except for a bunch of old people dressed as birds.

Everyone's doing this.

No, no, no, no.

It's Britain.

They'll be doing the parade sarcastically.

Oh,

Yeah,

um, well, I mean, there are some extraordinary things, including the government in the last week suggesting bringing back the old imperial measurements as part of

the Jubilee Festival of nostalgic patriotism, and also a celebration of our freedom from the decimalisation that we like to think Brussels inflicted on us, even though that that isn't technically true.

So, going back to these old imperial measurements.

now bearing in mind, government statistics have suggested that 17 million adults, almost half of the working-age population of England, have the numeracy level expected of primary school children.

Bringing back these mathematically baffling

measurements is maybe not the best way to boost the economy.

So, I mean, for those of you unfamiliar with the way we used to measure things, for example, in distance, there were eight furlongs in a mile, ten chains in the furlong,

66 feet in a chain, which of course is also eleven eleven fathoms long, and you need five thousand two hundred and eighty fathoms to make up a league.

And to understand all of that helps to drink three quarts of mead and or a gill and a half of whiskey.

Then of course you've got thirteen sclobbles in a blapard, nine blapards and a gnert, half a gnert makes up a watchama forksworth, which is the same as twenty four hog bollocks, a weirdo's dozen fallatiacs or two family fun buckets.

And the government has been accused of trying to weaponise nostalgia at this time where there's a cost of living crisis that is causing havoc around the country.

And I guess the thinking is, let's give them some credit, because we do criticise the government quite a bit on this show, that if you can't afford a pound of potatoes, that's better than if you can't afford a kilogram of potatoes, because you're actually losing less food.

If it's just a pound, because that's 453.6 grams is a pound, rather than the thousand grams.

So you actually only be 0.4536 times as hungry.

So you can see the logic.

Well, it also won't matter when a pound pound of potatoes costs as much as a kilo of potatoes used to be because you won't be able to do the conversion in your head.

It'll be much, much more confusing to have to try and do the conversion.

All I can say is when I saw this announcement, I thought I would like to put my foot near his inch.

The

origin of the term Jubilee actually goes way back.

It's

William the Conqueror's 20th anniversary celebration.

It's a room and there's a fog.

In 1086, 20 years on the throne, and he converted to Judaism, hence Jew Billy.

I saw that coming from so far away.

Journalists are super excited.

They're sort of preemptively speculating that the Queen may or may not, but come out on her balcony to watch this parade go past.

And I just think that is the epitome of the monarchy.

People are, you know, dancing around in their

mobility scooter flamingos.

They're operating 25-foot-high puppets of, you know, children cleaning cars, and she might come out on her balcony, and that's the news story.

I just.

Well, it's very exciting.

I mean, there's nothing more exciting than seeing an old woman wave on a balcony.

I genuinely saw a news piece where the headline was,

Notable times Queen Elizabeth Stood on the Balcony.

And, you know, I think that, you know, it makes the whole nation feel creepy.

Yeah, it was there.

I mean, the henu was particularly spectacular of this.

1940s.

Is that where she mooned the nation?

That's what that build balcony is there for.

Indian news now, one thing she won't be eating the Queen at her Jubilee celebration, or indeed at any point in the future, if news reports are to be believed, is a mango.

Because, Any Vab is our mango correspondent.

Bad news, the mango crop is

failing.

Terrible news, Andy.

I mean, I've been your mango correspondent for years now, you know,

and it's blistering heat in India.

New York Times wrote the story: it's devastated the crop.

The soul of the farmer shudders at seeing these fruitless trees.

That's what the New York Times said.

Basically, it's so hot.

In March and April, you need a certain kind of heat for the mango to blossom.

And it's been so hot that mango.

How hot has it been?

Sorry?

It's been 44 degrees.

And in some parts of India, it's gone up to 47.

It's been so hot that I'm sitting in Andy's house trying to recognize how hot it's been.

Fruits are exploding, lots of crop,

you know, wheat that grows this time of year, we cannot supply to the rest of the world.

And indeed, the question being asked is an existential one in India, which is, what is India without the mango?

You know, it's a question I've asked about the world as well.

You know, what is the United Kingdom without Winston Churchill, the Queen, and Andy Zaltzmann?

What is indeed Australia without Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Don Bradman, and Alice Fraser?

And what is India, you know, without Mahatma Gandhi and the mango?

That was a great kids' book, by the way.

So, Russell Crowe is New Zealander.

That's one of the problems.

That is why Australia is losing its status in the world because one of its leading people who's considered Australia is not even from Australia.

That's part of the problem.

So, we have a huge mango problem.

We may not, and as fellow bugler Harry Kondabulu has talked about in his stand-up, you know, we don't eat the mango.

We make love to the mango world.

E.T.

loves his mangoes.

He does.

He does.

He's written an entire stand-up special about it.

And

we have no mangoes this year.

So there's really nothing unique about the Indian fruit landscape.

We have nothing to present to the world except...

Prime Minister Modi.

He's not a mango.

So obviously on one level, anyway, this is a story of great human tragedy for the many farmers dependent on the mango crop.

And it's also another warning about the whole total societal collapse of the world shtick and all the hoo-ha around the devastation of the planet and the woke lobby whinging about the end of all viable life as we know it.

But on another level, I want my f ⁇ ing mangoes

because the mango is objectively one of the natural world's greatest creation.

In fact, I've been doing a knockout competition to find out what is the natural world's greatest creation.

I've got to the quarterfinal stage.

It's mangoes against waterfalls for the right to play sunlit mountain range in the semi-final.

Mango had some pretty easy wins in the early rounds, saw off wasps, no problem.

Drizzle, not a contest.

Then some more impressive victories as the tournament progressed and the matches became more competitive for mangoes beat rhinoceroses, windswept cliffs, and a sensational clash against coral reefs in the last 16 that went to a penalty shootout.

But I mean, Alice,

the mango's a pretty big deal in Australia, isn't it?

It's a pretty big deal in Australia.

Usually around the time of my birthday is what I call Mango Week.

No one else calls it, but it's a special holiday in my house it's where you can afford a crate of like a tray of about 26 mangoes for less than $20

it used to happen when I was a child now no longer alas but then you would just eat nothing but mangoes and make yourself incredibly sick just eat mangoes for weeks and weeks and yeah weirdly one of those things that even when you get sick after eating too many mangoes they don't you don't it doesn't turn you off them Yeah, it does not.

I mean, that's the history of India in a thousand years.

People eat mangoes and fight over whose mango is the best.

It's still there.

And one of the things is Indians are surprisingly getting along with each other because summer is when you fight over which part of India has the best mango.

And now when you don't have any mangoes to fight over, you surprisingly have nothing to talk about.

And the thing is, I think the only answer is now, you know, what's going to happen with ABBA and the Jubilee, which is 3D mangoes will have to be created.

That's an interesting one.

Yeah.

The 3D hologram.

The hologram mango.

That's the word I've been looking for.

The hologram.

Thank you, Andy.

Andy.

We will be doing an ABBA-style bugle show featuring a hologram John Oliver at some point for sure.

Yes, it'll involve projection, but it's mainly just sort of emotionally projecting our childhood issues onto the audience.

Boris Johnson update now.

And the Sue Gray report was finally published last week

after

considerable delays for various reasons.

For those of you without the time or inclination to wade through the full report, which comes in around about 60 pages, we have marched it down through an online condenso summaristicator and then translated it into two languages for you.

In traditional English, it translates into a savage indictment of a self-indulgent culture of crass political indifference.

In Boris Johnsonian English, it translates to a full vindication.

If this had all come out at the time, it would have been, I think, almost certainly terminal to Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.

But there's this kind of bizarre way in which just the fact that it's come out so slowly has sort of bought him time rather than it's kind of been a gradual investigation by investigation drip, drip, dribble.

Because time is not only a great healer, it is also a f ⁇ ing phenomenal amnesiac.

And it sort of deadens the...

We've all been there.

We've all come home to find a dead unicorn on the sofa, haven't we?

And now initially, there's shock, there's disgust.

You know, it's hard to live with the stench.

But gradually, as humans, we get used to it.

And as the decay sets in, it even gets interesting watching the process.

And eventually, it's just a perfectly normal unicorn skeleton that has become part of the furniture.

Nothing exceptional.

When visitors ask why you don't get rid of it, you say, well, A, none of your fing business.

B, he'll be right as rein in no time.

And C, if we're talking about home improvements, don't you think we should all be focusing on the damp issue from the bath I've left running for the last six weeks first rather than the dead unicorn?

And that's essentially the situation we are in with

the Sue Gray report.

Any of you

must have read it on the flight, Alice.

I imagine it was yes, it was

riveting reading the Sue Gray report.

I feel like this is the tactic of politicians nowadays is they'll leak things before there is proof and then by the time there is proof people's outrage has run out because outrage prices have shot shot through the roof and you can only sustain outrage for so long before it becomes weary indifference and a sort of a sour contempt that erodes your very soul which is you know fun but not quite as

aligned with political action I have a question for the both of you I mean I don't live in a Western style democracy

I live in gentle fascism but in your the best kind of fascism it has to be said gentle is the best

one of the things the Prime Minister said is your prime minister said is that well accountable accountability is a variable word

and i want to know what he meant by that apparently

you don't have to be entirely accountable oh no

well no it's like the the phrase and he used this he said he takes full responsibility now bearing in mind this is 2022 um Taking full responsibility means saying you're taking full responsibility and then taking absolutely no responsibility.

So it's the same with accountability.

It's just a word.

It's just sounds.

I mean, you know, it's a social construct, essentially.

If you just, before language existed, if you'd said accountability, no one would have known what you meant.

And really, this is just getting back to that elemental state of human existence.

And I think we're all better for it.

So it's a hologram of morality instead of real moral.

Well, I mean, the thing is, so why is Johnson that held on to power?

I mean, fundamentally, his driving political philosophy is that he should be in power.

And you cannot spell failure of leadership without lure of leadership.

So in this post-ethical, morality-averse landscape of modern politics, we live in it, it's just turned out to be another everyday, commoner garden, survivable, massive embarrassment.

for Boris Johnson, the undisputed Michael Jordan of inexplicably shambling through despite everything.

So he said he was humbled, which was.

I mean, Boris Johnson's saying he was humbled.

He's a man who wears humility as comfortably as a vegan pope wears a tiger skin gimp outfit.

And

similarly, you know, if Boris Johnson can say he's humbled, I would like to say that I am absolutely ripped.

I bench 480 and I'm world 800 meter record holder, having just this afternoon dipped under the magical one-minute 40-second mark.

I don't know what the vegan pope's into, but don't kink Shane.

I know a very nice vegan guy who's into

leather fetish gear.

It's a very conflicted sexual scenario.

But is he also devout and religious?

Well, I think it depends if you count veganism as a religion.

It is to many.

Now, you guys, and maybe you're coming to this Andy, and just have a quick question.

You guys have something called the Ministerial Code of Ethics.

Yes.

We don't have that.

And apparently now you don't either.

Well, no.

I mean, the thing is, we have this code of ethics, and it's turned out it's really inconvenient if you're a massively unethical politician.

So therefore,

Boris Johnson is essentially saying that it's kind of voluntary, and, you know, if you do something naughty, just f ⁇ it.

I just feel like we've really been underrating hypocrisy for far too long.

Because it's not that politicians weren't always cuts, it's that they used to pretend that they weren't.

I never realised until now how valuable that pretense was, that invitation.

Yeah, so we're in a more honest age of open hypocrisy.

We know we're in a more honest age of open shitness.

They're not even hypocrites.

They're not even like, I'm not shit.

They're like, yeah, I'm shit.

But it's charming question mark and question mark.

No, that's absolutely true.

I mean, if you guys don't have a ministerial code of ethics to violate, then you haven't violated anything.

Exactly.

It's a very good way around it.

And it was a kind of strange line of defense that Boris Johnson took.

They shouldn't have it in code.

They should have it in plain English.

Have you ever read the Magna Carta?

That is code.

So his defence was essentially to say that he didn't know what was going on amongst his staff or in his house.

So it's a kind of strange line of defence for a Prime Minister to say, I am completely fing clueless and therefore I should stay in my job.

But that's where we are.

So without a ministerial code of ethics, conceivably a minister could just run around naked in Parliament, shouting obscenities while doing cartwheels.

Yes.

And that would not violate a particular code of ethics.

It's merely perception, isn't it?

Again, what does violation mean without meaning?

And of course, one person's massively incriminating, overwhelming body of evidence is another person's yeah, whatever.

Fair, fair.

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

It's been lovely to have you in my slightly chaotic dining room, surrounded by pictures of old dead cricketers and

a 125-year-old cricket bat in the corner, and a sculpture of my own head as a child.

So, no, it makes a different kind of recording studio.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

I've enjoyed it so much.

It's been a genuine delight.

I feel very happy.

I'm very humble to be.

I feel like I'm somewhere between like a Freemason society meeting.

Are you humbled in a Boris Johnson kind of thing?

Yes.

A variable accountability.

Yeah.

But yeah, I also feel like I'm in your Jubilee, Auntie.

Every day's a Jubilee, where I am.

Alice, you are doing shows.

I mean, you didn't come here just to record the bugle, I should say.

I did not come here just to record the bugle.

I am doing shows, not very many.

I'm trying to be a reasonable human being about the process of being a new parent and a comedian at the same time.

So find the,

we'll be announcing them on Twitter at alliterative, A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E and Instagram the same address.

Or all of my stuff is on my Patreon, patreon.com slash AliceFraser on my website.

There are links to all the gigs and ticket things.

I'll also be in Edinburgh.

Also have a podcast, which is the sister podcast to this podcast.

It's the Glossy magazine to the Bugles Audio Newspaper for Visual World.

It's called The Gargle.

Ana Bab is sometimes on it.

You should come on one day.

Yes.

I've been quite busy, but yes.

Yes, yeah, we've been missing you down at Gargle headquarters.

And it covers topics from this planet and various other planets as well.

No, that was the other one.

That was the last post.

That's still there.

366 days of absolute nonsense

available on the internet.

That is just, you know, a summary of the average Earth year now.

And if I have any shows to do.

Well, yeah, I mean, the reason, I'm doing some shows around the UK and they're, you know, I tweet about them.

But

the main thing is I did an Amazon special for Soho on The Empire, which is out.

And it's really nice to hear feedback from people on Twitter.

Feedback like

where is it?

question.

Then you'd send them the link and they write back, oh.

So I really like the fact that modern entertainment in the streaming world is so engaging with the audience that you send it out into the black hole and nothing comes back.

But it's streaming on Amazon Prime UK and it's about the Empire.

And apparently now there are other topics I should write about, but I didn't think there was any other topic than the Empire to write about.

You can hear me hosting the news quiz for the next couple of weeks.

We're towards the end of the middle series of the year.

That is available on BBC Sounds.

We will now play you out with some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers.

You can no longer get a lie told about you.

We will get through all those who have subscribed before the lie scheme ended.

But we do now have a wall of fame for our premium level volunteer subscribers and bonus bits of merch as well for premium level volunteer subscribers.

So do join the scheme or to make a one-off or a current contribution of any size to help keep the Bugle free, flourishing, and independent.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

David Miles was once given a voucher for a free trip to Madagascar by a local travel company, only to be disappointed on reading the small prints that the company pledged only to contribute to the trip an inflatable dinghy, 50 tins of soup, and a guide to marine life that gave tips on what things are and are not edible when attempting to survive alone on the ocean.

I was tempted, says David, I must say, but I don't really like soup and I'd lost my tin opener in any case, so I had to turn it down.

Craig Worsley Grace Grace was disappointed to read that spiders have no mental framework for appreciating the aesthetic beauty of their own webs.

What a real pity for the arachnid community, laments Craig.

Sure, I'm sure they appreciate the practicality of their impressive web work, but imagine seeing a spider's web glistening with dew on a chilly spring morning and thinking, shit, my office is damp, rather than, wow, isn't that wonderful?

What a sad way to live.

Due to a misprint in a library book, Julie Nosco has spent much of her adult life thinking that Socrates, the celebrity ancient Greek philosophy was, an all-round smartass, was sentenced to be executed by having to consume French fish.

My book definitely said he had to poiss on himself, says Julie.

Of course I thought it was a bit odd, but this happened 2,400 years ago, and as per their vases, they did some pretty weird shit, so it did sort of add up.

Sajan Hira once calculated that if you strang together all the tape from cassette tapes of prog rock albums released in the 1970s, you could probably lasso Jupiter and fling it out of the solar system.

I didn't bother doing the maths very accurately, says Sajan, because I knew I wouldn't have the time or more importantly the funding to put my scheme into practice.

But I've always hated Jupiter as a planet.

To my mind, being a big ball of gas is no use to anyone, so I found the idea that I could theoretically wang it into outer space strangely comforting.

And finally, Philip Reeves doesn't know how he would feel if he was a horse.

I hope I would come to terms with my species' declining influence in society, says Philip, and accept it as an inevitable part of the advance of technology, and as a chance to get back to my innate horsic self.

But I can't help thinking I'd miss the feeling of playing a crucial role.

I mean just being a horse is okay, don't get me wrong, but aside from that, you're little more than a conduit for the social curse of gambling, an anachronism for ceremonial pageantry, or an excuse for police officers not to do their own dirty work with crowds.

I'll be honest, I'm conflicted, but luckily, I'm not a horse, so it's okay.

Here endeth this week's lies.

Goodbye.

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.