Arm in Armageddon (4223)

This is a level of production that I don't think I've ever come across in a Bugle opening.

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue minus 293 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world.

It is the first of January of the year 2000.

I am 25-year-old andy zoltzmann and what an exciting time it is to be a human being you go is it the dawn of a whole new millennium the first one for a thousand years would you believe i've lived 25 years of my life in years beginning with one and frankly the novelty has worn off but now well it feels like a psychological clean slate for humanity as we leave behind the conflicts and failures of the past and march towards a space-age high-tech future of global unity optimism and progress as we're all brought together and improved by the wondrous power of technology.

I mean, yes, it might be quite hard to find comedy in such a massive utopia, but here on the bugle, we're going to give it a go.

And join me in trying to give it a go.

It's very amusing, up-and-coming, open-minded comedian and actor, John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Bugles!

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

What year is it?

And what month as well, please?

It's March 2022, Andy.

Oh, no.

I was hoping you wouldn't say that, Chris.

Oh,

yeah.

yeah.

Sorry, I've overslept.

Let me just quickly catch up on the newspapers.

Oh.

Oh,

uh,

oh,

um, shit.

Uh,

Tom.

Sorry, Chris,

do you mind if I take some time off?

How long?

Okay, 40 years?

Yes, I do mind.

You can have five seconds off.

All right, that'll do.

Start the clock.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4223 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visceral world.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann looking out of the window of my shed here in London.

The sun is shining and the sky is blue and both of those seem totally inappropriate in the current circumstances and it makes me think that maybe using weather as a metaphor in any art form should be instantly banned.

It is another bit it has been another, I think we could fairly say,

of a week and joining me to try to whiz up the twitching entrails of this roadkill badger of the seven days into a vaguely swallowable audio milkshake.

I'm joined from London by Nish Kumar and from New York by Josh Gondelman.

Hello, both of you.

Have you enjoyed

the latest installment of World War 3 so far?

Yep, that about sums it up.

Just Josh slowly exhaling.

That you could just play that sound on a loop for 35 minutes and put that out as this week's bugle.

That is why I couldn't be a newscaster.

Every episode of the news is just like,

oh boy, here we go.

I feel like they should be allowed to do that.

Well, here on the radio, on radio 4, there was the bleeps on the hour.

People think that's to show the time, but actually, they're just bleeping out the first six words of every newscaster.

It would be great if the the news at 10 tonight just opened with whoever's presenting it just going okay first things first fucking hell okay all right let's get back to it let's get back to it okay let's get back it's all right i just need i just needed a second to compose myself just but let's get back now we're into it

in brooklyn uh new york city is trying to prove that we're not full of coastal elites who care less about american values and more about keeping people alive so today we've eliminated almost all of our vaccine and mask mandates mandates in indoor spaces.

So that's an additional exhale.

I'm just trying to stop the coronavirus from entering.

So it's just a constant stream of...

You know, Josh, what I say to the news that New York has only just got rid of all of its mask mandates and vaccine passports?

Pussies!

We got rid of that shit months ago, man.

We just think it became law that you have to cough in an old woman's mouth once a day every day, about six months ago.

That's just to keep the old women happy and stimulated.

People used to talk about how dangerous New York was in the 90s and stuff.

Be like, oh, New York lost its edge, but now you could digest from breathing in a grocery store.

So we're back, baby.

Take that, Giuliani.

I think, I believe at one point Giuliani was working out how to bring in legislation to ban exhaling.

Well, with him, it's because he doesn't know which one is going to be his last.

He's worried that anytime air escapes, he's like, Oh, no!

That's the last oxygen that'll ever circulate through me.

It's carbon dioxide now.

Also, take that Giuliani as the boy-band Republican politics crossover that the world is

not going to go to.

We are recording on the 7th of March 2022 on this day day in 1876.

Alexander Graham Bell was given a patent for an invention that he called the telephone.

Don't do it, AGB.

What the f have you unleashed?

On this day, 15 years ago, Nish,

the House of Commons voted to make the upper chamber of the British Parliament, the House of Lords, 100% elected.

That vote was held 15 years ago.

How would you say that's going in terms of putting that into

action?

Well, I don't want to give too much away to the content of this week's episode once we move into the meat of it, Andrew.

But

I'll quote from one of my school reports from the mid-90s.

Things are not going to plan.

I don't believe I need to say any more or any less than that.

Just as an outsider, it feels like when a group called the House of Commons votes and is like, hey, House of Lords, here's how you should do things.

The other house isn't going to listen to them.

Just going by the names, that's how I would feel.

This is my favorite anecdote to contextualize the House of Lords, particularly for American friends of mine.

It is a chamber where somebody can get into

just essentially on the whims of the government of the day.

And so Andrew Lloyd Webber is actually a member of the House of Lords and he actually got to vote on whether they were going to increase benefits for single mothers.

He decided to vote against that at the time.

So a man who has got into a position of power because he wrote cats was able to prevent increased benefits to single mothers because of the film cats.

And you thought the film cats at this point he should be tried in the hague for cats,

not being allowed to have a say in whether single mothers get more benefits.

Yes, in terms of school reports, not so much could do better in terms of turning the House of Lords into an elected chamber as could do anything at all, would be something.

More on this later in the show.

Section in the bin this week: all hope.

Did I do that, Reese?

Did I have already do that?

Come on.

Top story this week.

Well, we reported exclusively last week on the Earth plummeting down the planet rankings in the solar system.

This week, the human race,

while still just about clinging on to the coveted cleverest species in the world title, has also gone right back to the top of the stupidest fing species chart as well.

We've overtaken lemmings.

That is a contest that has run and run throughout history and will run and run for as long as history continues.

So till next week, Andy.

Quite possibly.

Quite possibly.

We've got another six to seven days on that.

The two Vs, Vladimir Ukraine, and Vladimir, you

up against each other.

And I will say,

as a Jewish comedian in his 40s whose surname begins with Zed, I've been feeling deeply inadequate this week.

Even more

than usual.

I think, listen, it's been a chastening week for all of us because I saw it spotted in the last, really over the last two to three weeks, there are people on the internet trying to contextualise Vladimir Zelinsky for people in the United Kingdom, and more than one person

has

used the following phrase.

This is a bit like what would happen if Nish Kamar was elected Prime minister.

And I am here to tell you all, it's

not.

Because Vladimir Zielinski has refused the offer of asylum in America and had said that he's going to stay in the country and fight for his people.

And I'll be honest with you, if Putin rolls up on Dover, I'll be out of this place so quickly, I will leave a pencil outline in the air like a cartoon character.

And if anybody accosts me, I will be doing an Indian accent so offensive, people will assume it was coming out of the mouth of Apuna Hasapiba Petalov.

Yes, I mean he has set the bar high for what comedians can achieve if they put their minds slightly higher than talking shit on a podcast once a week.

And

we see how it's going.

Better pod.

I mean, it's been one of those weeks

as a parent.

Where you find, you know, you find your children watching uncertified slasher movies on a stolen laptop after lights out and and you think, well, at least they're not reading the newspapers.

Guys, please, we've taken all the filters off.

Watch pornography.

I would prefer that at this point.

You know, you check their internet browsing history and find that they've been trading illegal guns, steroids, ivory, questionable World War II memorabilia, bushmeat, and endangered reptiles in the dark web, and you think, well, it could be worse.

They could be binge watching 24-hour news channels.

Or you find your youngest child engaged in the amateur taxidermy of a dead fox that they found in next-door neighbour's bin using your best kitchen knife and your priceless collection of 1930s cricket autographs as the stuffing, whilst posting baseless conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton running a global baby stealing ring.

And you think, well, that is better than listening to an hourly news bulletin.

It's just tragedy on tragedy played out on our TV screens.

Million people have

been displaced already from

Ukraine.

Thousands have died.

Europe as a continent is just trembling, shitting itself as it contemplates its past, its present uh and its future.

But I've been on tour this week and Nisha, I know you've been touring as well.

I think it's been the the hardest I've ever found it to to to do comedy and to sort of think comedically.

As I was sat in a hotel room uh in Ipswich watching footage of a

Russian military force shelling a nuclear power plant in Ukraine, I did think this is going to make my customary post-show wank a little bit sadder than usual.

Well you got to turn the news off before you start that.

That's

just a protest.

Also get get off the stage as well.

Family show, honestly.

Loomed up by my own tears for humanity.

That's the Mishkamar story.

In any ordinary week, Nish, that would be the most revolting image series, my games.

But I guess if you're going to say that, this week may be as good as any.

Yes, listen, it has been another

very difficult week.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues at pace.

From a British perspective, it's been...

a somewhat depressing week.

Obviously, the bind that countries like the UK and the US find themselves in is that any kind of military intervention by NATO or any of its allies it could be the thing that triggers a nuclear war.

And I found a very very concerning quote from Nikolai Patrashev who's a very close advisor to Putin and head of Russia's Security Council.

In 2009 he warned NATO that Russia might engage in a nuclear strike to repel an aggression.

And so one of the principal concerns at the moment is that Russia may use one of its 1,000 to 2,000 tactical nuclear bombs that it has, which are smaller nuclear weapons and make them more mobile.

Boutique.

I think they're known as boutique.

Artisanal nuclear weapons.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they come with a happy meal and McDonald's in Boston.

But Pavrashev said, you may have a more impressive military than I do, but I care a lot more and will kill us all if necessary.

And at this point, Russia are a kid who is going to say, if you're going to beat me at football, I'm taking the ball with me.

It's mine, I'm taking it with me.

Except in this case, the ball is everyone's lives.

It is literally the nuclear football.

The ball is our planet, essentially.

I read another card.

I can't remember who it was from, but saying

on a sort of similar line of thought, what is the point of a world without Russia?

Yes.

So, I mean, that's, it does suggest that that card is

in the hand, if not yet on the table.

Josh, I mean, what's your view on

nuclear arm again?

Are you for or against generally?

Depends on the day.

So, look, as an American, I'm just relieved we're not at war yet.

Like, normally America is the first country to show up at war.

It's like we're ringing the bell.

They're still looking out the window like we weren't even ready yet.

Like the hors d'oeuvres aren't out.

It's like we have a second war to be at later and we're trying to hit them both efficiently.

And normally that's because we do.

But I don't know.

I read an op-ed this week that I read the headline that said potential nuclear winter isn't actually as harsh as we thought it would be.

That's a grim place to find optimism.

Just like like it's going to be kind of a balmy nuclear winter, which I don't like because that just reminds me of climate change.

So it's like two Armageddons

just walking arm in Armageddon into oblivion.

But does it work sort of, you know, like two negatives in maths that actually they cancel each other out and will actually presage a glorious new future for the planet?

Listen, we've got to start looking at the positives.

Megan the Stallion infamously released a song called Hot Girl Summer.

It's time for Miz the Stallion to step up and release Nuclear Winter.

Hot Girl Nuclear Winter.

Hot Girl Nuclear Winter.

Come on, Ms.

The Stallion.

The world needs you.

It's mad.

I don't know.

It's...

It's just like, just even reading that, it's just like, where are people's heads?

Like, that it's not going to be a nuclear holocaust so much as a lesser nuclear ethnic cleansing.

And I know comedy is about specificity, but choosing a particular genocide for that joke does feel a a little insensitive.

So if you're listening at home, think of your own, tell no one.

That's what I would recommend.

In terms of what countries could actually do,

one of the sort of more practical steps that might not escalate the world into a nuclear war is taking in refugees.

In terms of Britain's current contribution, so far we've been told that we're going to be world beating in terms of our refugee status.

Pretty Patelo, I believe I've contextualized before as every Indian kid's least favorite aunt, has formally launched the Ukraine Family Visa Scheme to

make sure that people in the Ukraine that have family in the United Kingdom will be able to get in.

Great news.

How is that going so far?

Well, let me tell you, Josh and Andy and Chris, we have so far offered a monumental 50 Ukrainian visas.

Get in.

50.

Double digits, baby.

1% of the 5,535 people who applied to join the program 48 hours ago have been granted their visas.

We are world beating, by which I mean we are beating the world with a British stick.

That's the traditional way.

Traditional way.

Bend over.

Uncle Britain is here to see you.

I mean, it just...

It feels to me, and this is me as an outsider.

I don't mean to sound like I'm throwing stones here because we're not really, you know, we don't always do a great job either over here of this.

But it just feels like it's tough for the UK to be like, we're going to lead the world in taking in refugees when like five years ago, you all were like, we don't want French people, Spanish,

we want no one, nobody, even Europe can't even come to Europe anymore.

Yeah.

The French Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, has accused Britain of lacking humanity because 150 Ukrainians were turned away at Calais when they were trying to get to the United Kingdom.

And I guess the response of the United Kingdom is: oh, thank you.

Thank you for recognising that, monsieur.

The ultimate compliment.

In terms of following the proper procedures, there's obviously been a huge amount of conversation in the United Kingdom about the influence of Russian money in the UK.

And in terms of their proper procedures,

these aren't even actually new conversations, particularly.

The Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee in 2020 found that Russian influence in the UK is the new normal.

And this is a direct quote from the report.

There are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene and accepted because of their wealth.

And

the report added that any attempts to mitigate that are not preventative, but rather constitute damage limitation.

Now, one of those Russians is Evgeny Levedev and there have been serious questions asked this week about why he has been accepted into the previously mentioned on the podcast House of Lords.

There are reports that Boris Johnson was warned by the security services that Levvedev, whose father was a senior KGB officer, might constitute a security risk to the country if he was given a peerage.

Now, all we know at the moment is that on the 19th of March 2020, Boris Johnson had a private meeting with Levadev.

And subsequent to that, several sources have revealed that Boris Johnson worked hard to overrule the initial security advice and guarantee him a peerage.

Now,

this is, to quote Mynando's order, incredibly spicy.

Incredibly spicy indeed.

Sources close to Johnson have revealed to ITV's Robert Peston that he was obsessed with the peerage being granted.

And this is the thing.

What I would say to these Ukrainian refugees who are struggling to come to Britain, you idiots, mate.

There's no way you're getting in this country.

What you need to do is whip round and do what Levedev did, which was buy the Evening Standard newspaper and give Boris Johnson uncritical coverage in his run-up to becoming Mayor of London.

So what these Ukrainian refugees need to do is stop being chumps about it, have a whip round, buy a paper, say Bojo equals number one, and then maybe we'll talk about not just getting you the country, but giving you a seat in the House of Lords.

So this is just to go back to that vote in 2007 on reform of the House of Lords to make it 100% elected, 15 years on, Evgeny Lebedev, party chum of Boris Johnson, son of a former KGB agent, is elevated to the House of Lords.

Oddly, he's then not bothered to do anything there.

He gave one speech and hasn't attended since, apparently.

He didn't even write cats.

He didn't even write his own speech, from what I've heard either.

Kirst

called for an investigation into the elevation of Lebedev to the House of Lords.

And I guess, you know, we complain it's not voted, but he was voted in on the one-man, one-vote system.

Boris Johnson was the one-man and the only vote, and he was 100% elected under that system.

If you do have any suggestions, Bugles, on how to improve the British parliamentary system and how to deal with the issue of corrosive Russian influence in the British economy and politics, do write them on a bit of paper and post them to your local landfill site.

And please mark your envelope.

Please mark your envelope.

This country is sick to its very core.

Now, look, again, I'm an outsider here, but I have to say, being one of many lords appointed to a government position for life is weird to me, even when you're not a security risk.

In my country, we only give lifetime appointments to a baseball team's worth of judges You said ironclad legal president,

even after they've become so old, you wouldn't trust them to order for themselves at a diner.

So it's just kind of two different ways of doing things.

I saw this reported.

I was because I was reading to catch up on the story.

And some people were saying, like, oh, this is just anti-Russian sentiment.

But I'm inclined not to trust Boris's judgment ever, right?

Like, first of all, like, Nish, you said

they had a meeting on March 19th, 2020, a week after every government in the world was like, don't have meetings with people.

That's the worst thing you can do.

So starting there, this is a bad idea.

If Boris Johnson told me I was wearing a cool shirt, I would throw it away.

I would take it off and throw it away.

And I know you're thinking, Josh, why not donate it?

Well, it's because I don't want a person who accepts a donated shirt getting bullied on the street.

I have that in my conscience.

Compare the market adverts in Britain which have used Russian meerkats in a very popular campaign over the last 13 years.

They've been pulled at least temporarily.

I mean surely Vladimir Putin will take notes.

I mean we are tolerant in Britain.

As we've discussed we've tolerated extremely dubious

wealth emerging from the mineral riches which have been filched from the Russian people by its oligarchs.

We've accepted them.

But Putin has made Russia such a tainted brand that fictional puppets now no longer want anything to do with his country.

Surely that message will get across.

Surely.

I feel like you've gone through that much too quickly for people that don't live in the United Kingdom, Andy.

I think we need to explain to people that there is a series of long-running adverts for a car insurance price comparison website that is called Compare the Meerkat that features two Russian meerkats

as their spokespeople.

Frankly, I think it's high time that we stop uh letting Vladimir Putin be the voice of one of those meerkats.

He is cancelled, people.

It's absolutely astonishing that the measures that we're taking, will we seize uh assets linked to Putin?

Maybe after six months.

However, if you are a fake Russian meerkat on a car insurance price comparison website, you are getting locked up, my friend.

In fact, we are now officially withdrawing the word rushing from the official dictionary.

Just in case anyone, you're now in a hurry or you're nothing.

Russian dressing is now exclusively Thousand Island dressing.

Flipping back to the other room.

I think we should do more puppet-based sanctions.

Like Elmo, from now on, Elmo won't let any episodes of Sesame Street be sponsored by the letter V pronounced like the letter U.

I think we could see something we could do.

Russian dolls are now just called women with a bunch of other women stuffed in them.

That actually is a different thing.

That's a different thing.

Josh, what did you think of your former

political and indeed spiritual leader, Donald Trump?

His suggestion that America bombs Moscow, but in planes of which they've put stickers of the Chinese flag on, so Russia blames it on China.

Do you think that's a.

I just don't think our military strategy should be contingent on bumper stickers.

It's like, hey, we could broker a piece.

We slap a coexist sticker on an F-22.

We fly it over Ukraine.

This is, it is, I think it's even worse than my best idea for diplomacy, which is, you know, because people have brought up a no-fly zone, which you have to enforce then with military aggression.

I think we should have a no-thanks zone.

So that is if Russian planes fly through Ukrainian airspace, we go, hey man, no thanks, huh?

Knock it off, big guy.

Nadine Doris,

another British cabinet minister, has suggested culture is the third front in the Ukraine war.

Now, I'm not sure entirely what she meant by that.

I mean, people seem to assume she meant that cultural sanctions,

banning Russian orchestras, conductors, musicians, whatever, from playing can play a part in the isolation of Putin and turning Russia against him.

But bearing in mind other things that she and her fellow cabinet ministers have said, it might be that the government is taking this chance to impose brutal economic sanctions against people who choose not to use he-she pronouns, which I think could be the front in the culture war they truly want to open up.

You have no, that is the latest.

It is absolutely astonishing.

There is a piece in the Times newspaper today,

written by Matthew Syed, that features this complete phrase.

While Xi Jinping was resetting the world order through his Belt and Road Initiative and Vladimir Putin was recreating the Russian Empire by annexing Georgia and Crimea, we were arguing over gender-neutral toilets.

And at this point in Britain, it is simply, whatever the subject is, you are on a timer.

for someone to blame it on gender-neutral toilets.

It is the level of brain worms that have affected a whole class of people in British society is beyond me.

It's happening here too, but it's like, it's not, first of all, the two things are unrelated, right?

The two kind of global and local initiatives.

Second of all, the honest way to say that is like, hey, while Vladimir Putin was

trying to increase his empire in Ukraine and Xi Jinping was using the Belt and Road, you know, implementing the Belt and Road initiative in China, we were trying to make it illegal for transgender transgender people to shit.

Like, that's what, yeah, that's like really how you're supposed to put it.

Yeah,

right?

That's what it was.

This wasn't some kind of all-encompassing multi-billion dollar FDR style new deal for gender-neutral toilets.

This is like conservatives imperiling trans people and everybody else going, knock it off.

We want people to be okay.

If there's one thing that would have taught notorious homophobe Vladimir Putin a lesson, it's if we'd been less kind to the LGBTQIA commit.

Just kind of as an olive branch to Russia.

Also, it's a rather selective thing, you know, but it's picking

three things: one, you know, one from China, one from Russia, one from the West, and laying them.

It doesn't, you know, he could each equally have gone, well, we in Britain were voting for Brexit and to take back control of our national future and indulging in a in a in a momentous decision that will shape the entire future of our country.

In Russia they were opening up a new ice rink and giving balloons to children at a party.

Raid.

While Xi Jinping was turbocharging the Chinese economy, LeBron James was facilitating a trade for Russell Westbrook in the other season.

What is the West thinking?

The Ukrainian authorities, however, have amidst all the tragedy and the brutalities, have managed to see the funny side.

The National Agency for Protection Against Corruption issued a statement saying, Have you captured a Russian tank or armoured personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it?

Keep calm and continue to defend the motherland.

So you won't be charged tax.

I don't know exactly how the tax on stolen military vehicles works in Ukraine, but

amidst the middle of a war to

basically troll Russia with a tax gag.

That's high-level stuff.

Listen, we're all waiting for a day, hopefully, when this war ends unsuccessfully for Putin, where a farmer in Ukraine is just driving down the road and sees his neighbor getting into a tank.

Okay, I know that you don't have to pay tax if you capture a tank, but what about on the income if you sell the tank?

I think that's where they get you.

I think that's where they're going to get you.

Also, I definitely think, I mean, there's been like a strain of U.S.

conservative who's like very pro-Putin because of his kind of like masculinity.

And I think this is going to get them on board with the cause of the Ukrainians, right?

Like, this is the American dream.

Every Republican just wants to own a tank and not pay taxes.

So

this is perfect.

All they have to do is incentivize using those tanks to blow up abortion clinics, and it will fully become the Texas of Eastern Europe over there.

I think it's also worth saluting the sheer

bloody-minded bravery of the over, I believe at the last count, 4,300 people arrested in Russia, in 21 different Russian cities, for protesting the war.

And also, it's worth shouting out the protesters in Kazakhstan who turned out in large numbers to chant no to war.

And Putin is a dickhead.

That's a good chant.

I mean, if anyone deserved the term dickhead, it's Vladimir Putin because, as he increasingly has work done, he is beginning to resemble a shiny ball end.

I also think, look, we've got to bring back 90s-style insults into political discourse.

Dickhead, dillweed,

all of those.

As if the world wasn't shit enough, on Friday of last week, the news broke that Shane Warne, the great Australian cricketer, one of the finest cricketers of all time, had died suddenly of what is thought to be a heart attack.

I'm not blaming Vladimir Putin for this,

but the timeline doesn't look good for the Russian oligarch.

For all cricket fans, of which I don't think I'm breaking my own confidence in saying I am one, Warren

is one of the iconic figures of the game, one of the greatest players

of the game.

He sprung to prominence in England with his first ball ever in an Ashes test in Manchester in 1993.

And he's a leg spinner.

Now, to explain to non-cricket fans on the bugle, the fast bowlers bowl the ball at, you know, over 80 miles an hour up to about 95 miles an hour.

Warren as a spinner doesn't have the advantage of speed bowls, sort of 45 to 55 miles an hour, and uses craft and deception and the rotations of the ball to make it drift and spin.

And it was an art form in cricket that

had struggled over previous decades.

Not quite should say it was fully extinct, but he was something of a throwback.

And he bowled this ball, the first ball he'd ever bowled against England.

And it bowled out Mike Gatting, who's a very experienced England player.

And it drifted through the air, it dipped, it bounced, and it span away viciously and it hit the top corner of his stumps.

And Gatting looked like like a child who just discovered that Santa Claus is a Russian secret agent.

That look of befuddlement and disappointment as

he walked off.

It's possibly the single greatest ball bowled out of more than five million in Test cricket, certainly in terms of its impact on the game.

And Warren then had a

prodigious career over about 15 years and then became a commenter.

Actually, worked with him on Indian television for three days of a Test match some years ago and

met him a couple of times on BBC Duty.

And it was just

amidst all the awful news that's been coming it was just a horrific thing to hear Nish I know you as a also a cricket fan albeit maybe not quite at the level that I am

I don't believe anyone is at the level of

you Andy

I think it's you and the inventor of cricket

if someone had asked me if someone said to me woke me up from a dead sleep and said Josh name the biggest cricket fan I have a gun to your head and if you can't do it I'm gonna shoot I would say Andy Zaltzman and they'll let me go back to sleep

so tributes were paid uh so on a good fuse of tributes from his former teammates opponents um

uh you know a a flawed man as as most are but an incredible character in in cricket uh the statue from outside the melbourne cricket ground people left flowers as you might expect cricket balls as you might expect but also cans of beer and packets of cigarettes in tribute to the kind of life that that warn uh What did he mean to you, Nish,

as a cricket fan?

I'm a cricket fan, and I'm 36 years old.

And what that means is Shane Warne is

a figure who has dominated my entire life.

He made a decidedly, and Andy won't thank me for saying this, unsexy game, feel incredibly cool.

He was the rock star of cricket, and

saw him play a couple of times and I remember being sat on the

pretty close to the boundary rope like pretty much the front row that you could sit at in Lords and

he was you could hear the revolutions of the ball the ball was spinning so quickly that it was audible on the boundary rope and it witnessing him bowl live is one of the great thrills of my entire life and again briefly meeting him at

a cricket event before I was, let's not be around the bush, justifiably blacklisted from those due to an incident involving a flying bread roll.

It was

really

one of the greatest thrills of my life.

He was a kind of bowling mystic.

He had a number of different variations that he mastered.

And then later in his career, as he had to have repeated shoulder surgeries because of the strain of his somewhat peculiar action, he evolved his game and became a sort of wizard elder statesman.

It is, for non-cricket fan buglers, of which I imagine there is a rapidly declining group,

a quick squeeze.

As cricket gains global popularity at an unprecedented rate.

Or, as this bugle, as this podcast hemorrhages listeners who can't stand to hear about a game that is the result of baseball having unprotected sex with a library,

it's worth having a quick squiz because he did things with a cricket ball that still to this day seem

geometrically impossible.

And

it's blown a huge hole in the life of the game.

Yeah, that one ball to Gatting in 1993, I mean, it took England

basically a decade and a half to recover from that single ball, essentially, the kind of impact it had on the psyche of English cricket.

And I was asked at one of the Saturdays for Har shows I did in Australia, did I prefer Warne as a cricketer or as a pundit, as a TV pundit?

And I mean, the thing is, whatever you think of Shane Warne

as a commentator, as whatever he did, he became a quite a successful poker player, I think, after his cricket career.

There was nothing that he could do that would be as good as what he did on a cricket video.

He could have found an elixir for eternal COVID immunity that just involved eating a mango and clucking like a chicken, and it would not have been as good as what he did as a bowler.

He could have developed a hybrid chicken pig crossbreed that every morning laid 20 ready-made bacon and egg omelets to solve the world hunger.

It wouldn't have been as good as that boy who got Andrew Strauss out with in 2005.

He could have gone to Antarctica, pulled out,

he could have gone to Antarctica, had urinated a full-size replica of the ashes urn that froze in mid-air.

It wouldn't have been anywhere near as good as what he did on the field.

He could have swallowed Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison whole, put on a big red curly wig, drunk a bottle of tequila, and belched the Australian Prime Minister back out in the form of a Mexican clown.

Still wouldn't have been the most amazing thing he did.

It was extremely.

And I also found out the way I found out was: I was driving on the way to my tour gig in Barnard Castle, and I had my phone up with the map app, and a WhatsApp message came through from Chris that just said Shane Warren with a kind of like a surprised face emoji.

and

and I thought what on earth

has he has he come out in favour of Vladimir Putin has he announced that he's coming back to play for Australia as he you know found an elixir of life and is now 20 years old again and it's going to dominate the asses for the next 15 years

and I put the radio on and heard the sat it was a very strange way to hear that news Chris very strange yeah sorry about that I um I mean I could have posted something far more explicit based on the text messages I've received since but we'll keep that working

The Borley Bowls Andrew Strauss with the 2005 is worth watching

because

Andrew Strauss is

it feels like he's still trying to work out 17 years later what happened to his next up

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

Not the happiest of shows, I think it's fair to say, but i hope you've uh i hope you've enjoyed it uh don't forget to buy tickets to all of my tour shows this week uh if you hear this on uh tuesday tonight i'm in northallerton uh then wednesday and lincoln thursday and surely friday and birmingham then the following week cheltenham leices maidenhead aldershot nottingham bristol cambridge and milton keynotes that's well the following two weeks then an eight-night run at Zoho Theatre in London in May.

Anything to plug?

Yes, I am on tour.

I am all over the place.

I am in

Warwick on Friday and Aylesbury on Saturday.

And yeah, I'm covering some ground.

And if anybody knows 400 people in Wrexham, for the love of God,

send them away.

Because

that gig was pretty much currently based on my current Wrexham sales.

That gig would have been safe in April 2020.

I'll take to my group chat: 400 people in Wrexham plus charge.

Oh,

I've got to get Ryan Reynolds and Rob McInerly on the button because they bought Wrexham Football Club.

They could buy you a craft.

Josh, surely

you got some in with Reynolds.

Oh, yeah.

I'm a big Renhead.

You and Blake Lively, a piece of the pod, surely.

We went to summer camp together.

I am doing a little stand-up.

You can find it at joshgondelman.com.

I've got a couple shows in Brooklyn.

I've got a show in Woodstock, New York.

I am adding stuff hopefully for the summer that so I'll be out on the road.

And Dezus and Merrow returns to television this week, which I'm very excited about.

Again, I feel like I have to say because it doesn't scan knowing me, but I work there.

I'm not just a fan.

Thursday night at 11.

Well, thanks.

as always to both of you.

My tour dates are at andysoltsom.co.uk, which I think is largely accurate now, after a few slight glitches.

It's the best thing that anyone has ever said about your website.

At minimalist, I think it's fair to say.

We will now play you out.

If you've not had enough lies from the world already, we'll play you out some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers to join them and to make a one-off or recurring contribution to the BugleJessesBugalPodcast.com and don't make that happen.

Torre Evanson thinks that whilst many people are allergic to peanuts, it is quite possible that peanuts are even more allergic to people.

At the very least, says Toro, I think the average peanut would rather avoid contact with humans because it tends to end quite badly for them.

Whether they're actually allergic or just human-wary, well, I'll leave that to the scientists to work out.

Sanders Asperlund believes that all you need in a domestic kitchen to cook pretty much every necessary dish is a potter's wheel and a fun-sized flamethrower.

You can cook anything with a source of heat and something that rotates, explains Sanders.

Ovens and hobs are a waste of space if you ask me, but then again I also think that all you need in a bathroom is a garden hose and a tennis racket, so what do I know?

Stephanie Eglinton Warner thinks that the tricycle should be the only vehicle allowed in city centers.

Not only would it help the environment, says Stephanie, but it would also assist in reducing traffic and it would, would, most importantly, help people to stop taking everything so seriously.

It's really not possible to try to look cool, businesslike, wealthy, or superior on a trike.

You just can't do it.

Believe me, says Stephanie.

I've tried.

Colin Kostachuk is in favour of the wider use of Advent Calendar style reward-based anticipation enhancing countdown assisting accessories.

Why is it only Christmas that gets a countdown calendar?

rails Colin.

Christmas can look after itself.

Wouldn't it be more use to have a calendar giving you a chocolate every day for 24 days in the build-up to something less innately exciting, for example the end of a tax year or the start of your exams?

And finally David Blumquist is already all over Colin's idea.

Personally, says David, I've got a special calendar counting up towards the end of the world, or at least I have a special box with tiny little cardboard doors with chockeys behind, and I give myself a chocolate every day.

I've been counting up, as advent calendars do, and having blasted through 24, I've just kept going, and I simply write a new number on it every evening before I go to bed, so I can happily open it next morning if the world hasn't ended.

I've been doing it since October 2007, and I'm on day 5260.

Yes, I'm bored shitless of chocolates, but I'm oddly excited about Armageddon.

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.