Colonies update (4225a)

Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle issue 4225 sub-episode A for a hiatus is being taken in bugle faction for a couple of weeks whilst Andy goes on holiday.

This week we bring you some previously unheard chunks of spare bugle that were withheld from from publication when we recorded them due to fate and the will of Zeus, or the editorial decisions of Chris.

It can't be so hard to tell the difference.

And you can also hear a chunk from the Bugle's sister audio publication, The Gargle, the glossy magazine to the Bugle's rigorously serious broadsheet, bringing you a wonderful collection of comedic talents from around the world, some of you will have heard of on the Bugle and some of whom you will not.

All hosted by the one and only Alice Fraser.

Other news now, and Australia is, well, clearly very concerned, Alice, about being first in line for an alien invasion because it's launched a new Space Command Defence Agency.

Peter Dutton, Defence Minister, of whom I know you're a massive fan.

He stars himself visually very much as a wannabe cartoon Machiavellian shyster baddie.

And he said

these words.

He said that Defence Space Command would, quotes, secure Australia's place in the cosmos.

I mean, this must be very exciting for you.

It's very exciting for us.

It's an attempt to sort of combat sinister superpowers who are presumably trying to infiltrate our way of life.

It's being run by Air Vice Marshal Kath Roberts, who said that she's scared of Australia's inability to combat Beijing and Moscow's internet activities for the most part, satellite activity.

She said the Chinese satellite could theoretically take out the national broadband network for regional Australia.

But if you'll remember from a bugle, a couple of, probably a year or two ago, the national broadband network could be taken out by cockatoos.

So

maybe we need to go to slightly lower than space to start solving our problems.

The role includes sort of increasing Australians' national understanding of space threats, which I think is a thing that I'm going to look forward to.

I can't make too much fun of this story because my cousin Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist and she's probably going to be heavily involved in this.

Well, I mean, and China obviously is a huge threat because, as previously discussed, China's got just a what, about a 25, 30 year window of opportunity for blasting Australia to smithereens with a death ray mega laser from space before Australia takes delivery of its, what, three or four nuclear-powered submarines from the AUKUS deal and becomes an unstoppable global force.

So time is of the essence.

You can see why Australia

wants to defend itself.

I mean, one of the best things about this news is that the uniforms that they've chosen to wear are camouflage

and I'm just not sure that you need to be camouflaged in the endless blackness of space but it's very nice.

What I think was probably there was a bit of leftover camo fabric and they went with that.

Empire updates and uh well Anuvab, children in Britain should, according to the Education Secretary and Nadeem Zahawi, be taught more about the benefits of the British Empire as well as the, as we mentioned, glitches that

it perpetrated or underwent.

He cited the successes of the pre-Saddam Hussein Iraqi civil service as the sort of thing children should be learning about.

And I mean, you know, I agree that we need to learn all aspects of

things from history.

But, I mean, how has this gone down

in India in terms of

the great benefits of empire that I mean I guess it it it made you know choosing food in in in restaurants in i in bengal at various times of history a lot simpler because there was no food at all anywhere.

So yeah, that I I guess was a probably cleared up quite a lot of thinking time.

Yeah, I mean look Andy you and I have have gone around and seen sort of some physical benefits of empire, large marble statues.

put up in different parts of India of tall British people and for generations afterwards, Indians staring at them, confused as to who they were and why they're in the middle of an important Delhi street.

So there are benefits, you know, but here in this town that I'm in in Punjab right now,

they're a little bit upset about some 2,000

unarmed freedom fighters being shot to death on a particular day.

So when I spoke to them, their feelings are a little more mixed about

the benefits of empire.

I've tried, I've tried to have a longer discussion with them.

I've even

tried to say, can we sort of settle this over a British meal of chicken tea kamasala

and see if I can win you over?

But they seem to not sort of see that sort of joyous side of the empire.

And I think it's mostly because they're humorless, I think.

I mean, I haven't really got to the main reason.

But for whatever reason, they're upset about 4,000 Punjabi unarmed protesters being shot by colonial forces.

And this do not seem to somehow see the fun side of empire.

The problem is one of analogy, I feel.

Not to interrupt you,

but I feel like the problem is one of analogy because, on one hand,

how do you quantify

many thousands of innocent dead versus like cricket?

Like how do you

balance out a train line against the complete destruction of

the integrity of a culture?

It's very difficult to figure out how to quantify.

Cricket is really great, Alice.

I mean, really, really great.

Yeah, but how many lives worth of great?

Oh, look, don't make me go into the stats.

Yeah.

I mean, look, it's mixed.

You've got a few famines, as Andy has researched, a few massacres, but in return, some tremendously good gin and tonic, right?

So it's mixed.

This is what I'm trying to get at.

It's mixed.

Gin and tonic.

He's mixed.

It's also a mixed gin and tonic.

So, you know, I mean, there are many, many benefits.

I don't know what language I'd be doing this podcast in.

And would I prefer to do this podcast over the fact that 4,000 random people died?

I don't know.

It's mixed.

It's very mixed.

So, Alice, Andy, I just had a very quick question for both of you.

And I know it's not one of the big topics, but it sort of is.

And I want to know how both of you think about this.

Obviously, Prime Minister Johnson wants to be a Churchillian wartime leader.

And he thinks this is World War II, and he's Churchill.

Now, when Joseph Biden showed up,

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, if you saw in the video, was the one who wanted to introduce him to the different world leaders, stand next to him, and give a good speech.

Instead, he was sort of stuck behind Emmanuel Macron.

And as Emmanuel Macron went around introducing President Biden to everybody, Boris Johnson sort of was going around sort of like a chicken with his head cut off.

And my question is: do both of you feel like he is the Churchillian leader that we all need?

And if so, how does he bounce back from this to become Churchill?

Well, I guess, I mean, that's always been Johnson's dream.

And very much, I mean, I don't know if

Joe Biden had the full dreams of being Roosevelt.

And we certainly know that Putin is wanting to go the full Stalin.

So I don't know if we'd do some kind of World War II conference

reunion.

This is the problem with modern politics.

It's just trying to gritty reboot old politics.

Try something new and original, man.

I mean, Boris Johnson is, as I might have said this on the people before, halfway to becoming Churchill.

Churchill famously said, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

Boris Johnson has got halfway there.

He can simply say, I have nothing to offer.

There he goes.

He's 50% Churchill.

Now here's something from the gargle.

In a time when corruption is king, where contagion is legion, and the lords of men spend their time saying pointless shit for giggles, when the polar ice caps release their long-held curses as they melt, and an ancient Japanese devil rock has cracked open, potentially releasing the demon within, if you believe in that sort of thing, devil rocks, not climate change, only one podcast dares to invite you to ignore all of that.

That podcast is The Gargle.

All of the news, satire, none of the politics.

This is the Sonic Glossy Magazine to the Bugles audio newspaper for a visual world.

I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Tom Neenan and James Nokise.

Welcome back!

Hello!

Hello!

We're going to take hands and plunge into the seance that is the body of this week's magazine, but first let's have a look at the front page.

Today's front page is a glitzy Hollywood spread because awards ceremonies are being held in person again.

Finally, you can enjoy all the glamour of strangers wearing clothes.

Stories from the Hollywood glamour include an in-depth look at what the woman wore on the night and an in-depth interview with the psychological trauma the male actors inflicted on themselves and their colleagues so they could play a character from a children's book and a speech that keeps going.

Just when you thought it was over, it is still happening.

And our satirical cartoon this week is from the UK where energy prices are set to go up by 54%.

It's a picture of a small girl making a prank phone call and she's asking, is your fridge running?

And the man she's called is saying yes, but he's tied to a chair and the fridge has run outside with all of his money in some kind of fridge man hostage situation.

You can tell he's stolen all his money because the freezer compartment is full of banknotes, and the cartoonist has added the helpful caption: The man's fridge is running, dot, dot, dot, away with all his money because energy bills are expensive.

End quote.

Satire, it's not dead, but it might be too expensive to keep in our city flat, so your parents are going to start introducing the concept of a farm upstate.

And now, our spectral news opening story: a ghost, A ghost is haunting a beauty spot, apparently.

The ghost of a dead woman has haunted a place called Dead Woman's Ditch, loudly telling people to f off, which is what I would do too if I were a dead woman and people kept stomping in my ditch.

Tom Neenan, you've been in a ditch.

Can you unpack this story for us?

I certainly would.

Dead Woman's Ditch.

Possibly the worst place to invite anyone on a first date, I'd say.

It's a red flag.

It's an instant red flag.

So yeah, so this is what I love is it's in the Quantox, which being British already sounds like a swear word.

And yeah, people have been scared off because this woman, sometimes it's whispered, sometimes it's shouted.

I don't know if there's any particular sort of differentiation between, you know, if it's shouted, leave quicker.

If it's whispered, maybe stick around for a bit longer.

But yeah, people have been scared away from this from this dead woman's ditch by a ghost who's been turning the air blue, even though apparently she's called the woman in white.

Is that right?

She's like the white woman or something.

I mean, it definitely is a white woman.

Definitely.

She's telling people to f ⁇ off and probably also saying she's going to call the manager.

So, yeah.

F ⁇ off back to where you came from, says this woman.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so I don't know whether, you know, like all these things, it's not true, is it?

But it's nice to believe that there is a white woman out there, a ghostly Karen, telling people to get the hell out of her ditch.

And maybe I'll take a visit.

Maybe I'll pay a visit.

And just because I like, you know.

If you have a thing about women talking dirty, then you can get it

from another realm over there.

If that's your kink, I'm not going to kink Shane.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is one of those stories where, like many of the ghost stories, it's just a story about a woman who they haven't figured out where she's standing yet.

It's classic, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They'll find out that there's just a shed somewhere and a woman with

a tannoy.

And that, you know, it'll all be a disappointing revelation to this.

But, you know, good for her.

Get good for her, getting her opinions out there.

Usually, you know, the amount of women who want to say something and then are spoken over by a man immediately.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a man in white, they're sort of, you know, ready to correct her and speak over at any point.

Actually, yeah, this woman isn't telling people at the ditch to f off.

She's just pent-up rage from like 40 years in HR and she's just standing in the ditch saying all the fk offs that she wish she said.

Definitely.

That's my heaven.

My heaven is literally going somewhere and all the people you wish you could have told to fk off, you just get to scream it into an existential void.

James Nokise, have you ever stood in a ditch and been told to f off?

No, no, I mean look, maybe this is just a racial divide between us guys, but generally when people of color encounter a ghost that tells them to f ⁇ off, they f off.

We're not like, oh, maybe we'll investigate or go for a holiday or let's write a new story.

We're just like, thank you, ghosts.

Okay.

Nothing good.

Nothing good's going to come from sticking around and investigating this.

There's a whole genre of movies just based around ghosts telling people to f ⁇ off and them not f ⁇ ing off.

Poor ghost.

No wonder she's shouting.

She's been trying for hundreds of years to warn people.

It started off as a gentle ghost.

That's the queen guy.

It's like, hey, excuse me excuse me.

Yes.

If you could just, and that was like in 1792.

But by 2023, it started to f off.

Well, I mean, look, I don't believe in ghosts because I believe that believing in them gives them more power.

But I think that it's an important thing here to debunk this story.

We need a sort of a Scooby-Doo gang

to unmask this woman in white.

Well, we're kind of dressed like one today, aren't we?

Yeah.

I mean, yes, that's a great joke for an audio podcast.

I'll go Zoik's as well, just encouraging listeners to go and investigate.

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Now it's time for your clubbing news, not seal clubbing.

This is the news that a nightclub is planning to sell off chunks of its sticky carpet.

If you were eating anything, I apologize.

James Nokise, you've been stuck to a carpet before.

Can you unpack this story?

Many times, Alice, sometimes of my own

volation.

So Halifax is, and I apologise to locals if I'm saying this wrong, Acapulco.

Sometimes I say English words too ethnically.

Acapulco.

It's been a fixture of the Yorkshire town of Halifax since 1961 and they are selling off small bits of their carpet, which is a unique 70s

design, an unclean.

Well, you can get clean sections in a glass frame, which is very arty for £50,

or just get a section of the club for £5,

and it all goes

to a charity.

called Street Angels, which I assume is a charity that specialises in helping people who've caught infectious diseases of carpets.

It's a bold move.

As someone who spent a lot of time on nightclub carpets, I have to say, I don't think I ever wanted it to follow me home, especially the sticky sections.

Well, you too can own a souvenir of a visit to a crap Yorkshire nightclub.

Well, a souvenir that isn't regret by buying this carpet.

And again, inexplicably, they have not used the selling of the carpet to buy themselves a new carpet.

They're just leaving the remnants of the old carpet carpet there, I assume, or the stickiness that stuck the carpet to the floor, so you can have all of the stickiness and none of the carpet.

Tom Neenan,

have you been to this nightclub?

No,

I studied at Durham, and what people at Durham are frequently, you know, they're very proud of saying is that Durham held the record for having the second worst nightclub in the world.

It did until the first worst nightclub burnt down.

So the blues in Durham is sort of officially

the worst.

I mean, how do you what's the metric on that i literally think they just take a black light to the walls and uh see how much of it doesn't reflect back it's um horrific i'd say like here's my controversial opinion don't have carpet in a nightclub i think there's uh four places there should be no carpet bathroom kitchen nightclub hospital that is the those are the rules um if you find yourself wanting to carpet there just stop because you just want with a basically your perfect nightclub is somewhere that you can turn off all the lights and it looks fine and then when the lights are are on you can hose it down and start again yeah you mentioned this 70s design once again not great for an for an audio medium but um if you do google it if you do google this um it literally looks like tapeworm this design literally looks like intertwining multicoloured tapeworm it is absolutely vile but yeah you can have your own i'm guessing sort of venereal disease filled piece of felt or whatever on your wall if you want to.

In defense of this, it was inspired because they had a birthday party there for a young boy whose parents had well no i don't think a young boy but a younger boy whose parents had met in the club and so they got a piece of the carpet as as a bit of a gift which i don't think i want the carpet of the place where my parents first hooked up i think there's a lot more pack there yeah that patch of carpet could be your potential siblings yeah

so i don't know why we've all assumed that everyone just jizzes on nightclub carpets it's not a thing I've ever seen.

Like plenty of disgusting shit happens in nightclubs, but it's

mainly not people jizzing up the walls.

I think we've made some horrible borderline bigoted assumptions about the people of Yorkshire, and I sincerely apologise.

Definitely.

I will say that thing about places not where carpet shouldn't be.

I went to a low-decile school and I was in the debating team with a couple of mates as a way to get out of school.

And we ended up going to a high-decile school.

And I went to use their bathroom before the debate and came back and went, bro, there's carpet in the toilets because I'd never seen carpet in a urinal before.

Yeah.

Where you know how they have the step?

The step was carpeted.

And they mocked me for the rest of my time at school going, hey, remember when you got freaked?

Like I was the weird one.

I was weird to go into a urinal, knowing what happens to the urinal and going, oh, this should,

this is too much.

Yeah.

Men are famously good with their their aim so um exactly yeah it's very worrying they did say uh one thing i love is that they said that they started selling it uh and then um you know they said it just snowballed from there guys that's not a snowball that is uh

please just launder this thing and then sell it

well that's all the time we have for our clubbing news because now it's time for your reviews as you know each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars uh james no kise what have you brought in for us today Now I know it's going to sound political, but it's not.

I've just got back to my hometown of Wellington and I just want to give a quick review to the occupation outside Parliament that we had because it wasn't political, it was just a bunch of idiots with too much time.

So I've looked at it.

They were trying to get rid, if no one knows the story, of their words, our communist leader, Jacinda Ardern.

And they did this hand on heart, no word of of a lie, Alice, by forming a commune outside Parliament where they lived for a few weeks until the police and most of the city of Wellington was like, oh,

off.

We tried a ghost.

We did try a ghost.

But then they ended up worshiping it.

They set fire to things as they left, including the children's playground, which seemed quite ironic because they were officially there because they didn't want children to get vaccinated.

So they were all for the safety of children, but mainly needle-based.

For too long, we have writhed under the thumb of big children.

Exactly.

And the best part is they had tinfoil hats, which sounds like I'm taking the piss out of conspiracy people, but no, because they started to get COVID, they convinced themselves that it was radiation weapons from parliament.

And so we're wearing tinfoil, and the local supermarket sold out of tinfoil, and all these people were walking around with tinfoil hats going, why are you teasing us for being crazy?

So difficult, difficult, satirical situation at that point, almost entrapment, one would say.

But I've reviewed it and they overstayed their welcome.

They burned down a kids' playground and they achieved nothing.

Nothing actually happened.

No MPs came to meet them from the government.

So I'm going to give it two stars out of five just for the effort, just to acknowledge the effort of organizing and following through.

But it's going to read like a four.

I mean, it is hard.

It is hard.

I've tried tried to get people to come to my gigs before.

So getting a bunch of people to form a commune, that's some flyering skill.

Well communes against communism is underappreciated charity.

And Tom Neenan, what have you brought in to review?

Today I'm doing an album review, but it's a review of a photo album that I found in my late grandmother's attic, which we were doing some sorting and we found this one.

And I'll just give you the edited highlights.

So my nan's photo album, which I found in her loft.

So, it starts strong with photos of sort of men from the 50s.

You know, they are white, they have pencil-thin moustaches, and they have real creamed hair, very much looking like the kind of people who in a movie would have refused service to Sidney Poitier.

And I'm going to guess equally as racist.

Then there's a big time jump.

We jump straight away to the 80s, and a wedding of two people who I have no idea who they are.

Never met them, and no idea who if they're connected to my family or not.

Obviously, big shoulder pads and big hair.

hair and my favourite image from this is a large group shot with basically everyone from the wedding in it and on the far left a man has quite cheekily got his penis out

which

was

love was a fun bit of a harmless jape in the 80s and in the 2020s is obviously a cancellable piece of malfeasance.

How times have changed for the better question mark?

Yes, full stop.

That's what the new doctor who's going to be with this wokeness is just going to be doctors and going back in time, cancelling people for things that weren't offensive back then.

That guy is going to get, he'll just get obliterated.

And, you know,

who could argue with that?

The album ends on a strange inclusion.

This is genuine, as all of them are, but this is just, it really struck me.

It's a photo taken of my grandmother's television on 9-11.

It's 9-11.

As the plane's hitting, she has taken a photo of her television.

And her handwritten caption just reads a terrible day

so fair enough she's not wrong it's a thrilling piece of social history and I'm gonna give it nine out of eleven never forget thank you man

I mean I think that is so charming that she decided to have that photograph printed and annotated like everyone else might not have recorded yet.

Yeah,

yeah, I think there were cameras on that day, that day, Nan.

I think we've got this covered.

Tom, I have to apologise.

I doubted your grandmother um right up until you said what she wrote and then she wrote a caption i was like oh

where's this going if the caption was just finally then it'll

make me worried success yeah

that's your lot for this week no complaining we will be back next week with another sub-episode Don't forget to buy tickets to my SoHo theatre run of Satirist for Hire.

That's the 9th, 10th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 20th and 21st of May, 7pm kickoff.

So Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday for a couple of weeks from the 9th of May.

Tickets via andyesaltman.co.uk or the Soho Theatre website and please do send in your email requests for topics for me to satirise.

To satirise this at satiristforhire.com and do please include the date of the show you will be coming to.

Alice Fraser is currently performing her show Cross at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival until the 24th of April.

Do go to see that or our vengeance will be swift and, of course, deadly.

Nish Kumar is also on tour, and in fact, most of the other Bugle co-hosts are up to something or other.

All the details somewhere in the ether or internet.

And do download this week's Gargle and indeed all previous episodes from your usual podcast placings.

There will be another sub-episode next week.

Until then, Buglers, Bugle hard and bugle often, whatever that means.

Goodbye.

Don't forget to buy the tickets of the Soho run, please.

You can listen to other programs from The Bugle, including The Bugle, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.

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.