Biden His Time (4219)

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, and welcome to issue 4219 of the Bugle, audio newspaper for a world that may well be visual, but is still a stone-cold thing idiot most of the time.

I'm Andy Zaltzmann, coming to you recordedly live from the shed of unquenchable truth in South London.

And if you listen very carefully, you can probably smell with your ears the putridity emanating from Downing Street, some six or seven miles north of here.

Can you hear it?

There it was.

It was unmistakable, wasn't it?

You're getting it?

You're getting it?

I'm definitely getting it.

It's like a cross between a stench, a wheeze, and a squelch.

Turn it up and play it backwards later.

It's definitely there.

Joining me, someone who I've known since she could belch but not speak, a balance that she has largely rectified over subsequent years.

It's the quibbling sibling, Helen Zaltzmann.

Thank you, Andy.

Thank you.

Welcome back

to the bugle.

Lovely to

have you on again.

So, I was away over Christmas.

How did an Andy-less Christmas work out for you?

Well,

we were quarantined with COVID, so we had an everyone-less Christmas.

So, you could have been there for all I knew.

Right.

I didn't go.

Sounds like you had a very nice one without the rest of us.

It was sensational and unusually hot as Christmases go.

Bearing in in mind, I was in the incorrect hemisphere.

Joining us, someone who, by the most striking of contrasts, never occupied Alison Zoltzmann's womb.

But nevertheless,

everyone is welcome on the bugle.

You made it weird.

Particularly.

Almost a year since it was last on, due to busyness.

It's Hari Kondabolu.

Welcome back, Hari.

How are you?

I appreciate being back, Andy, and I want to apologize for anything I did that forced you to put me into bugle exile.

You can call it busyness if you'd like, but I think we all know that I had been banned.

But I appreciate it.

I thank you for forgiving me.

Was it the stuff I said about cricket not being as good as baseball?

Could that have done it?

That definitely did it.

Okay.

I'm not afraid to cancel people who say goodbye sayable.

Well, I'll stop telling the truth then.

And what's even better than baseball is

themed mini-golf.

And I will not take that back.

I've cancelled my own sister.

She's

very bad.

So how's the last year been for you, Hari?

You followed the news.

I've been home a lot.

I have a child.

Did I have a baby child when we last spoke?

You did.

He's 16 months.

He has destroyed many things already.

He is beautiful.

He takes up most of my time.

I am happy.

My favorite thing, first of all, let me say, I just slipped that in.

I'm happy, which by the way, means that my career in comedy is,

I'll be producing soon, is what that means.

I'll be producing.

No more writing and performing.

But yeah, like I love having a kid.

And I haven't shared this with anybody yet, but one of the things I love the most is that when people piss me off, I think to myself, ah, my son will avenge me.

And it makes everything

feel so much better.

And do you put pictures of these people up next to your

child's cot or bed?

Like a little mobile dangling over him of all your mortal enemies.

I mean most kids will have the pictures of their heroes in the room and I want enemies up.

I want them to always keep their eyes on the prize.

Your father needs the destruction of that

Twitter person whose name I real name I do not know, but you must find them.

You must find this person, hunt them down.

I don't think we had pictures of heroes on our walls growing up because I don't think our parents wanted us to grow up with aspirations.

No, we had pictures of grouse on the walls.

Oh, yeah.

Which is odd.

I aspire to be like those grouse.

Quite odd.

Tenacious, despite lacking in any kind of aesthetic merit.

Which is odd because I don't think anyone in our family has ever slain a grouse.

Not yet.

No, I guess it's something to aspire to

we are recording on monday the 7th of february tomorrow the 8th of february is world opera day

so if you're going to have a conversation on the 8th of february uh please make it ostentatiously melodic over-emotional and totally incomprehensible uh for uh world opera day we have a special opera section in the bin including uh reviews all the latest opera books including uh i've forgotten how to talk do you mind if i Warble, the autobiography of Dame Prunelia Storchlever, who famously caused the evacuation of Birmingham City Centre during rehearsals for La Biscotta delli Moncelli, when mistaken for a nuclear attack warning siren.

Also, we review If You Can't Say It in Ten Words, Sing It in a Hundred, an opera librettist's guide to conversation by Professor Ernold Halberd, and Everyday Opera Skills, How to Order Coffee Comprehensibly as a Soprano, a Tenor's Guide to Singing Your Way Out of a Hostage Situation, the key seem to be persistence and volume, and Verdi for Vets.

It turns out you you can spay a cat unaesthetized with a well-sung blast of La Traviata.

We also review a couple of new operas.

Can you tone it down a bit?

I've just got the baby to sleep by a Rhododendron Artley Smiles, one of the top parenting operas of recent times.

And of course, Ernie Snittles and the Porcupine.

Another section in the bin this week, an audio tapestry section.

Obviously, arts and crafts have become more and more popular over the last 8,000 years.

And we give you an audio tapestry of a cityscape.

Simply weave together the 3,000 sound effects we will give you over the next 70 odd years of the bugle, one a week to get a snapshot of life in a generic rendering of a big city.

To start you off, here are the first three effects.

A special prize for whoever can tell us what city it is once you've pieced it all together.

Do submit your entries by the 31st of December 2092 for your chance to win an animatronic robot version of yourself at the age of your choosing, which we assume will be available by then with a bugle logo tattooed across its face.

Those sections in the bin.

top story this week, America is still not entirely happy with itself.

Hari, it's been a while, as we said, almost a year since you were last on the bugle.

That was quite early on in the reign of Joe Biden as president.

How would you say things are now compared with almost a year ago in terms of just the general

state of the nation and your general state as someone who lives in that nation

it's about the same i think the word reign is generous

uh it's more of a

a substituting he's like a substitute teacher it's just filling a spot until like somebody who should be there is there you know he's just he's just he's just grandpa holding the fort you know what i mean well i can i can feel in the the tone of your voice that you're you know

wildly optimistic yeah yeah yeah i guess that's that's that's the term.

Now, Donald Trump,

God rest his soul,

is

back in the news this week with his former vice president stroke

chief enabler Mike Pence

dismissing claims that he could have stopped Biden becoming president using some magical made-up vice presidential power.

He said, I think pretty much for the first time, President Trump is wrong.

I had no rights to overturn the election.

The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone.

So you are, you part, own the presidency.

I mean,

is there any, I mean,

how is your relationship with sort of the Trump era retrospectively now after

this latest flare-up?

Well, you know, it's a funny thing.

I was reading up about, you know, the Pence thing, which, by the way, all he did was state a fact.

You know what I mean?

It wasn't an essay question where you can interpret it multiple ways.

It was a true or false, and he said that was false.

There's no such thing as true or false anymore, Hari.

That is.

Well, that's the thing.

I didn't understand how this could be possible.

And then all of a sudden, it jogged my memory for a year and a half ago.

Like, it felt like I had blocked the last four years of the

tweets and

the meanness and all that.

And all of a sudden, it hit me that all those things happened.

And I got very emotional and upset because I had put it in a place I didn't want to ever get to.

But then I had agreed to do this program, and so I had to read about it.

Right.

So we truly do, essentially.

It's awful because the idea of

up and down and left and right all being the same and the rules one day change the next day.

Like, I need consistency.

I need structure in my life.

What do you just want all fash all the time?

I just want all facts.

I want the truth.

Oh, I didn't say facts, Harry.

I said fashion.

I mean, again, the story is so frustrating because, again, he legally, according to the Constitution,

which is the document everyone cites as the end-all,

he is not allowed to not certify the election.

He can't stop.

He has no power to do it.

He could have delayed it possibly.

He could have faked a stomachache.

He could have made some bathroom trips, a bomb threat, fire alarm goes.

There were some small choices he could have made, but nothing that could have really changed.

the outcome of the election.

And even like people who are writing from the left, they keep saying he condemned Trump and he did not he just said that the fact he said was was incorrect he didn't say Joe Biden won the election he didn't say Donald Trump

made you know his actions led to the insurrection on the Capitol he didn't say there was no voter fraud no he just said a thing that is that is literally incorrect.

He did not show any strength.

Mike Pence, more like Mike Mike Farthing.

Whoa, pre-decimalization jokes.

See, see, you didn't expect that.

I didn't.

Not coming from you.

With your

face 10 currencies.

All the rambling before, which posed as some kind of political discourse.

No, just trying to set up an old currency joke.

Hey, what a pro.

I have a question.

What is Mike Pence up to?

Because

if he's going, no, I couldn't have done that.

It sounds like he's trying to distance himself from the whole Trump thing.

Is that because he's planning to run for president?

That,

or he, for the first time, thought about history and what his place in it is, but most likely because he wants to run for president.

I mean, he is famously a God-fearing man, and it possibly that he suddenly realized that he really ought to be fearing God even more than he used to after the festival of anti-Christian values that was the Trump pence years.

Correct.

So So when he does meet his God, his God is going to be cross with him, isn't he?

And I mean, maybe this is he's factoring in to his.

I mean, obviously, God is a little behind on the paperwork, probably still stuck somewhere around the mid-16th century working out who shouldn't, shouldn't be set on fire.

But, you know,

at some point, Mike Pence is going to have to front up to God and issue him a strongly worded apology.

I don't think Pence fears God as much as he fears human women.

Enough women's marts could finish him.

He calls his wife mother, doesn't he?

I believe that's true.

He calls his wife mother.

Now, why is it considered sexy when people call men daddy in a

sexy

face?

But they don't say father.

Notice how they don't say father.

I don't know what people do.

Oh, yeah, father.

They might have

Victorian roleplay.

I don't know.

Yes, mother, yes.

Give me some breakfast, mother.

I am am hungry.

Steve Bannon was very cross with Mike Pence.

Helen, I know you've always been a massive fan of Steve Bannon, of being

trying to get him on your list.

I think that's libel, Andy.

For years, I've seen the tattoo.

He said, you will carry this to your grave

to Mike Pence, which is,

I mean, bearing in mind that Steve Bannon very much has

the mien,

the aura of someone who is not only spiritually but physically reporting from the bowels of hell,

that's quite a scurrilous accusation.

You'll carry this to your grave.

Why is anyone giving Steve Bannon press?

Trump has hinted in classic Trumpic fashion that

if he wins a second term in 2024, and

let's just have a few moments to contemplate that we live in a world where that is even a remote theoretical possibility, and then a few more moments to reflect on the fact that at long last we have beyond conclusive proof that we live in a godless universe.

But if Trump wins a second term, he would pardon many of those charged for attacking the Capitol last January the 6th in the final throbbing lunacies of

his reign.

I mean, he's proven himself thus to be essentially a despot and also a coward.

So, if you will, a chicken Caesar.

Oh,

that's not bad.

I would tell you, Andy,

never make a joke about Caesar salads that imply they're anything to do with Julius Caesar, because I once did that and I heard for about two years from people correcting me,

even though I already knew it was a different Caesar.

So goodbye to your life.

Who was correcting you?

One, because he listened to podcasts, sorry.

No offense listeners.

But some of you could really use some hobbies.

Is it really possible that he could not only run but win, do you think, Hari?

I really hope we're underwater by then, I'll be honest with you.

And this is from a new father.

I really hope we're underwater as opposed to this human being running the show again.

Yeah, I do think it's possible.

Yes.

Yes, I do think it's possible

that that mistake gets repeated again.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, we did on the bugle many years ago joke about the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president.

Chris, I can't remember exactly when that was.

Was it 2012?

It happened more than once, but yeah, around then.

I don't think we ever thought even humorously about the possibility of him serving two non-consecutive terms.

A Grover Cleveland,

as it's referred to.

Sorry to be be a downer, but isn't it possible that Trump won't serve a second term because someone much better at being evil will do it?

Oh, the Antichrist return of the house.

The Antichrist.

Yeah.

Back for a second term.

It's possible.

So we are a year into

a year into Biden's

term of office.

I mean, clearly, it's a tricky job being President of America at the best of times, but taking over after...

Look, I I guess it was like taking over as curator of a Ming Vas museum from Randy Trevor, the Ming Vasa file bull.

There's

a lot of physical and reputational mess to clear up, a lot of things to fix, and no real prospects of people being able to get out of their heads the images of what has happened.

But I mean, how would you assess Biden so far, Ari?

It has been very disappointing.

And it is right, you're right.

He inherited a disaster, but he also has a Democratic House and Senate.

He's been unable to easily get an infrastructure bill through.

That was a struggle.

Restoring voting rights, ending the filibuster, all the things we foolishly thought were possible were impossible, are impossible.

And the reason for that is that there have been two Democratic senators that have gotten the way.

That's Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema, who I'm sure are still Democrats to avoid all the paperwork to formally become Republicans.

Like, it's weird having a Democratic majority when you have those two as part of the majority is like being in an open relationship where only your partner is allowed to see other people.

You know how quite a lot of places in the US have animals as mayors?

Like Idle Wild, California has got like a golden retriever as mayor.

Everyone loves that.

So why not a golden retriever president?

That would be popular.

And probably not as bad as a lot of the humans who've done it.

Yeah.

And it would have visible enthusiasm.

Yeah, there are

a face.

Yeah, exactly.

But the shedding, though.

Right.

Well, go ahead.

Get like a labradoodle.

Then they don't shed.

Moving north of the border, Ellen,

a huge scandal involving another animal in the Canadian town of Wyaton

involving a groundhog.

Yes, Wyatt and Willie is a famous albino groundhog who does the Groundhog Day thing of coming out, prognosticating the weather.

Except it seems like the life of Wyatt and Willie or Wyatt and Willie's has been marked by a lot of scandal, lies,

tragedy.

Wyatt and Willie did not appear in last year's Groundhog Day

because it was live-streamed for coronavirus, but

Warton Willie was actually dead, died of a tooth abscess.

And because he's an albino Groundhog, quite hard to replace in a hurry because most of them are brown.

But I do wonder why people would be that upset by an animal, which has supposedly been popping up like for decades.

This tradition has been going on, that an animal would die.

We know that animals are mortal.

A groundhog such as Warton Willie, their life expectancy is like 10 years.

Right.

So why be upset?

Why not?

The last previous Warton Willie, they died two days before Groundhog Day, and they couldn't source a standard in time.

So they had a funeral for him instead, except he was played by a taxidermied groundhog that died a while ago because Warton Willie was too putrid.

So

you can't.

You really can't.

I mean, part of the problem was the fact that they couldn't easily replace the Groundhog because they needed a white albino groundhog with red eyes.

Like, just use a regular Groundhog.

White supremacy works in mysterious ways.

Yeah.

Well, this year they've gone for a regular Groundhog, which I guess now they can bump it off every year and easily sub it in.

Why didn't they try a weekend at Bernie's solution?

Easily could have played a recording of the Groundhog making sounds, maybe stuffed it with a remote-controlled car to move it around.

Maybe that would have gotten them through the day.

Yeah, the first ever Warton-Willie Groundhog event in 1956, the Groundhog was actually played by a fur hat.

Really?

Do you know why or how?

What happened?

I think because...

How did you know that?

I have my sources.

Because

there was a local resident called Mac Mackenzie who wanted to show off Warton to friends and so decided a Groundhog Day gathering would be it.

And a reporter from the Toronto Star showed up, and ultimately, there was no Groundhog Day event because it was really just a big piss-up.

And the reporter was like, Well, if I'm going to expense this, I need to see a fing Groundhog.

So Mack Mackenzie just put his wife's furry hat in a snowdrift.

Yeah.

And

that was the first Groundhog in Wyatton.

I hope that residents take some solace that this is a stupid ritual that will hopefully end with their children.

Have we considered replacing the President of the United States with a hat?

Well, I think

that nearly

in Abraham Lincoln's time, I think.

Oh.

It was smart for Lincoln to build a coalition with his hat.

Yes.

And, well, I mean, they've worked very harmoniously together.

But I think the hat could have done a pretty solid job, I reckon.

I mean, who came after Lincoln?

Was it Jackson?

No, it was

Johnson, Andrew Johnson.

Johnson.

Hat would have done a better job.

The hat would have done a better job, I reckon.

The Groundhog, if the Groundhog saw its shadow, there'd be six more weeks of winter.

That is the tradition, both in the U.S.

and in Canada.

It is also

the only

climate change that Republicans believe in.

Winter Olympics news now, and it is underway.

The Winter Olympics, the quadrennial festival of people saying f you to physics,

or pushing stones very slowly along the floor.

It's a curious one, Beijing 2022, because of all the stuff that's

happens around Beijing.

And the opening ceremony,

well, I mean, it tried to send out a message of unity that was,

well, slightly undermined by the fact that unity has been in somewhat short supply in China, particularly in certain parts of China.

Hari,

how did you enjoy the opening ceremony?

I was curious what China's Muslim population, known as the Uyghurs, thought of it, but they really weren't able to share their opinion because they're probably in some underground prison somewhere.

There are so many reasons why I hate

this whole Olympics.

First of all, so many human rights were violated in just the building of all the Olympic stadiums.

It's not even people's favorite Olympics.

It's the winter ones.

That's like the second favorite Olympics.

So all these...

The specific Olympics, all the sliding.

I mean, people are dying for curling, which if you didn't know it was a sport, just looks like ice rink maintenance, right?

With brooms and some kind of stone buffing device like why are we doing this for something a small percentage of people care about

well i'd i'd i'd i'd go against that uh and i think helen you're on on side with me here i think this is the greatest olympics the winter olympics the greatest of all the two different olympicses um

because

yeah i mean i think you know humans were were you know generally we have been constrained by physics, and for most of human history, people haven't done, you know, 19, 120 degree pirouettes in the air whilst flying down a mountain with a bit of wood on their feet.

And I think this shows what is possible, not only, you know, in terms of our conquering of the natural world, but also of, you know, what we have to do, increasingly, the level of skill required to be able to overlook the human rights abuses that are going on behind the scenes.

Because I think if it was only a 1080,

I don't think that'd be enough on the snowboard now.

But now it's up to 1920.

I think

we can pretty much overlook anything now.

I mean, that is spectacular stuff.

Sorry, it was such a long sentence, so I forgot where it started.

I was supposed to say.

You must be using Anna.

But it sort of began as a question, and then it's had two birthdays since that sentence began.

I mean, where else can we see a competition

where a nation like Haiti has little to no chance of winning other than at the Winter Olympics and global capitalism?

Isn't that something?

Also, if you didn't know, Haiti has an Alpine skier that is competing, which should be a Disney movie.

Yeah, matter of time.

Just a matter of time.

Surely.

Some of the movies that might be made about

this Olympics might not be the happiest.

There's been numerous complaints from participants about the level of service they're getting.

Complaints that they're having to compete and it's too cold in the cross-country skiing.

Polish speed skater Natalia Malaszzewska said she's been living in fear in a Beijing COVID isolation ward.

She was released back to the Olympic village but then taken from her room at 3am back to the isolation ward due to an administrative blooper.

She said, I've cried until I have no more tears.

My heart and mind can't take this anymore.

Which suggests she might not be having the Olympics of her dreams, but she is halfway to a decent blues album.

The Finnish ice hockey player Marco Antilla has claimed he's been kept in COVID isolation for no reason.

And the Finnish doctor said these decisions are not based on medicine or science.

It's more cultural and political.

I don't know what the political beef between Finland and China is.

But, I mean, there must be something.

Something, lake jealousy, perhaps.

We don't know.

The German skiing coach, Christian Schweger, complained there was no hot food for athletes.

He said the catering is extremely questionable because it's not really catering at all.

Which gets quite philosophical, doesn't it?

You know,

when is catering not catering?

He said there are crisps, nuts, chocolate, and nothing else.

But

that's three of the five main food groups.

I don't mind whinge about missing two of them.

I thought the Olympic Village had a KFC in it.

Well, it's this time?

Really?

Yeah.

or maybe they're only serving nuts crisp and chocolate it's very off-brand

um one of the highlights of the opening ceremony was Vladimir Putin um much uh much in the news um

falling asleep when the Ukrainian team entered entered the arena or I mean I don't know if he was actually asleep Helen I remember when when uh when when we were kids and and we went on long car journeys and you would uh flatly deny having been asleep yes and I was never asleep on those journeys Andy in In the back of the car.

You can't prove I was.

Absolutely deny.

I was faking it

as a protest against an Olympic team.

Yes.

Because I'm a basic level troll.

Putin is obviously being childish, but it's better than his other idea, which was to do a crotch chop and say, suck it.

Suck it, Ukraine.

So in that way,

he took the high road.

He might have done that afterwards.

Yes, yes.

So

Russian athletes were prohibited from competing for Russia.

Yes.

But they are competing as the Russian Olympic Committee and wearing the Russian flag and Putin was there.

So

how are they banned exactly?

Well

they're banned exactly

in that way, Helen, that they have to have Olympic committee or Olympic committee after the name of their country.

Every athlete's worst nightmare.

Well, exactly.

I don't think the international sporting community can send a stronger message about

institutionalized cheating than making people have a slightly longer country name.

I don't see

what else they could possibly do.

Well, also, think about all the jersey sales that they're going to lose in Russia from speed skating and curling and

any number of sports which are very popular all the time and not just for a two-week period every four years.

You know, that's really the tragedy.

Royal family news now.

And Helen, I know you're obsessed with the Royal Family and have been ever since birth.

You were born, of course, famously in time to see Charles and Diana marry the following year.

That's your devotion to the Royals as an institution.

And Britain can now rest easy because the the Queen has said that Camilla, the wife of Prince Charles,

will

she want her to be Queen Consort.

Obviously, you know, a missing child.

Not Princess Consort, like some kind of fucking idiot.

The degradation of being princess, not queen.

But I mean, all the things that have been tearing Britain apart over recent years, you know, Brexit, COVID, Boris Johnson, all the things that have sundered us as a nation.

I mean, worrying about the exact title that Camilla will have when Prince Charles, that's probably the most, the biggest thing dividing our nation.

It's been keeping me awake since Charles and Camilla got married in 2005, and the plan was just to call her Princess Consort, even though it's usual practice to call the royal wives queen consort when their husbands become king.

But it was a diss because she's not Diana, but now the queen is like, yeah, she can be queen consort, that's what I want.

And just look how it's not like one of my other children is awaiting a trial for sex crimes this is the important right you know it's like they're building her a chair from which to look at peasants below and they're like well we said it was only going to be 17 meters high but it's going to be 18 meters

is it's still important this is

is it still special to be the queen uh for the first time when you're 80 like is that still a big deal like oh i'm finally the queen i'm 80 years old so now I can live quietly as other people take care of me like I was 80 in a care facility like absolutely nothing is different

When you become queen at 80 so why

ask Joe Biden what it was like becoming president

A quick UK politics update now.

We reported on the the publication of the Sue Gray reports last week, and Boris Johnson is, so while he's fighting on, the Muhammad Ali of our times floating like a whale corpse, stinging like a lemon squeezed into our national eyeball.

There's been a slew of resignations from within the Downing Street staff, including his head of policy, Munira Mirza, who resigned over Johnson's baseless, horse-shitterous claim that Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, one whose director of public prosecutions, had chosen not to prosecute Jimmy Saville.

She described it as a scurrilous accusation, which is a fancy talk for a massive lie in the House of Commons,

which would ordinarily be a resignation offence, but we live in post-decency times.

I think he's got a new head of propaganda, Guto Harry, who very generously today said his boss is, quotes, not a complete clown.

Is this the summit of our national ambition now, Helen, to have a prime minister who's not a complete clown?

I think he's right.

Boris Johnson is not a complete clown.

I don't think he's even partial clown.

I think he's a highly calculating, conscious-free aristocrat.

Right.

Is that not what clowns are?

I mean, clowns are very calculating as far as behind all that.

I suppose you do have to know how you're going to fall down so you don't hurt yourself.

Yeah.

Also, when they had their first meeting, having hired Gudo Hari, they sang Gloria Gainer's I Will Survive to each other.

Swapping lines.

Yes.

Which includes, of course, the line, I spent oh, so many nights just feeling sorry for myself.

I used to cry, which is not what you want in a Prime Minister.

There's all this talk of, you know, this time of global crises, we don't want a Prime Minister who is weeping himself to sleep in a fug of self-pity.

But that does appear to be what we have.

Guto Hari also said he's not the devil, like some have mischaracterised him.

And I hope we haven't mischaracterised Boris Johnson as the devil.

No, he's all too human.

Well, I mean, the devil has a far greater grip on detail, logistics, messaging, and leadership.

So,

Jacob Reese Mogg,

again, one of his chief enablers, the Archduke of Anachronism, the MP for Much Brazen and Upperty, tried to excuse Johnson's behaviour by pointing out that he'd won the election, Boris Johnson, in 2019 and therefore has a mandate.

Which, as it turns out, is a mandate to do whatever the f ⁇ he wants.

Now, that isn't really how mandates work.

And also, I don't remember that bit of the manifesto from which he got his mandate.

That bit.

I mean, obviously, no one read the manifesto.

Maybe that's the problem.

But I don't remember the bit about him, you know, outright lying in parliaments and breaking his own laws and just generally displaying a phenomenal lack of sensitivity in a delicate situation.

But if this is how democracy works, and emphatically it's not, maybe we should be thankful.

that Johnson restricted himself to just ignoring his own laws and not always hitting the treble 20 of truth with his parliamentary darts.

Because, according to Jacob Rees-Mogg, we had, in effect, voted for him to do, you know, he could have been throwing 50 kittens into a cement mixer every morning, live on children's television.

He could have replaced the cenotaph with an animatronic statue of himself mooning towards Big Ben.

He could have launched a nuclear attack on Canada because he won that election, according to the Rehs-Moggian theory of politics.

So perhaps we should be thankful that he is merely debasing democracy and the office of Prime Minister.

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

Don't forget to buy your tickets to my stand-up tour, which begins on the 25th of February in Leamington Spa.

Details on the internet.

We've also added some dates in May at the Soho Theatre.

Do come to all of those shows.

It is the Satirist for Hire show, so do submit your satirical requests for topics for me to satirise at the show you're coming to.

To satirise this at satirist for hire.com.

Helen, what have you got to plug at the moment?

Well, there's my podcast, The Illusionist, which is about to come back for 2022.

I also did a guest spot on the podcast Bullseye, interviewing the actor Kristin Bell.

Alright.

Yeah, which is strange.

Is it a darts podcast?

Yeah, we talked for an hour about darts, which she doesn't play, so she was just mystified as to why she was there.

There's a niche for everything in the podcast world.

Harry?

I am going on tour for the first time in two years as a result of the global pandemic.

So

just it'll be all spring.

A few dates, March 10th to 12th in Burlington, Vermont, the Vermont Comedy Club.

March 24th to 26th at the Laughing Tap in Milwaukee.

April 2nd at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware.

And April 7th through 9th at the Comedy Loft in Washington, D.C.

And you can get information at hurrykundabolu.com.

Again, this is asterisk pending the state of the global pandemic.

Don't forget to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to give a one-off occurring donation to keep the show free, flourishing, and independent.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com, where you can also, if you take out a premium-level subscription, have a lie told about you by the following people.

This week's lies are entirely related to the Winter Olympics.

Simon Blunt is disappointed by the use of only blue and red as the colours for the flags and gates in Alpine skiing events.

He explains, The last thing I want when I'm watching people wanging themselves down a mountain at 80 miles an hour is to be thinking, is this supposed to be some kind of satire on the cyclical nature of American politics and that you have to somehow try to negotiate your way from Democrat to Republican and back again, going right to the extreme edge of each to stay in play, hoping you don't get things wrong and have a terrible accident?

That's not what I want when I'm watching sports.

I just want to watch the sport.

Jennifer Schuberth agrees and goes one step further than that, even and says, Look, if they're going to turn skiing into a satire on the pointlessness of American bipartisan party politics, I think they need to make it a bit less oblique.

I'd rather they had to ski between alternate pairs of actual donkeys and elephants.

In fact, I'd rather see that anyway, especially as you could easily end up with the magnificent sight of a champion skier zooming into the finish area in hot pursuit of a herd of confused, gravity-adled elephants and donkeys.

I would definitely watch that, she concludes.

Whilst rightly mesmerised by the extraordinarily multifaceted skills of ice hockey, Sam East believes the sport could be improved if the attacking team could physically move the goal.

It would bring a new dimension to the tactics of hockey, postulates Sam, and it would make life a bit more exciting for the goaltenders.

Travel broadens the mind, as they say, and you could have a couple of extra players on the ice as well as goal shifters.

There always seem to be a lot of spare folks sitting around waiting for something to do which seems very wrong in this busy busy world.

Tor Oostein Andresen meanwhile is quadrennially annoyed by Olympic figure skating.

Look, I appreciate this skill of the skaters says Tor and the fact that the sport heroically sustains the global sequin industry.

But why oh why are these people allowed to choose their own music and practice for it in advance?

Where's the skill in that?

They shouldn't know what tunes they have to skate to until they get on the ice, and then they should improvise their twiddly twaddlies and spinny jump jumps, or whatever they're called, around a medley of pop, classical, jazz, funk, grime, and grunge.

And finally, Chris Billing admires ski jumping and the people who are prepared to do it for the entertainment of others, but believes that it too could be improved by introducing an element of medieval jousting.

Let's face it, says Chris, it does get a little bit repetitive after a while, and it's not as if, like in Pol Vault, they're having to jump over an increasingly wide crevasse in the ice.

So let's stick another amp at the other end of the arena, give them each a big stick and some armour and watch the viewing figures go through the roof.

Here endeth this week's icy 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.