You're Putin Me Off (4220)

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4220 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World with me Andy Zoltzman sitting in for myself this week as I have done in over a quarter of all Bugle episodes, would you believe?

It's the 15th of February, 2022, and I'm joined this week to provide the definitive truth on everything in the universe by, from London, Nish Kumar, and from Melbourne, Australia, Lloyd Langford.

Welcome back, both of you.

Lloyd, on the show for the second time, the first one he did was the live show

in Melbourne in December.

Nish, I've lost count of

your tally.

It's getting the whoever does the Bugle Wikipedia page, whichever...

Let's not beat around the bush.

complete f ⁇ ing nerd, keeps

the Bugle Wikipedia page updated.

No offense, but let's be honest.

Let's not pretend there's anyone updating Wikipedia pages about podcasts regularly who moonlights as a jock.

Let's just...

I say that as one nerd to another.

This is very much geek on geek violence.

But someone is definitely the best guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But someone has definitely been keeping a tally, and that is a use of a person's time.

And I will not say whether I think that is good or bad.

Right.

Well, no criticism from me.

I am a professional cricket statistician.

I have

a 3.00 legs.

What's that resting?

Oh, it's my case.

Lloyd,

how's Australia been since I'd

jumped ship through three or four weeks ago now?

Is it holding itself together without me?

It's a far poorer place in your absence yeah um my my daughter is coming along well though and we had a maternal health meeting today and um the the woman uh confirmed that her eyes do indeed follow you around the room so she's at least as entertaining as a decent painting

that's all you could want from a baby isn't it that's why most most people have babies because they're

cheaper to produce than painters.

George, I absolutely love every single detail about what you've just said.

I love your metric for what constitutes a successful child, and I love your metric for what constitutes a successful painting.

I think we can all agree a painting is decent if its eyes follow you around the room.

That's why I will not tolerate Picasso.

We are recording on the 15th of February.

On the 16th of February, 99 years ago, 1923, Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Tutankhamun.

And it's been pretty much downhill for humanity ever since Carter disturbed King Tut's 3,300-year-plus slumber and unleashed the curse of the Pharaohs.

Now, 99 years on, we have Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, Ukraine teetering on the precipice of war, and everyone in the world arguing about everything in the world with everyone else in the world.

So next time you find someone having a very long snooze and a blinged-out box carter, let the weirdly bearded bastard be.

That also constitutes our section in the bin, a special King Tut section, the 5 foot 6 inch pro-celebrity pharaoh, so-called,

because he was generally very disapproving of stuff.

King Tut was apparently going to be the official title of the head of the Catholic Church, but they were beaten to it by the Egyptians and had to settle for Poopa, as in party pooper, which over time became pope.

That is that is a linguistic fact.

I borrowed that from my sister.

And in our free King King Tut section of the bin we have a free curse for you to dispense to anyone you won't wish to dispense it to, singular or plural.

Here is your free curse.

I condemn insert your target here.

To suffer, insert your consequence here.

For insert your time period between ten seconds and all eternity here.

Also, we have a special feature on how to bury your loved ones without taking up 13 acres and requiring shitloads of quite expensive building materials.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week, Ukraine is or isn't at war.

Delete according to what's happening when you listen to this podcast.

The latest is that Russia might be withdrawing some of its troops or it might be bringing more towards Ukraine.

No one seems to quite know.

Joe Biden and Boris Johnson have said a crucial window for diplomacy still exists, and there is a glimmer of hope that war can be avoided.

I mean, I'm finding this quite hard to follow because

Russia continues to claim it has absolutely no intention of invading Ukraine.

And obviously, it might be entirely coincidental that 140,000 Russian troops all chose to take annual leave at the same time and go on holiday to the many resorts located on the Russia-Ukraine border.

uh at at the same time the cards available for uh the non-russian uh countries involved in in this uh remain uh slightly limited to growling and uh threatening parking fines and all the russian oligarchs who now live in central london um nish is our unnecessary war correspondent um uh how do you see the situation as it as it currently stands i mean i think it's pretty indicative of how bad things are at the moment that the best possible news we can offer anyone is World War III may not happen this week.

That's the absolute silver lining to all of this.

Yeah, as we record on Tuesday, the morning of Tuesday the 15th, UK time, whatever fake time it is in that made-up country Lloyd lives in, I don't know, I don't know and will not learn.

But I

it's as we record on Tuesday morning, they have started, there is some sense that Russian troops are starting to move away from the border.

I actually didn't realize this.

The number of troops at Russia's border is estimated to be 60% of the country's ground forces.

I mean,

how

big are these training exercises?

It's most of the army.

I mean, it does beg the question, if these really are training exercises, how shit is most of the Russian army that they've had to send over half of them on a weekend to sharpen up their game?

But also, if you're doing training exercises on the border of a country that you have an at-best spicy history with, it sort of is the equivalent of someone saying, Why would you think I was going to break your legs as they caress a baseball bat?

It's the same tactic that I used to use when I was fighting my brother when we were younger.

When I would hold my face sort of millimeters away from his, and then when he would complain, I would say, Ma'am, I'm not, I'm I haven't touched him, I'm not doing anything

so if over half of Russia's entire military force is now surrounding Ukraine

Bear in mind how big Russia is

does that mean that there is a huge opportunity now

for

an invasion of say the Kamchatka Peninsula by

British forces even you know I reckon if there's that many of them in Ukraine, I reckon look at an advanced force of bugle listeners could invade the Kamchatka Peninsula and possibly claim it for the Bugle Empire.

I mean, I think,

I really feel like it would be a bold move for Britain at this point in our country's history to try and do anything constituting an invasion.

Vladimir Chizhov, the Russian ambassador to the EU, said we will not invade Ukraine unless we are provoked to do that.

But that does slightly raise the question, what what constitutes provocation, particularly when the personal thing being provoked is A, Vladimir Putin, or B, Vladimir Putin's Russia as a political force.

He mentioned

that there could be attacks on Russian people living in Ukraine.

But I mean, knowing how Putin tends to be a little oversensitive to things and

judging him by how he generally deals with people or journalists or opponents disagreeing with him, provocation could be as little as someone in Kiev looking a bit skeptically at a bowl of Russian cabbage soup or some kid calling Stalin a wiener in a history class or someone speaking disparagingly about how smaller versions of a thing inside larger versions of a thing is frankly a bit of a weird thing to make.

He's one of the most easily provoked men in history.

Like Vladimir Putin is like a man on a night out in Croydon.

Just constantly sharking the bar game.

You look at me.

You look at me.

You look at me.

It genuinely is like the geopolitical version of being in the Milan bar, which is a weatherspoon at the centre of Croydon and maybe one of the mouths that leads directly to the centre of hell.

I was talking to my partner, Anne, about this, and she said that the Russians were going to wait until after the end of the Winter Olympics

before they did anything.

And I can't quite fathom the logic in that.

I mean, have they got like

they've got like a monobob competitor that they're desperate to to get home before it all kicks off or

I think that's quite possible.

They've probably got some more teenage skaters to pump full of steroids as well.

Just purely speculation that, of course, and obviously you've got a big chance in the ice hockey because the NHL players aren't playing for

America and Canada.

So it could be a gold for the red machine.

So you can understand why he doesn't want to jeopardise that, surely.

The British government continues to

threaten Russia with sanctions, but those,

I'll be honest with you, those threats are as empty as my Winter Olympics medal collection.

Because since July 2019,

donors who have made money from Russia or have alleged links to the Putin regime have given £1.93 million to the Conservative Party or individual Conservative associations.

So the Conservative Party taking a strong line on Vladimir Putin is a bit like me taking a strong line on someone who drinks oat milk and reads The Guardian.

Neither of us is going to piss off our key demographic.

I think we also need like a we need a better word or a more frightening word than sanctions.

Because whenever I hear sanctions, I just think of Super Nanny.

Wait,

does Super Nanny use sanctions?

Yeah, yeah.

You know,

she makes the children, gives them little minor punishments and stuff.

Right.

So, I mean, I don't, I'm not sure I remember Super Nanny.

What was

she the mother of Hootanani?

I only brought up Super Nanny because I wanted to make a very laborious pun about Russia being sent to go and sit on the naughty steps.

Well,

that is more than enough reason, Lloyd.

I apologize.

No, don't apologise for that.

Do apologise for that, Lloyd.

Your morality is corrupted.

On the subject of corruption, Transparency International, an anti-corruption group, identified one and a half billion pounds worth of Russian money that is in London property, most of which is held by shelled companies in offshore havens.

And

so it does, as you say, Nish, it slightly undercuts the British threats of strong sanctions.

Nuss said in a bugle I think a couple of weeks ago, that Russia is a nation that spent spent seven decades imposing the strictest possible sanctions on itself

not that long ago.

So, I mean, really, beyond Premier League referees wrongly awarding free kicks against Chelsea, there's not a huge amount that is on the table, is there?

Yeah, no, I mean, I really

it's fairly

we've snookered ourselves.

We've absolutely snookered ourselves in terms of the

sort of willingness of Britain to turn itself into a global laundromat for dirty money.

Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov had a very amusing filmed meeting to discuss the situation for the cameras.

And they had this socially distant meeting.

And I think it was the same table he met Macron on, which is a, I think it's known as an RFLT, which stands for ridiculously fing long table.

Because apparently Putin is so concerned about catching COVID.

Also, possibly concerned about ketchup squirting into them.

He seems like the kind of man who would understandably be concerned about his enemies wanting to squirt ketchup or even mustard or even

lethal bullets.

Presumably, you know, a level of self-awareness about his own, shall we say, controversiality as a political figure.

The only thing I will say in terms of Vladimir Putin's concern about catching COVID is that he's actually having a meeting tomorrow, which is being described as hugely ill-advised in regards to trade talks with Brazil, with Brazilian President Jaya Bolsonaro.

And Bolsonaro is going to have to take five COVID tests before his meeting with Putin, as per the arrangements.

And that is the first time in human history I found myself in complete agreement with Vladimir Putin.

Because at this point, Bolsonaro's blood is COVID.

I think he's had it so many times that he technically, his heart is pumping coronavirus around his body and i think like his balls have got the delta variant and his ankles have got the omicron variant like the guy is just a walking disease vector

so i mean in terms of putin's strategy uh you know this is he gonna you know dip his toes in the water i've heard people say that in terms of a little in incursion i mean for most people dipping your toes in the water in terms of adverse effects might result in cold toes or hot toes or very hot toes and a dinner guest saying they don't want to eat the pastor anymore anymore, or might result in a bemused goldfish, or an angry vicar with a why must you always spoil my christenings look on his face.

But for Vladimir Putin, dipping his toe in the water could result in thousands and thousands of deaths.

Yeah, so I mean, it's a yeah, it's a different life, isn't it?

The British Armed Forces Minister James Heapey

told BBC that he feared, quotes, that we are closer than we've been on this continent to war for 70 years.

Now,

this comment caused understandable

bafflement

because in the last 70 years there have been some pretty fing major wars on this continent

which apparently

maybe because they didn't feature

Boris Johnson, I don't know.

It don't don't count.

I mean it was kind of or or is it that you know now we can

is he just acknowledging that we don't have space in our national mind for anything that isn't to do with the Blitz and World War II?

I would like to issue a plea to every minister currently serving in the Conservative government, and I know they're listening.

They're huge bugs.

Please, please, take your hand off your cock now.

Take your hand off your sad, soggy cock,

close down

the Wikipedia page for the Second World War,

pull up your trousers over your horrible, stinking, flaccid member

and read any other book about history.

Please, I beg these,

stop jacking it over Winston Churchill's Wikipedia page and read one book about something that happened after 1945.

It's absolutely obscene.

I think this heapy guy, he was one of the very few things that was affected by the Y2K bug.

He was essentially reset

December 31st, 1999 into 2000.

So that's understandable.

Health news now and well good news.

Drinking coffee three times a day

means you'll live forever or at least reduces your risk of death, which is, I mean, pretty much in modern terms of misinterpreting things, living forever.

It's got to be ground coffee, not instant coffee.

This research was apparently paid for by a Ken and Ethel Lavazza and a Deirdre and Brian Starbuck.

As well as

receiving funding from the Society for queuing up for hot drinks.

I guess in a way, actually, I mean, the fact, you know, if you've got a queue for a coffee three times a day,

again, that gives you less chance of

starting

a genocide.

Yeah, logistically.

Just logistically, yeah.

I live in this in pretty trendy coffee shops, and

if I queue for a coffee in them three times a day, I'm getting very little work done.

And that's a good thing.

Yeah, it might also explain your bowel issues slightly as well.

Listen, how many coffees have I had today?

Brackets three.

How many shits have I had today?

Same answer.

If we can just slightly direct this podcast out to something

resembling uh a civilization.

It does slightly depend on the amount of coffee you drink, apparently.

So it says three coffees a day, but if it's three twenty-four gallon fish tanks full of coffee three times a day, that's potentially deleterious to your health, especially if you haven't taken the piranhas out of it.

And a thimble full of coffee three times a day, probably not going to do a huge amount of good unless you down those thimbles of coffee whilst doing some some proper exercise, like a bit of swerobics.

Bugle favourite uh form of exercise.

And it's very easy watching the new I'm getting about 12 hours a day of scwerobics just watching the news.

Lloyd,

are you a coffee drinker?

I am.

Much like Nish, I usually have

three a day, and

thus far I am impervious to death.

So

the research bears out, I think.

So how old is your your baby's now, what, three or four months old?

Yep, four months.

Four months.

And I mean, three coffees a day for a b actually accelerates

babies growing up

to become impervious adults by up to 73%.

So, yeah, just get those espresso down your little kids.

Yeah, and

Andy's put his money's where his mouth is.

He's given his kids three coffees a day since they were born, and they're both seven foot tall.

I've met both Andy's children, they're absolutely humongous.

Yeah, well, that's they were both standing behind large special prisms at the time.

Make them seem

I once got described in

an article, I think it was by Zadie Smith.

She was writing an article on it.

She was up at the Edinburgh Festival, and she described me as a great tall man.

Which, I mean, even in this age of misinformation, I'm five foot ten.

Anyway,

it is particularly.

We're just letting great man go, though.

We're saying that that's absolutely fine.

We're saying

that Zadie Smith calling you a great man is absolutely...

We're only quibbling with tall of that.

Actually, I'd assume the great was with tall rather than the

size thing, which maybe half right.

It's not particularly effective at drinking you three coffees if you drink them at the same time as living in a war zone or using

froth absinthe in place of froth milk

or being an amateur improvised trapeze artist or dressing up as a zebra and standing in a line enclosure trying to sell them skinny almond lattes.

So, I mean, it's all about context itself and the case with these health reports.

In further health news, lentils can add 10 years to your life.

200 grams of lentils a day.

Is that part of both of your diets as well?

Dahl.

The Dahl supremacy.

If that is really true, this planet is going to one day be exclusively Indians.

I'm excited for it.

I'm excited for the Dal Empire.

I very much enjoy a Dal as well, but I usually combine it with a Rogan Josh or Peshwari Natan, three pints of Kingfisher and a duke pot-sized platter of poppadom, so I don't know if that would cancel out the health benefits of the lentils.

Well, it just just says lentils.

Yeah, two hundred grams of lentils a day will give you ten years extra.

So that's one bonus year of life per twenty grams of lentils.

So if you simply eat 80 kilograms of lentils a day, you'll live to the age of 4,000.

Which does raise the question, is it time to change the UK's national anthem from God save the Queen to God, can you feed the Queen a massive bucket of dal every day?

I mean, we need something to juice our national anthem up.

I mean,

Lloyd, this is, I mean, this is the Six Nations rugby is on at the moment, and it is the time of year where, as someone from England, I get the biggest anthem jealousy when you know when you see the the welsh rugby team with uh the welsh national anthem compared with god save the queen it's

i i i in terms of the the gap between national anthem quality i mean that's

yeah i mean that's like jimi hendrix

playing

playing alongside um i don't know Boris Johnson on the guitar, frankly, yeah, or yeah, Nish on the guitar.

I agree with you.

I'm not a fan of God Save the Queen because you're essentially asking someone who doesn't exist to protect someone who shouldn't.

It's like asking Spider-Man to look out for Rolf Harris.

Do the English supporters still sing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot?

Well, yes.

But

there's been a lot of talk about this over the last couple of years, which is this

rugby song sung by well it's a rugby song it's a it's an old um spiritual uh sung by that was adopted by england rugby fans a few decades ago and there's some dispute over exactly where it came from uh but there's

and there's some that say oh it's just a rugby song and there's others say it has a deeply troublesome race racist heritage um

but the problem is when you've got 80 000 people who've been drinking since 9 a.m uh it's quite quite hard to make them think about the historical context of

songs.

Yeah, the England fans definitely adopted that song in much the same way that England adopted India for

a period between the 19th and 20th centuries.

In other health news, one in three Americans contains toxic weed killer, according to a...

according to a recent study, and this literally contains toxic weed killer, not just spiritually in terms of how they vote.

They actually physically contain traces of the herbicide 2,4 hyphen D, which is short for 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, sometimes also shortened to 2,4,6,8 motorway.

It was used also in Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, which again we could include in our stupidest wars catalogue.

And the poison running through their veins in America.

It's been widely used in agriculture as well as by gardening enthusiasts despite concerns that it's bad for people, wildlife and the environment in general and causes a range of diseases.

Childhood cancers have been linked to reproductive problems and birth defects.

But it's allowed because of the yeah, whatever clause of the rules of free market economics.

But

a third of Americans

contain toxic

weak.

I don't know if can you tell by looking at them?

I'm not sure.

This has actually been a real problem at the Winter Olympics because lots of the athletes, they've been testing negative for drugs, but positive for Ron Seal.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean,

I guess it could be a performance-enhancing substance.

I mean, if your sport is least weeds in your body, then yes, I think it is definitely

like if the sport that you're engaged in is Olympic weed killing, a sport so stupid it may as well be at the fing goddamn pointless Winter Olympics,

you're definitely going to be at an advantage if your gob murders weed.

I mean, do you think it's something that we need more of in general?

I definitely.

Bear in mind that, you know, America is one of the world's most successful nations, objectively,

depending on how you measure it, and if you measure it wrongly.

So, I mean, it used to be all the raised, didn't it?

Just generally around the world, toxic.

People got a bit.

Maybe this is the.

Is this more evidence of the woke ruling the world?

That we can't just last toxic weed killer into the mouths of children anymore, are we?

Yeah, exactly.

It's people like the woke left has cancelled pumping your children full of weed killer.

I think the walk, yeah, the walk, they

came out and said, actually, we do need bees.

That upset a lot of people in the toxic weed killer industries.

But they were like, bees are sort of important in the world and how stuff works.

So, yeah.

The social justice warriors.

Ruining people's picnics.

No wonder there's a percentage of the population we can't convince to give a shit about the lives of black and brown people.

They don't even care about bees.

COVID news now and the renowned crooner Barry Manilow has become a weapon, a weapon of war in the COVID culture wars.

New Zealand have played the songs of the notoriously

irritating singer

correct technical technical term

Barry Manilow against

anti-vax COVID skeptic protesters.

Lloyd, you are our Southern Hemisphere music and COVID protest correspondent.

I mean, this is what a remit, Lloyd.

What a remit.

It's a huge win.

It's one of the great moments in southern hemispherical musical cultural history, isn't it?

The comedian Greg Devis told me he was once

doing

like meeting people, you know, for photos and stuff after a tour show.

And a woman came up to him and said,

You are in one of my top three performers of all time.

And he said, Who are the other two?

And she said, Lloyd Langford and Barry Manilow

of all time.

We've all got a very similar vibe going on, I think.

Davies Langford, Manilow.

Of course, Manilow.

Of course, that's the way you finish that sequence.

When I heard that they'd deployed Manalo to try and move on the protesters, I was wondering: was it the music or photographs of his surgery?

He has transformed into him, he has transformed himself into what I can best describe as vacuum-packed, reformed ham.

It's kosher if it's been back, in fact.

I very much enjoy that they were playing all of this sort of

generally accepted bad music to try and move the performers on.

And then the musician James Blunt actually volunteered his own music.

He volunteered

his own music

to turn up to play as a joke.

And then the

New Zealand, I think, a minister who was in charge of the playlist gratefully added him to the playlist.

Well, it was the Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament who was apparently

playing DJ in this

effort to move along the protests, Trevor Mallard, and he certainly has not ducked his responsibilities.

Put together a quacking list of people that will surely make the protesters be quiet.

Nish, I mean, what music would you, when you're in a situation like that, what's your go-to track for dispersal?

Absolutely no need for any sort of music, Andy.

Just set up a PA system and get me on that stage.

Once the

avalanche of bread rolls has been thrown, those people will disperse.

And I have seen, I have looked at quite a bit of footage from the New Zealand protests, the Canadian trucker protests, and some of the anti-vax protests in this country.

And I would say there is a

very, very thin overlap between people who've enjoyed my comedy and people who are at those vaccine anti-vax markets.

I got a look at them and I thought, not Kumar fans.

So I think you stick me on there.

I think those guys will be...

I think they'll be with Lloyd in Australia.

If you stick me on at the Wellington.

And I have done some bad gigs in Auckland, as

Lloyd will attest to.

Lloyd actually did a few of them with me.

I think you are doing yourself a disservice, Nish.

I believe that the trucking community are no longer using CB radios and just listening to audio versions of your stand-up structures.

Finally, some more news from your hemisphere, Lloyd, your well, your adopted hemisphere.

Sad news, the koalas are having a bad millennium listed as

endangered, the notoriously lazy,

literal tree huggers.

I mean,

the fact that koala, I mean, they are very much the national symbol of Australia

in that they hang around

not doing a lot.

So, I mean,

it must be striking at the very heart of Australian national identity.

this it has been an incredibly uh bad week for Australia because of this uh koala news, but also um the soap opera Neighbours um is under threat as well uh for the exact same reason as the koalas.

There's been a a chlamydia outbreak.

Um

the natural habitat of uh the residents of uh Ramsey Street has been threatened.

Yes, um Lasseter's has burned down again.

Oh, dear.

I mean, the fires have had a terrible effect on both the koalas and neighbours, as you were saying.

I mean, they've been around for almost the same amount of time, I think, as well,

in Australia.

I mean, this is this.

I mean, sorry to be kind of brutally capitalistic about it, but a koala is not one of the species that really we should be looking to get rid of in the search for a more efficient.

No, you know what, Andy?

If I may quote Oliver Dowden, woke culture is weakening Western civilization, and this kind of leftist, liberal nonsense that everyone should just be alive is exactly the kind of thing that's preventing us from properly dealing with Vladimir Putin's aggression in the Ukraine.

I actually think, as well, the

chlamydia that ravages the

koala community can be traced back to a day trip to Melbourne Zoo by Shane Warne.

They kept up with the story.

Yeah.

Who did appear in Mabels as well, Shane Wong?

Who appeared as himself in Navis as well.

Well, it's taking over 700 test tickets.

Well, that brings us to the end of

this week's bugle.

We will, as I say, have full exclusive updates on the Ukraine war over the next

few weeks and everything else that is happening in the universe.

Don't forget to buy your tickets to my imminent satirist for hire UK tour beginning in Leamington Spa on the 25th of February.

I then have shows in Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Barnard Castle, Salford, Northallerton, Lincoln, Chorley, Birmingham, Cheltenham, Leicester, Maidenhead, Aldershot, Nottingham, Bristol, Exeter, Cambridge, and Milton, Keynes

in a slightly scattergun geographical geographical schedule.

Then there are some shows at the Soho Theatre in London in May.

Buy tickets to all of them and send your requests for topics to be satirised to satirise this at satiristforhire.com.

Nish,

give details of your current tours because we're following each other in some of the...

Yeah, yeah, I'm in Leamington Spa

as we record in two days.

I'll be in Leamington Spa on Thursday the 17th.

Tickets are sparse.

Tickets are genuinely sparse.

However, I am in Blackburn on Friday, and let me tell you, tickets are blooming.

There is a surplus of tickets.

I don't know if someone in Blackburn has taken out sanctions against me, but let me tell you,

they have taken out some sanctions.

There are

10,000 halls in Blackburn, Lancashire, and they're all in

the middle.

It's not quite 10,000, Lloyd, but it's not far off.

Otherwise, I'm on tour.

I'm all over the UK

in March and April.

Tickets are available at nishkimar.co.uk.

Lloyd, anything to plug?

I am touring in Australia, and I'm hopefully coming back to the UK doing some Medima fringe and some other gigs and stuff June, July.

Well, well, well.

Look who's coming crawling back

to the country that he was, and I'm quoting directly from the horse's mouth here, too good for

because it was full of shit-covered peasants.

The idea, Lloyd, that after you said all that to me in private, that you would now come back to this country, I think it's an absolute disgrace.

This is the podcast you come for truth.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

On the subject of truth, we will now play you out with some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

To join the Bugle Voluntary Subscription Scheme to give a one-off or occurring donation of whatever sum you wish, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click donate.

Jake Freeman sometimes contemplates why the ancient Romans could be bothered to do massive mosaics like they did.

I tried doing a mosaic of a jar of lemon curd once, says Jake, and I was bored before I'd even finished the lid.

Bearing in mind life expectancy for the ancient Romans was pretty short, it's a wonder they wasted their time mosaicing the hell out of walls and floors and stuff like that, instead of getting hammered and fighting lions lions like they do in most of the films.

Darren McNamara wonders whether there will ever be an end to superhero films.

He has calculated that if the current proliferation of superheroes continues at its current rate, by the year 2374 there will be more fictional superheroes than real human beings in the world.

Clearly, speculates Darren, the market ought then to collapse, but I reckon the big film studios will keep on crapping them out because it's easier than thinking about tedious stuff like plot and characters.

Besides, by then most humans will be able to fly or fire spiders' webs out of their cyborgous arms anyway, so these films will function as gritty realism at the same time.

Having been forced to watch the film The Devil Wears Prada at a work event, Andrew Bosworth found himself drifting off and wondering whether the devil would in fact wear branded clothes at all.

If he did, I reckon he'd probably have his own label, says Andrew.

Most likely, he'd probably wear a fire-retardant onesie accessorised with a specially modified helmet with special holes for his horns.

Frankly, I can't imagine the devil has got the time to give a flying one about fashion.

He works in a results business.

He just wants practical work clothes.

Stephen Pratt does not understand the fuss about Isaac Newton's discovery of gravity.

Sure, says Stephen, I get that big Isaac knew one end of an equation from another and could wow the wimple off the most celebratious of nuns with his truly sensational physics.

Not of course that that would have been the way Isaac rolled.

By glamorizing gravity, however, he probably held back the development of air and space travel by 200 years he should have kept his mouth shut ideally by shoving the apple that fell on his head straight into his over scientific gob

and finally Ed Ball meanwhile has a theory that trees have no real concept of nationality Don't ask me why says Ed but I'd be surprised to find that trees are that fussed about labelling themselves as being from one place or another.

The Dutch elm, the English oak, the Liechtensteinian chestnut, I just don't think they'd be that impressed with those labels to be honest, even though they do, to be fair, tend to stick to their local areas for life.

I think trees probably see themselves as representatives of the plant kingdom, and given that they've all seen so many relatives and predecessors hacked to pieces and turned into furniture, ships and the like, I doubt they'll have too much emotional affiliation to any human political entity, country or otherwise.

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.