Zelensky's Tight 16 (4224)

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4224 of the Bugle audio newspaper for uh whatever this planet is right now.

I've got no fing idea anymore.

I'm Andy Zotsman sitting here in the shed of inescapable veracity and the purest factfulness known to humankind, which is not a high bar right now, admittedly.

It's not a fact either, but if anything, that just highlights the uncertain, mendacious times we've been living in since humans first evolved.

Joining me to haruspicize through the entrails of another week of global shittery from New York City, it's Hari Kondabolu.

Hello, Hari, welcome back.

Thanks, Andy.

Thanks for having me back.

How's things stateside?

It's weird because

whatever God or Darwin or whoever has planned planned for the end of the world, it is quite a setup.

You know what I mean?

Like, I was already like, okay, is it going to be global warming, right?

Or is it going to be the pandemic?

And then all of a sudden the nuclear element, oh my God, it's back on the table.

Like, this is pretty exciting.

Like, this is how...

you set up a grand finale.

And the best thing about this kind of grand finale is that no one can complain after that it wasn't what they hoped for.

You know what I mean?

Like, oh, I didn't live up to the hype.

Nah, that's the best because we're all gone.

Well, I'm hoping that dinosaurs come back and do us in, to be perfectly honest.

That's always been like a bit of revenge element, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

After what Raquel Welsh did to them, uh, it's a matter of time.

Well, uh, also joining us, and uh, we will shortly find out what his chosen form of Armageddon is from uh just down the road from me in Crystal Palace.

It's Mark Steele.

Uh, hello, hello, Mark.

i mean how would you like the world to end what's your sort of optimum for well not like this because

vladimir putin said that when he put the nuclear missiles on his extra high alert the reason was list trusts the foreign secretary the current bloody ineptitudes ineptitude that is this trust the foreign

i mean i don't mind the human species dying out but let not the reason for it be lizing trust that's just a that's appalling millions of years of humanity civilizations rome egypt persia alexander the great beethoven

hamid ali the invention of things like curling everything beekeeping all we've done ended

Liz trust i mean like if you found out this dinosaurs didn't die out because of an asteroid it was just there was one really stupid ignorant stegosaurus Kevin, who just went, I'm going come, I'm going to walk over, don't go over there, I'll fucking tripped over and bloody upset a nest of pterodactyls and function of brontosaurus.

And within half an hour, everyone was dead because of this one

twatty stegosaurus.

That's what's happening.

List trust.

And that's where we're at now.

Who would ever have thought we would look back on 2020 as the good old days?

That's where we're at.

At least then, when we had a maniac in charge of half the world, all he did was send out Mendel tweets and build a wall and tell us all to drink bleach.

Jesus, happy times, yeah, happy times.

Uh, we will, of course, have full exclusive coverage of whatever Armageddon does materialize here on the Bugle, the official podcast of the end of the world.

Uh, we are recording on the 18th of March 2020.

It's good,

you've got to you've got to take the branding deals where you can.

Uh, it's the 18th of march 2022 on this day in 1965 the soviet cosmonaut alexei leonov performed the first ever spacewalk a 12 minute nine second zero gravity poodle outside the uh vostkhod 2 commie craft uh he said the famous words one small toddle about for a man one symbolic cold war propaganda victory for all mankind maybe not all mankind however due to the latest retrospective sanctions against russia from the international community

Leonov has now been disqualified, as has his fellow crew member Pavel Belyaev.

The Voshkhod 2 shall now be known as Rocky the Rocket 2, and the International Space Agency has reattributed the mission to the reigning Wimbledon singles champions of the day, Roy Emerson of Australia.

and Brazil's Maria Bueno, who posthumously has the honor of being the first person to have walked in space to her seven Grand Slam singles and 12 doubles titles.

In other retroactive cultural sanctions, the works of Russian literary giant Alexander Pushkin have been assigned to children's author Lucy Cousins,

to whose eruva of popular works featuring Maisie Mouse can now be added masterpieces of the 19th century canon, including smash-hit verse novel Yevgeny on Yegin, The Undertaker, which of course is a famous short story about the professional wrestling scene in 1830s Yaros level, and Pushkin's no-holds-barred autobiography When Pushkin Comes to Shovkin, plus his posthumously written self-help tome, How to Lose a Duel and Die Senselessly in Your Prime.

Lucy Cousins is also now the author of Pushkin's smash hit historical play, Boris Godinov.

Its sequel, Boris, clearly not Godinov, is currently running interminably in London.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

Today, the 18th of March, is National Awkward Moments Day in the USA.

And let's just declare it Global Awkward Moments Day as well, because what a day to be recording as the world sinks daily further into what is proving proving to be something of an awkward millennium, a bit of a pattern emerging.

Alternate millennium seems to start very awkwardly indeed in the first 20, 30 plus years, and the one in between tootles, along with people doing sod all.

National Awkward Moments Day celebrates those cringe-inducing moments when the deep flush of embarrassment broils into your shame-quivering cheeks.

Such as moments such as, for example, when you've left a horse's head in the wrong person's bed whilst temping on a zero-hours contract for a mafia boss.

Sorry, Granny, doesn't quite cut it, does it?

Or perhaps you

that or perhaps that awkward moment at

awkward moment at work when you tell a colleague you thought a film was a total pile of unrelenting shit, only to find out that your work colleague wrote, directed, and starred in that film in their secret double life as a Hollywood superstar.

Or maybe you've just launched your PowerPoint presentation to outline your company's marketing strategy for increasing sales of Wi-Fi-enabled smart forks in the next two quarters, only to have the wrong file ready and accidentally share your intricate plans for breaking into the Spanish mint and printing billions of euros worth of banknotes.

Or maybe that awkward moment when you call the judge at your trial mummy, which is probably something to do with the long grey hair.

And we look also at some classic awkward moments from history, wrongful executions, unjustified wars, unnecessary massive famines exacerbated by imperial occupiers stealing all the food, prank referendum results that are deposited steaming slowly into the intrays of future generations.

We do have a habit as a species of concocting awkwardness.

And in particular, we look at arguably the greatest awkward moments in human history.

Abraham chopping off the end of his plonker at the age of 99 after misunderstanding God, telling him to gather a team of acrobats, jugglers, clowns, and lion tamers to travel the world, persuading people to worship the one true Lord.

Sorry, boss.

What was that you said?

Oh, circus mission.

Oh, no.

Oh,

I feel really silly now.

I feel really.

Could you,

boss, could you maybe make a magic bandage appear in that head?

Yourself?

It's really sore.

That section in the bin.

That's good, Andy.

Thank you, Lori.

Now, some of your astronaut cosmological thing there reminded me of the thing.

This is a true story.

When I did my in-town show about Corby, I found this out about it, right?

So

the extraordinary thing about Corby, I don't know if this will make any sense at all over in America.

Corby is this town in a county called Northamptonshire,

which is very sort of,

I don't know, it's not that far from London and it's quite sedate and it's nowhere near at all Scotland.

But a steel works opened up there in the 1930s and loads of unemployed steel workers that were from Scotland walked down, they were skinned, and they walked down and they pretty much populated this town.

And as a result of that, this town of Corby still has this really sort of broad Scottish accent.

And you'll meet people who are there and who go, I'm 63, and I've never been to Scotland in my leaf, and that's a little bit.

It's true now, and so the Iron Brew, which is a very Scottish drink, this is the biggest.

There's a huge Rangers and huge Celtic supporters clubs there, and so on.

And they do all sorts of Scottish customs, such as they have a porridge-eating champion,

right?

And the World Porridge Eating Championships took place in 1969 on the same day.

Do you know this story?

No, I don't.

Right.

Well, I can see where you're going.

From the year, I'm guessing where you're going with this.

Right.

Well, yes, when the first moon landing happened.

And there was a little joke that they had between sort of mission control and the astronauts.

And so the astronauts said, what's in the news today?

Ha, ha, ha.

And of course, all that was in the news was they're going to the moon.

So they found other stories as well.

And one of the stories was that a bloke from Colby had won the World Porridge Eating Championships.

And Neil Armstrong was so completely fascinated by this that when he got a chance to name a crater on the moon, he named it Colby.

And so

there is a crater on the moon called Colby on account of that.

That's sensational.

I mean, I mean, Mark, this podcast isn't really a place for facts.

But

I've got to let you off with the.

So, how do they judge the World Porridge Eating Championship?

Is it pure volume?

Is it artistic impression?

Is it I don't know if it's like the great British porridge off and the sort of people there going, oh my God, the oats are too mackerel

distributed during.

I don't know if it's like that, or if it is just volume, I don't know.

It's volume and speed.

So, someone here who won it did 23 bowls in 10 minutes.

I think that is the bear.

That's the the NASA guy.

23 bowls in 10 minutes.

But how big's the bowl, though?

Yes.

Yeah.

Not a washing up bowl.

It's not specific.

How big's the spoon?

Yeah, a normal, but that's wrong, isn't it?

Well, there you are.

Let's ask if he's still alive.

We know the answer to that.

You can't, you don't live long when you're eating 23 bowls of porridge in 10 minutes.

Is porridge essentially just oatmeal?

is that what it is yeah with water or with yeah invented probably in about 941 AD by some huge bloke with a kilt in the middle of some thistles in Sterling come and look at what I've invented oats and water and f all else

top story this week uh well uh the retro cat-headed cold war country that is Putin's uh Ukraine expedition expedition, power clogs on.

The gremlin from the Kremlin still hasn't really read the room, or indeed the world, and has been once again proving his lack of mastery of the delicate arts of public relations by, amongst other things, bombing a theatre full of

sheltering children, which seldom works from a PR point of view.

It's been a bleak...

bleak few weeks.

How have you both been,

well, enjoying the onset of what may be World War III and, as we mentioned earlier on, full-on again?

There's a relief in it.

I just wish they'd rip the bandage off sooner.

Do you know what I mean?

It's the anticipation that gets to you.

Like,

are we still doing this?

Do I still got to pay rent?

Do I still have to pay taxes?

Can I just let it go?

Like, it would, it would, I don't need all the thinking.

Like, I just like it to be done with if it's going to happen.

I'm talking about nuclear annihilation.

right um it's uh and

uh market i mean it's quite hard to see any sort of strategic plan from putin's point because it seems to make even less strategic sense for russia now than it did when it began and it already made not just no sense but sort of inverse sense i mean what what

what do you think he's what what's his game well that's probably crazy isn't it to try to work out what he's doing it's like sort of it'd be like watching um maybe you know when you've sort of sprayed a fly and it's not quite done the job but the fly is just visiting in all directions right imagine then if you sat round if all the world's top experts at everything sat round going what do you think the fly is aiming to do next

it's probably like probably like that innit well i mean the genius of it usually there's some made up reason for this sort of barbarity you know so like you know, the West, bless it, we make up that they've got weapons of mass destruction or that Saddam calls 9-11 or that a domino theory thing like with Vietnam or even Hitler had sort of, oh, I mean, I've been invited in to protect the German people of Sudetenland or something.

But Putin is just, I want more things.

And it's just, that's it.

He's not even trying, is he?

Yes.

I mean, without wishing to do an amateur psychological profile on someone who I've never personally met, Putin, and he's not really in the target demographic of the bugle.

But he doesn't seem to be a man, Hari, who is by nature open to the idea of backing down and admitting that

he was wrong.

No,

you've seen that picture with him with his shirt off on the horse, right?

Yeah, that guy doesn't apologize.

That guy goes for it.

I mean, it's kind of like he's held the world hostage with nukes.

I mean, honestly, I'm surprised Trump didn't try this.

He might have done, mightn't he?

And not, and just people just didn't interpret it.

They just couldn't understand what he was saying.

It's possible that one of them things about bleach or one of them crazy things where he would just come out and people would go, what's he said now?

And he's gone, oh, you know, it's time to put a cactus up the arse and squash a penguin in the

court.

And what he was actually saying was, no, no, I want to, I'm actually,

I'm saying I want the Isle of Man.

Otherwise, I'm going to nuke everywhere.

Well, I could quite understand it.

There was a time when he did talk about taking Greenland at one point.

Yes, he wanted to buy it.

But maybe that was, yeah,

if that had run on a little longer, maybe it would have got to the same

position.

I mean, it does seem a lot to do with Putin's.

We've had the war of Jenkins' ear that we talked about in the bugle a few weeks ago.

This, I think, could be the war of Putin's ego as he continues to put the I, the I, three more I's and another I into increasing international isolation.

Um, Vladimir, uh, Vladimir Zelensky Hari, uh, talked to the US Congress this week.

He gave a 16-minute virtual address.

There's the stand-up comedian in him, basically, 16 minutes of stuff, usually equates to a 20-minute set, but his material at the moment not getting a lot of laughs.

Uh,

he was supposed to do 10 minutes, but he burnt the leg,

went way over his time.

Someone's standing at the back with a with a bike light away from the red bike.

That's what we're used to having the open mic circuit over here.

How did

his speech go down?

I mean, it went down well.

It was weird for me to watch it because it almost sounded like he was asking for a stay of execution.

Like,

I know what we're reporting, but I just have a feeling at some point Russia just has more and they will swallow Ukraine whole

unless there's some kind of interference.

So, like, you know, he was saying all the all the things you have to say.

Like, he was saying blatant lies, too.

Like,

the leader of the world has to be the leader of peace.

And I'm like, no, it doesn't.

It's never been that.

He's really trying to work it.

And they were.

He's not been paying attention to America's MO as leader of the world for

indeed ever.

I mean, even before America, it's

never been that.

All the most important people, Alexander the Great, William the the Conqueror, all the people who've run empires, the British slave trade.

Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace.

Also, the leader of peace always gets killed really young.

I mean, that's always been the way that works.

So it's not really...

Anyway,

it was strange.

I mean,

Congress kept clapping every time he said something, you know, about being resolute and what they're fighting for and stuff.

And it was a weird kind of thing to see them clap constantly, both sides, as if to say, yes, this is wonderful.

We are not going to do anything.

We will continue to clap, but we will do nothing to help you.

Please enjoy this extended applause.

Do you think, oh, also, as a comic, he was probably thinking, I was getting lots of applause, Griggs, but no love.

Right, right, right.

Just.

They're actively trying to kill him.

And it's a strange thing to do a press conference when people are actively trying to kill you It's like if the roadrunner just stopped for a second looked around for Wiley Coyote and then took a bunch of questions like this is Not the best time, but he had to do it like he's you know and he and it was initially I'm like he was just wearing a t-shirt So I'm like why does he look like a hip young tech CEO?

And then I realized, oh yeah, because he's in an actual war.

Not like the wars we fight where the president, the leaders never get involved, you press a bunch of buttons.

He's like literally in the middle of a war where he could be bombed at any moment.

And a three-piece suit might not be the most effective thing to wear when you're trying to flee.

Zelensky was also really trying to go after the hearts of the American people.

So he like referenced how this was their Pearl Harbor or 9-11.

But the problem with that is that, you know, that happened to Americans.

So

that's a problem because what's happening right now in Ukraine is not happening to Americans.

And so for, therefore, it's not really the same thing.

Also, he started referencing other American things.

Pearl Harbor, 9-11, Martin Luther King, Mount Rushmore.

I believe he mentioned the Rocky movies,

Thriller,

and the McRib.

All desperate attempts to try to get Americans on board.

He did similar things with the UK.

he mentioned uh churchill and shakespeare and then when he did canada he paused for a second and he said canada has a very nice personality

so

something for everybody take that canada is he doing it for everyone like malta he had he had a for malta

I reckon he goes Tony Drago, snooker player.

That's what I call that.

Yes, you will remember your awful moment when the country sank into despair when Tony Drago was knocked out in the third round 10-9 on the final black

by

Joe Johnson in 1985.

That too, that too, is what we must face now.

I mean, if we let, let's say the world lets Putin just have

Ukraine.

I mean, certainly there's no historical examples that show that he can't just stop with one country, right?

We just have to let him take the one, and then it should stop.

Isn't that how this has worked historically?

How did this go in America then?

Because I heard the bit where he was talking about Pearl Harbor, and of course, a bit of me did think, I mean, bless him, you know, you can't help but like him.

But

that was clearly a very, very sort of

brazen attempt to catch the heartstrings of the American.

Did it work, or is it like you said, people just went, oh,

yeah, but it's not us, so bollocks?

Yeah, that's pretty much what happened.

Because you can see the videos and you see what's happening, and you know what's happening is terrible.

Well, that's not completely true.

Half the American people just discovered what Ukraine is.

The other half were like, oh, these videos are horrific.

You know, this is happening.

You don't need to be like, you know, this is like your Pearl Harbor.

Because honestly, most Americans at this point, like, don't have any feelings about pearl harbor uh whatsoever uh and also don't know what uh a day that will live in infamy even means so it's very like

i don't think it made very much of an impact here again because like americans didn't get hurt uh he is uh appealing for more direct assistance from uh america and the west in general to counteract the russian military machine uh the russian military machine seems to be a pretty shit machine but it is uh a big machine um Yes, controlled by a cast iron total shithead.

So still a concerning machine.

He said another thing I was quite interested by about the no-fly zone.

Saying, is this a lot to ask for to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine to save people?

Is that too much to ask?

It was, in fact, a multiple choice question.

A, yes.

B, no.

C, also no, apart from the fact that there are 13,000 nuclear weapons on this planet, and we kind of get the impression that Vladimir Putin is using his big red button as an office stress toy.

So it's hard to see

where it can go from here.

Liz Truss, the aforementioned Liz Trussmark,

the harbinger of the end of the world, as you've described her,

said in response to the events unfolding in Ukraine that the era of complacency is over.

Yes.

Now, is it over?

And if so, why did it last so long?

They're just full of these these sorts of phrases, aren't they?

You know, no more, no longer, are we going to be complacent?

It's,

I don't know, I'm not just saying this as a, it does remind me of when I had a

water bill that came in for £1,300 and it took me months to sort it out.

And eventually, this bloke on the phone said, Mr.

Sewell, you'll be very pleased to know that we have now passed this matter on to our concerned team.

And

I thought, well, who's had it before?

They couldn't give a shit team.

And

this is what they're saying, isn't it?

We are now passing this matter on to our concerns team, this matter of Vladimir Putin,

which suggests that they've really not given a...

Well,

if only they've not given a f ⁇ , but they have given a f ⁇ .

They've given a huge f ⁇ .

They've given a f ⁇ as much as we see this monstrous, completely deranged lunatic running a huge chunk of the world, including loads of nuclear missiles.

And what we've decided to do with him is not be complacent, but let him send all his bloody oligarchs over here to buy riverside apartments and football clubs.

And

we're going to buy all our energy off him and he can do whatever we want.

And he's going to, we're going to play tennis with his bloody, whoever he fancies in order that they fund our political parties.

And so it's not complacency at all.

They haven't been complacent.

They've gone, oh, come here, Mr.

Wonderful

lunatic, bloody bareback on a horse, nuclear missile, crazy man.

They've not been complacent.

They've not gone, oh, I wonder if he'll be a lunatic.

They've gone, ha ha, he's a lunatic.

Brilliant.

By all our shit.

So tipped over that fine line between complacency and naked venal self-interest.

I mean,

it's a tricky balance just right.

And those politically and economically expedient chickens have come home to have explosive diarrhea all over their roots.

Liz Truss also said that this represented a paradigm shift,

which is polite talk for we've fed up good and proper.

So interesting times for the world.

Do you think she knows what that means?

No one knows what it means.

What is a paradigm?

No one knows.

It's just a term that's used to cover up the fact that no one knows what it means.

I mean, if only only with hindsight, people had been warning about the dangers of excessive reliance on fossil fuels for, say, the last 50 or more years, or if only people had raised concerns about the reliability of Vladimir Putin, say, you know, 20 plus years ago.

But no one did, apart from the people who did, but

no one did that.

And I guess

we have to regret that.

I think what Trump has...

given the world is the sort of rather than the old-fashioned lying politicians you now just who sort of they say things that if you're caught up on it, you go, oh, yes, but that could be interpreted as that.

Now you just totally make stuff up.

So, and that's what this trust is doing.

That's what Boris Johnson, when he said, when he said, we have

settled more people since 2015 than anyone in the world.

So it's not just saying, oh, we have taken a lot of refugee.

We've taken more than anyone

in the world.

And Poland has taken a million.

And at that point, Britain had taken 300

but 300 more more than a million

in the world

and no one goes what are you finging talking about how much did your shitty education cost that you think 300 is more than a million

mathematically incoherent finger I just

But no one does.

No.

Prime Minister said that we've taken more than anyone in the the world, more indeed than all the world put together.

We're bigger than the universe, said Johnson.

Now the weather.

Quick side note.

The President of Yemen is still waiting for that Zoom link from Congress.

Must have gotten lost in a spam folder or something.

I think he's there right now, clicking

on Mick Wood.

It's been over a year.

Where is it?

They said he got lost in the mail.

That's impossible, but I keep clicking.

Out Out of sight, out of mind.

First rule of international diplomacy.

We've seen over the course of the war, incredible courage and bravery from people in Ukraine, and also various acts of protest within Russia.

This week, TV producer Marina Ovzhanikova interrupted a prime-time TV news bulletin holding up a banner saying no war and Russians against war.

And then there's some bit in between.

I assume she panicked because the letters in between didn't make sense.

They look sort of like proper letters, but the lines go in the wrong way and stuff.

But anyway, the message was quite clear.

She also issued a video statement.

And she's worked in TV news for a long time.

The video statement said, We are just silently watching this anti-human regime.

And now the whole world has turned away from us.

And the next generation and the next 10 generations won't be able to clean themselves from the shame of this fratricidal war.

Now here's Oleg with the travel.

When she she interrupted the news bulletin,

the newsreader tried to just talk over her

and then they switched to an emergency tape.

And it made me think, why can't our news bulletins go to emergency tapes every day, five seconds into every, but would that not make us happier?

As I just switched to footage of Ian Botham at Hedigley in 1981.

Well, or would you like Hugh Edwards to appear behind the main newsreader and say, I am sorry for all of the lies that I have said over the years.

I have played my part in turning the country into zombies and the fratricidal.

What is it?

I have

fratricidally turned everyone against us.

Well, I suppose reading the news over a period of 20 years probably would have its effect on you, you know,

same as being a paramedic or something.

So he's

he is the most morose, even if everything was

under an E is the first D of

spring.

Boris Johnson, meanwhile, with the flows of oil and gas from Russia being at least temporarily inconvenienced by the Ukrainian situation, Johnson was forced to resort this week to trying to butter up a perhaps currently marginally less tyrannical death cult warmongering regime, whose military crimes of choice are of considerably less concern in these parts under the out-of-sight, out-of-mind clause of the un's founding charter he was off to saudi arabia uh the prime minister uh also known under his official honorary title of the first lord of floundering fuckwittery uh to try to um persuade them to let us have more of their blood oil rather than russian uh blood oil uh i mean it did show

I think the way the world works in a not particularly glowing light this trip, Mark, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, yes, so

of course.

But

boris johnson almost does it sort of honestly whereas other politicians have to be more snidy about it we will not be beholden to tyrannical regimes that is why i'm off to see the king of saudi arabia

peace-loving saudi arabia

he has been accused of having no moral compass boris johnson which isn't entirely fair he does have a moral compass problem is he's torn the needle out of it uh and scrubbed out all the directions and just put a photo of his own face on it.

Saudi Arabia, for those who've not heard of it, is a part-time kingdom, full-time global sports brand,

still looking good for the executing political prisoners demonstration sport at Paris 2024, which could be a rare Olympic gold for the kingdom.

While Boris Johnson was there, they executed three more people to add to the 81 they dispatched in a single day recently, which prompted a rather bizarre

sporting event

in a post-mass press conference, some awkward questions for the Newcastle United football manager, Eddie Howe.

Newcastle recently taken over by Saudi Arabia essentially via a sort of sovereign wealth fund.

And so Eddie Howe, instead of speculating on whether the magpies remain vulnerable to counter-attacking overloads on the left-hand side when their fullback pushes up, was faced with queries about the wrongs and even wrongers of mass state executions as a tool for stifling dissent.

Such is sport 2022.

Tough things for a football manager to deal with.

But it's so, it's so distressing.

Like, so the Chelsea fans, sorry for

if you're familiar with this, but Chelsea is this club that was bought by Roman Abramovich, who is now, it turns out, as if there was ever any doubt about it, it was very close to Putin.

And he ran away from the collapse of the Soviet Union with five

billion dollars worth of assets, which he was given for almost almost nothing for supporting Boris Yeltsin in his campaign of straight deal.

And part of that money he used to buy Chelsea football club.

And, well, Chelsea fans were very ethical, of course, and

they couldn't give a shit.

And now sanctions have been put against him, and he's got to give up the club and he's not allowed to sell it.

And that's a part of the sanctions.

And of course, they're just all ringing in phones.

It's not fair.

It's disgusting.

And you'd think, no, well, I could see that if over all this business has gone on in the Ukraine over the last four weeks, that's a fair point.

Because if anyone suffered in that time, it's Roman Abramovich, the owner of the Chilcon Football Club, who's really been put through the mill.

Then it certainly puts the trifles of those people in bloody Kiev into perspective.

And

I said, what about this, right?

So this is part of the sanctions.

£20,000 is the upper limit on what they're allowed to spend on away travel.

And naively, I thought, right, 20,000 pounds for the rest of the season for away games.

Well, they should be able to manage that, shouldn't they?

It's £20,000

per match.

And their next match is against Middlesbrough, which is a very industrial town up in the northeast of England, not that far.

You can get there easily in two and a half hours on the train.

And the Chelsea Football Club went berserk, saying we can't get there and back for £20,000 to f ⁇ ing Middlesbrough.

F ⁇ ing, how do they normally trudge?

They hire Beyoncé to push them in a wheelbarrow or something on a f ⁇ ing

magic carpet sewn out of f ⁇ ing ostrich feathers.

And they go, it's not fair.

It's sanctions.

Yes, but we are used to traveling more luxury playing swimming pool on the wing.

Oh, it's so depressing.

Not one of them.

They don't even go, I understand the people in Ukraine are suffering.

Oh, they don't give a f ⁇ about them.

Now we got playing the f ⁇ ing Champions League with the take them the sooths we've got to leave them behind.

Yeah, so no more transfers for Chelsea for the foreseeable future.

But moving on to a transfer that did happen in the 1970s, the transfer of 1500 tanks from Britain to Iran,

which is this is an extraordinary story.

So two British Iranian prisoners, Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashuri, have been released finally this week after

five and six years in Iranian prisons,

irrespectively.

I think I've got them the wrong way around.

Anyway, years.

Let's just say years in Iranian prisons.

And essentially what seems to have happened is that Britain has finally paid a 400 million pound debt to Iran dating back to the 1970s for undelivered tanks.

This is just one of the

strangest stories.

It's a really great news story.

Just on the personal level of Nazanin Zagaria Radcliffe finally being reunited with her husband and young daughter and Adusha Ashuri with his family.

But quite how it all came about is just totally a 400 million pound debt for undelivered tanks.

I think the most astonishing thing or the most telling thing about this story, so for people who don't know, yeah, so she was

she was, well, she was a project manager, Nathanins Zagori Ratcliffe, who went to

Iran from when she first came to visit her parents and then was arrested at Tehran airport on the way back and was charged with spying, which she clearly wasn't spying, she was a project manager.

So that's very important for the main subplot of this story.

So,

and then she was just kept in jail for all this time.

And all sides knew she wasn't spying.

She was just kept sort of hostage, really, for this 400 million.

And Britain never wanted to pay it and stuff.

And now suddenly, who would have thought for some reason Britain wants to be close to countries who've got lots of energy all of a sudden?

Just by coincidence, at the same time as the country that they were getting loads of energy from has gone full scale mental and invaded somewhere.

So clearly it's to do with that.

And so, but one brilliant side issue of that, as you say, she came home this week, which is marvelous.

But now, this is the important subplot because Boris Johnson was the foreign secretary.

four years ago when it was his job to go and meet Iranian diplomats to discuss this.

And he clearly had not read even the headlines of his briefing.

And so he said to the Iranians,

she was just a journalist.

It's all she was doing, just here being a journalist.

She was a journalist.

She was a project.

It was nothing to do with anything at all.

And the Iranians were saying she was a journalist and she was spying, which he absolutely, utterly wasn't.

And then he went and guessed she was a journalist.

So they went, aha.

So she was a journalist and increased her f ⁇ ing sentence.

And this.

f ⁇ ing idiot has managed to cut who else is like a lawyer.

Yes, well, we have got them to change your sentence.

Unfortunately, I've got them to triple it because I see it.

But I'm not even on trial.

I'm the clerk of the court.

Yes, well, I rather did say that you were involved in the burglary.

So I'm a bit of a jail because

great moron is running our country.

I mean, just the sooner Putin invades us and takes over here as well, the better.

It's just

so bad.

And Pretty Patel's probably thinking, I don't know why she's celebrating.

I'll be deporting her again by the weekend.

It's very marvellous in all sorts of ways, but for

terrible reasons.

And I guess a lesson has been learned.

Well, I mean, in terms of 400 million pound debts for undelivered tanks, never pay up front if you're buying 1500 tanks.

Surely

you stagger those payments, don't you?

You stagger them.

Well, you have them on a direct debit, you little fool.

The IMF is probably so impressed with Iran.

Like, way to get your money back.

That is a shakedown.

I wish we could hold people hostages.

Oh, my God.

Brilliant.

I think if Nazanin wants to go away again, I'd suggest Bournemouth.

American news now and no more switching of clocks twice a year for America, Hari.

Daylight saving is to be made permanent.

So rather than having to put your clocks forward and then back,

which takes anything up to three to four minutes to change all your clocks, that's twice a year.

So Hari, that's equivalent to almost 20 million hours lost in the USA changing clocks, assuming 200 million people do change their clocks, obviously not everyone.

And if they're all on a basic $1.5 million per hour salary like classic American Tom Brady, that's $30 trillion a year wasted changing clocks.

So this is a huge turning point in American economic history, would you not say?

Correct.

Yes, plus it eliminates the excuse of, oh, I forgot, I'm sorry, I'm late, I forgot to turn my clock back or forward.

And that that has been useful for quite some time.

I never really understood why we did it.

And I looked up a bunch of articles and I still don't really understand.

It's just so it doesn't get late.

Is that right?

It doesn't get late too early, and it doesn't get

it doesn't.

I don't really understand.

The thing that annoys me the most about this, in addition to not understanding exactly how it works, is so you decide to get rid of something that's been an institution in this country for quite some time that never really made sense to people but like we just went along with it because that's the way it's been and finally you challenged it and you got rid of it and that institution isn't the electoral college

you went after daylight savings no

it's a pet peeve it's not a challenge to democracy it doesn't

it's not part of the reason that this country is as messed up as it is it's just an annoyance and i hated the articles i was reading about how the democrats and republicans Republicans finally agreed on one thing.

And I'm like, it's not even a thing.

It's barely a thing.

It's a stupid thing to begin with.

I mean, sure, what we could have done is just,

you know, kept it as is, like, gotten rid of it.

We should never have done it to begin with daylight savings.

I mean, people just simply would have been like, oh, we should come in an hour later today or an hour earlier.

But I guess that's, that doesn't work.

Whatever.

The point.

Is it farmers?

Because here it's it's always farmers.

No, but nobody knows.

I've read three articles and nobody was giving me a clear answer.

I don't understand why we were playing with clocks to begin with.

And now, and the Electoral College is still there.

So what was the point of any of this?

Well, Harry, but surely you've got to look upon this as

a gateway reform that America might, from this seemingly minor reform,

and Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Ferrella, said, if we can get this passed, we don't have to keep doing this stupidity anymore.

Now, as you say, that's not the most obvious piece of stupidity that America should be looking to scrub out from its not-to-do list.

But, you know, if this works, then they can look at the Electoral College and gun crime and presidential pardons, whatever else you want to reform about America.

But you have to change the clocks or stop the clocks changing first,

just as a little

entry-level reform.

Are you assuming that the next thing after the clock business is gun reform

and electoral, as opposed to we have to do something about leap year?

Like, you don't think it's going to be.

But then it builds up slowly.

Then maybe legalize some unpasteurized cheeses and gradually and in just a blink of an eye over the next thousand or so years, America will become a slightly more just society.

Just give it time.

I think leap year.

No, I think now you've mentioned it, I think leap year does take precedence of those arms.

The

Jewish calendar has a leap month, if I remember very vaguely from

some time ago now.

So, you know, it could bring.

How often does that happen?

Every now and again.

Yeah, no, that's a secret that my people are not at liberty to divulge.

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

No lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers this week because I have to dash off to do a tour show in Maidenhead, depending on when you receive this.

Do come along to all of the rest of my tour gigs.

There are a few tickets left on Saturday night and all the shots, Sunday night in Nottingham.

Then next week, Bristol, Exeter.

Cambridge and Milton Keynes and I have eight dates in London in May.

Mark, tell us about your podcast.

Oh yes, so I've got yes, my podcast of my own little breakaway, a bit like people do for the mafia when they go off to start their own family.

So it's called What What the F is Going On?

And that comes out every week.

It's F and Three Stars.

So I'm assuming that's what it means.

It might you know it might be what the flag is going on.

Who knows?

But yeah, yeah, so that's every week.

I'm joined by my son, who I bred specifically to find out

what is going on.

And we have various characters who come and help us.

On, in fact, one that you'd be appreciative of, I think, Andy Fred Truman, deceased cricketer Fred Truman, comes on, see him back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, he gives mostly his views are that everything was marvelous until 1965 and then terrible.

Yeah, so that, and then I've got various shows going around the country now that we're all back out touring again.

I can't remember where any of them are, to be honest, but if you look my name up and go through every single town in Britain, you'll come across the ones I'm going to.

Ari, anything to plug?

Yes, I'm on tour again.

A lot of dates, but I'll just give you a handful.

Washington, D.C., April 7th through 9th, Bloomington, Indiana, April 14th to 16.

Richmond, Virginia, May 19 to 21.

If I survive, Richmond, May 25th to 28th, San Francisco Punchline.

I'll be all over Chicago, Toronto, Cleveland.

I'm in Milwaukee next week at the Laughing Tap.

So yeah, I'll be all over the place.

Just puts us so.

Oh, we're in.

I'm in Maidenhead.

I'm in Tring.

I've got Milwaukee, Toronto, Denver, Richmond, Chicago, San Francisco.

Oh, I forgot to mention Hereford.

Right, well, do go to all of those shows, Buglers.

We'll be back next week with more on whatever is happening in the entire universe.

Thank you for listening.

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 come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.