Ukraine Crumbles, UK cakes (4217)

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4217 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World with me, Andy Zoltzmann, now correctly restored to the appropriate side of the equator after two months in Australia, a month in which I've performed an elongated performance art piece entitled The Futility of Hope, whilst simultaneously working on the BBC coverage of the England cricket team's failed attempt to lose the ashes with a shred of dignity.

Neat bit of multitasking there.

Um, or I mean, multitasking or doing the same job and calling it two different things, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference.

It's uh Tuesday, the 25th of January, 2022.

I arrived home yesterday morning at about 5 a.m.

So please do excuse me if I fall

at some point during the recording.

Joining me today in an all-northern hemisphere line-up from Brixton and Mumbai, respectively.

It's Nish Kumar and Anuvab Pal.

Hello, both.

It's lovely to be back in the same hemisphere as you both after the last couple of months.

Have you been?

Good, Andy.

Listen, it's not been a great, as a

person of dual heritage

from England and India.

Cricket has not been kind to me over the last couple of months.

Double series defeat for both identities that I claim.

How was the experience of being at the Ashes, Andrew?

Well, it was

in some ways great in that it was

a childhood dream of mine to follow an Ashes series around Australia.

In other ways, it was probably the worst time ever to follow an Ashes series around Australia.

both on and co-vidiously related off-the-field perspectives.

in the managed to just go from

kind of going down after a game in which they've been moderately competitive to a total humiliating degrading defeat in

uh you know the time it takes to basically brew and drink a decent cup of tea but which is kind of appropriate for cricket i guess well you know andy i

it's very hard to get test match special in india and i went through a bunch of hoops to download it quote unquote legally and

it was 5:30 in the morning here.

And I'm not a very early riser, but somehow I managed to get up at 6:30.

And the match was over.

It was done.

It was done.

By 6:45, I was back in bed.

I don't know what happened,

but I think India was very, very upset.

So upset that Captain Virat Kohli resigned.

He said he's done with the game

after watching.

Well, this is interesting, wasn't it?

Yeah, that he resigned after a period of broad success, a great success in a lot of ways, up to

being beaten in South Africa.

Whereas Joe Root is clinging on

amidst the wreckage of it.

So it's quite a noble gesture, really, to resign on behalf of another team's captain.

But this is what I mean.

Coley's a f ⁇ ing pussy.

If we have learned nothing from Boris Johnson or Joe Root,

all you have to do is look the person in the eye and say, I'm not going anywhere.

We are recording on the 25th of January 2022.

On this day in 1533, Henry VIII secretly married his second wife, Anne Boleyn, a relationship that I think it's fair to say did not end well.

He packed a lot of wives into his final decade and a half of his reign.

He died in 1547.

And this is only wife two.

So that's five new wives in the last

14, 15 years of his life, which,

yeah, that's pretty good effort from KHA, because he was known in

all his branding.

Makes me think

I've got to get a move on.

Still stuck on wife number one.

Today is, in America, is National Opposite Day,

where you have to say the opposite of what you mean.

In Britain, Britain, that's just known as every day.

And also, it might explain why, for example, Boris Johnson today is still saying I did nothing wrong.

They didn't fully explain why he's saying it every other day as well.

I like the idea that in America, National Opposites Day is legally verifiable.

Could we go back to the Clinton Lewinsky affair and see if he said

I did not have sexual relations with that woman on National Opposites Day and whether that stood in a court of law as always the section of the bugle is going straight in the moon this week a special free quiet moment for reflection

buy tickets for Andy Saltzman's UK tour February to March 2022

top story now and

Guerrilla marketing from Zaltzman.

Absolute gorilla marketing.

Saltzman isn't just a gorilla marketer.

He's the Viet Cong of guerrilla marketing.

I think you've just reinvented the minute silence, Andy.

You could

sell any product you want.

Everything can be sponsored these days.

Yeah.

That didn't go down well when you did it on Remembrance Day, though, did it, Andy?

All the troops assembled.

You with a megaphone shouting bye tickets to Andy Zaltzman's tour.

The world is at war, or may well be, by the time you listen to this.

Since we last broadcast the bugle a couple of weeks ago, when the year was still waking up somewhat blearily, somewhat complacently, thinking that it wasn't going to be as shit as its two immediate predecessors, 2022 has really started grinding into action in the classic manner of modern years, dumping turd after turd onto the world's breakfast plate of news.

Now,

it does seem that

the situation in Ukraine is getting

more fraught than would be ideal.

It is hard, I would say this, from a British perspective, Nish, to work out currently which is more important on an objective, global, cosmic, even philosophical level, whether a career political shithead did or did not go to what was or was not a party for however or however not long, or one of the world's most powerful and unaccountable military powers invading a frankly massive European nation in a battle what we can only assume is historical nostalgia for simpler times when everyone did that kind of shit all the time and we were all happy to march off to war and mutually slaughter one another as a result.

I mean, what would you say is bigger in the grand scheme of things?

Boris Johnson eating a cake or Russia amassing 120,000 troops on the border of Ukraine?

I would say, I mean, as someone who has been, who is not a fair weather friend to the northern hemisphere like you, Andy,

I've been in Britain pretty solidly.

I mean,

I'd go further.

I'd say exclusively for the last couple of months.

And

all of our talk about parties, which I'm sure we'll come to later, it is starting to feel like a man on the Titanic as the top half of it snaps off into the sea, yelling at the cook for overcooking the scallops.

It's starting to feel a little bit like we may have our priorities

skew with.

The situation is

very bad.

It's starting to feel and this is never a compliment a little cold war y

no one has ever said say for example of an appropriately cooked scallop man that appropriately cooked scallop was cold warry

um i mean i guess the big question uh with ukraine is exactly to what extent should we be bricking it how large should those bricks be and what should we be building with those bricks uh another wall that i mean that is after all how the Berlin Wall was built with all the bricks.

Look, I mean, you know, the Indian Prime Minister, Prime Minister Modi, who is a very, very wonderful, lovely man.

I got to you.

They finally got to you.

Because, you know, we know.

Just out of shot, I can see the end of a revolver, I think, just out of shot.

Well, he is getting a copy of this recording.

The bugle sound editor is being held at gunpoint.

So

there is Nish, you are correct, a pistol involved.

He's a wonderful man, and he looks up to Vladimir Putin for lessons of democracy and openness and transparency.

And for both these world leaders, you know, there is something that is really sort of, you know, disconcerting to them when there is a large period of peace and stability in the world.

So luckily, they had, you know, Vladimir Putin had the Russian hacking of the US elections for a long time to keep him busy.

Then there was the pandemic, and now he needs something.

So, you know, I think, and Prime Minister Modi looks up to that.

So, whatever invasion Putin does, we'll try to do a little one in India very soon after that.

Because, again, too much stability is destabilizing for these people.

Boris Johnson has said, I don't think it's by any means inevitable now.

I think sense can still prevail, which, if you run it through any entry-level Boris Johnson interpreter, means we'll all be speaking fluent Latin by Christmas.

He's also said intelligence suggests prospects are gloomy, and that's not him saying that if you have intelligence, your prospects of being appointed to high political office in his government are gloomy, although I think it probably does also mean that.

It means that he is essentially shitting himself at the prospect of having to deal with something that simply can't be dealt with by hiding in a fridge, unbrushing his hair, impregnating someone, or shouting, we won the war.

It's adding to his difficulty.

In terms of more collapsing unity, part of the reason that

Putin is saber-rattling in the region is because of his perception that the Ukrainian president and concerningly former comedian Vladimir Zelensky has too close a relationship with the West.

But there's a schism building there as well.

Zelensky's reacted quite angrily to Biden removing American embassy personnel and their families from the Ukraine over the weekend, Zelensky said that, quite frankly, these Americans are safer in Kiev than they are in Los Angeles or any other crime-ridden city in the US.

Now, listen,

I'm not here to defend U.S.

crime rights, but what I would say there isn't in the U.S.

is a build-up of 100,000 Russian troops.

And one of the other reasons behind Putin's potentially evading, apart from to distract from a myriad of problems, including a disproportionately high death rate from COVID-19, is that recent polling has suggested that his opinions of him in the Ukraine are kind of as bad as they've ever been.

A poll found that 81% of Ukrainians had an unfavourable view of Vladimir Putin.

Here's the thing, right?

Vladimir Putin's ego is so fragile.

If I had reacted like this to finding out that no one liked me, I would have invaded the houses of every child I went to primary school with.

Now,

I don't know, Nish, because I've been a big fan of both you and Andy Zoltzmann running for prime minister of the United Kingdom.

But the reason

what a dream ticket.

Absolutely dream ticket.

Not what I would call a balance ticket, Andrew.

No, no, no, no, no.

Disbalance.

But now, now here's where, you know, I just want to be the devil's advocate.

What's happening in Ukraine with a comedian becoming president?

Not a great guide to future comedians becoming prime minister or president.

He's had a rough time.

There was that whole Ukraine meddling, Russia, America issue that he had to deal with right after coming to power, if you remember, with Trump.

The quick cry quite.

Yeah, that whole thing.

And now he's taking his country into a war.

Not a great thing for comedians becoming world leaders.

Joe Biden said last week, the only war that is worse than one that's intended is when it's unintended.

Which, I mean, that's, I mean, a curious sentence.

And he said, what I'm concerned about is that this could get out of hand, which is...

I mean, a great political euphemism,

similar to, well, there might be a little bit of a situation, a Prime Minister word said to neville chamberlain in the late 1930s um he said i'm hoping that vladimir putin understands that he is short of a full-bone nuclear war not in a very good position to dominate the world and that is basically saying you want to go for a full-blown nuclear war vladimir that that could be your meal ticket

that's not an idea to put in his head

listen say what you will about vladimir putin and he will poison you uh russia's demands apparently issued uh a few weeks ago now uh include apparently assurances that the Ukraine won't join club NATO.

That's not the NATO Green fan club of Ulas.

That's the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

There's a surprising amount of crossover.

That NATO won't expand further.

Presumably Russia saying, seriously, guys, North Atlantic, look at a map.

and tell me exactly where the North Atlantic is.

They might have a bit of a point on that, just from a semantic point of view.

They want the withdrawal of NATO troops and all the old bits of the Soviet Union that fell off Russia when communism flunked out in the 1990s.

They want Chelsea to get an automatic place in the Champions League final every season.

I mean,

I'm not sure any of those demands can be easily met.

Really.

Other top story this week, Boris Johnson is still Prime Minister.

Words that I guess I fully expected to be saying, but still should not be saying.

He's clinging on, despite increasing

rumblings of discontent from within the Conservative Party and now a police investigation into several of the alleged parties in Downing Street and Westminster that have potentially contravened COVID regulations.

I did think, I got on a 24-hour flight essentially from Australia and I did wonder whether, you know, I would switch my phone on at Heathrow to find that the Prime Minister had resigned.

But I mean, that was...

But I think it's going to take, I don't know what it's going to to take to make him actually resign.

The latest total, I think, is I read 17 different parties or PRGs, party resembling gatherings during various lockdowns, including

this week a birthday party from 2020, his 56th birthday, a micro-festivity involving his chief of staff, his deputy, his senior advisor, his agent, and his wife, who are all the same person, it should be said, presenting him with a Union Jack birthday cake.

And I thought, this was the detail I liked,

Nishava, the Union Jack birthday cake of this party.

He claims he was only there for less than 10 minutes.

But what more appropriate metaphor could there be for Boris Johnson's prime ministership than being presented with something with a national flag on it, cutting it up, giving bits of it to his friends, shoving a huge amount of it in his own mouth, slobbering all over it as he destroys it and everything it stands for, and then shitting it out and fucking it to oblivion.

We all like to perform a metaphor on our birthdays, but I think that is going to be hard to beat.

Yeah, I should say, for the international listenership

of this podcast, the scandal about the parties that may or may not have happened in 10 Downing Street is being referred to in sections of the British press as Partygate.

And I cannot stress this enough.

This is what passes for Watergate in our country.

It's an event that may or may not involve people wearing novelty hats and blowing on streamers.

So, yes,

the latest round.

Basically,

I know, honest to God, professional clowns who attend less birthdays than these ones.

The latest thing is this potential birthday cake slash not birthday cake.

Downing Street has not even denied that this took place.

At least this time, we've hopped that stage of them going, there wasn't a party, there wasn't a party, and and then a photograph emerges of johnson with his nutsack in a cake and they go oh no there was a party sorry everyone they've hopped straight to the next phase of their remonstrations which is getting into an existential debate about what constitutes a party these guys are like the sartre of parties they they want to really investigate what constitutes a party and what circumstances constitute a party so number 10 is acknowledging that on Boris Johnson's birthday, again, as you say, Andy, his 56th birthday.

I mean,

last year, my 15-year-old cousin said that he probably wasn't going to have a party because he was, quote, getting a bit too old for it.

And this 56-year-old motherfucker is still insisting on cake.

But look,

that is the principal bone of contention.

It's

whether or not he understood this to be a party.

So his wife, Carrie Johnson, had organized for some people at Downing Street to bring a cake in and to sing Happy Birthday.

Now,

obviously, what happens with all of these things is there's a period of denial, then they accept it, then they get into the existential debate about what qualifies as a party.

But then the next round is that presumably, whichever government minister has drawn the short straw with the words, ha ha, it's your time on it,

has to go out and do all of the morning grants.

So today's short straw is Grant Shabbs,

who

has been doing the media rounds.

And he had to say this sentence.

And I don't know how, as these words are coming out of your mouth, you don't think it's time for me to quit this job.

He said, the Prime Minister clearly didn't organize to be given a cake.

Some people came forward and thought it would be appropriate on his birthday.

I mean, it's,

I'm lost for words.

I just have a question for the both of you.

Basic question.

How did your country rule three-fourths of the known planet?

You can't agree on a party

because you threaten members of parliament.

How did you?

And the second one is a request.

And this is my request.

Both of you are leading political voices in your country.

You do political comedy.

Maybe you can make this happen

because you know enough people.

Maybe, please make this happen.

Can you please return Boris Johnson to India?

Because he sounds like an Indian politician.

There's corruption with his residents.

There's threats to members of parliament.

There is, he's in the wrong place.

I mean, none of the things he's doing is unethical here.

He would fit in perfectly.

All the things they were complaining about,

you know, they're not even issues.

You know, I was in conversation with uncles who were like, they couldn't understand why people are harassing Boris Johnson over minor ethical issues.

So that's my request.

Keep all the stuff in the British Museum, keep the Kohino diamond, kill us Boris Johnson.

Adiba, on this, if we want to further the comparison between Boris Johnson and particularly a current Indian politician,

the Conservative Party was once again embroiled in fresh allegations of Islamophobia this week.

After Nusrat Ghani, who's a Conservative minister, said that she had been sacked from her job because her Muslimness was making other MPs uncomfortable.

And there's been a lot of public soul searching for the Conservative Party this week saying, how is it possible that this could have been allowed to have happened?

I'll give you one f ⁇ ing answer to that.

Boris Johnson wrote an article a couple of years ago where he compared Muslim women to letterboxes and bank robbers.

It is a party very much made in his image.

And I'm sick of people saying, that man does not have a racist bone in in his body.

And your instinctive response is, Yes, but he has a racist brain in his skull, and that's the problem area.

That's what no one ever said, oh, if you think Hitler was bad, you should have met his skeleton.

My God, that

bony bastard was intolerant as all heck.

Also, a treasury minister, Lord Agnew,

he was a treasury and cabinet office minister over the last couple of years.

He resigned due to the government's, quotes, lamentable record tackling COVID business fraud, saying they could take a one P in the pound off income tax

if they dealt with COVID fraud,

essentially.

He said his

remark, he basically announced his resignation in the House of Lords.

And again, as Alice mentioned on the news quiz last week, the irony of seeing the House of Lords standing up for democratic probity in Britain shows that

we still lead the world in area, if nothing else.

He said it was not an attack on the Prime Minister.

But, you know, if that's his government that's enabled the billions of pounds worth of fraud to happen, it sort of is an attack on the Prime Minister, even if it's not directly an attack on the Prime Minister.

One Labour MP has defected to the Tory Party last week, Christian Wakeford, the MP for Bury South, which coincidentally is also a leaked policy under consideration from the Conservatives in a desperate attempt to win over faltering support their new won Red Wall Northern seats.

And David Davis, former cabinet minister and Tory grandee, which is a term for someone who's been around for finging ages and speaks in a ridiculously deep voice, he said to Boris Johnson in Parliament, in the name of God, go.

At which point the heavens opened and a tired-looking guy with a beard and said somewhat stropperly, for f sake guys, don't bring me into this.

This is your mess, not mine.

And oh, by the way, thanks for finally stopping burning people in my name.

That was really f ⁇ ing weird.

And in case you're wondering about whether your national anthem works or not, I have saved the Queen three times this week.

Man, does she enjoy dicking around with helicopters?

All I can say is if you keep singing that song, well, also, she's going to keep eating those berries and giggling to herself, muttering absolute cart.

India news now.

And,

well, alcohol is a huge part of the negotiations for the forthcoming, hopefully, India-UK post-Brexit trade deal.

Work has begun hammering out, always with the hammering out, the trade deal.

And Anuvab, as our

British-Indian trade correspondent, it's fair to say that times have changed over the centuries since previous trade deals were hammered out between Britain and India, often involving terms such as, actually, I think you'll find we own that diamond,

as well as perhaps you'd like to discuss that with our army of 250,000 soldiers.

And don't worry, our research suggests that starvation is 99% psychological.

Give us your food.

I mean, mean, things have changed.

A little.

Britain wants lower tariffs on whiskey, which is one of the key points of the lower tariffs on Scotch whiskey.

How excited is India about

helping Britain to rebuild itself as a global force post-Brexit, which is what it's all about?

I'm glad you asked that, Andy.

The India Today magazine, one of our leading magazines, is calling this the whiskey for visas trade deal.

So apparently the way it works is you give us single malt whiskey,

which we drink and we pay for and in return we get visas from Britain so that Indians can flee and study in Britain.

I don't know why this is happening because I'm very, very happy in India with our Prime Minister or whoever's

or whoever in the Ministry of Home Affairs is receiving this recording.

So I don't know why this is happening, but apparently some people believe there are no jobs in India.

They'd like visas to go and study in Britain and Canada.

I don't know who these people are.

And frankly, I think it's a really tiny number of maybe 600 to 700 million people.

So

this is happening.

So there is a theory in economics, as you will know, of guns and butter.

That was where Axel Rose went after him and Slacker.

The basis of the band.

Exactly.

So a country can apparently either make butter or make guns, depending on whether one's strategy is offense or defense.

So if, you know, like Vladimir Putin, you want to build a defense economy, you'll have a lot of guns.

If you want to have jobs and that sort of thing, you have butter.

We have a different model.

What we're saying is ours is the get drunk or flee model.

So

either you stay here and get pissed on single malt or get a British visa and get the hell out of here.

It's a new kind of economics.

But along with this, I just want to suggest to the two of you two new kinds of

possible trade deals.

And one of them is:

we give you all our elephants,

and you teach us what is or is not a party.

The amount of whiskey involved, it's only 1% of the Indian whiskey market, but

that's the kind of rich prize we're after in these post-Brexit times.

The UK's annual whiskey exports are 380 million litres.

We talked about this in our radio show last year, Anuvab.

To put it in terms that are easier to visualise, listeners, that's equivalent to just over half a million hot tubs full of whiskey or

3,400 London buses filled to the brim with whiskey apart from a little air pocket for the driver,

which would

basically mean a 27-mile buses of whiskey traffic jam.

That's what we export every year.

This is, you know, it's one of our great, great products.

And just so you know, Andy, that's the people who drink that, that's just my family.

And I would argue...

I would argue Nisha's relatives were down in Kerala, you know, just together, that group, that's just for them.

I mean, we haven't even counted the family.

Yeah, I mean, I can tell you from personal experience, my family have been heavily involved in the importing of whiskey from the bottle into their mouths.

Well, you know, we're talking about drinking to forget.

This is this is why it's such an important part of Britain's trade negotiations.

We're trying to make India drink and forget some of the little glitches of the past.

Merger news now.

Anuvab,

an interesting story that you brought to our attention.

The merger of two eternal flames at war memorials in Delhi.

The Amar Jawan Jyoti, I hope I pronounced that right, which has been burning for more than five decades as an eternal flame, has been merged with a newer flame at a new national war memorial.

Of course,

the original one, the Amar Jawan Jyoti, was famously sung about by the American pop group The Bangles in the 1980s, which was one of a series of songs by the LA Four Piece outfit dealing with Indian military history.

Manic Monday, of course, being another dealing with a particularly fraught start to the week during the Siege of Lucknow during that 1857 Indian rebellion.

So why is this decision being made now

to

bring these two flames together?

And what does it signify for India as a country?

Excellent, excellent question.

And I would love to know what you both think about this because

basically the central debate is around this: how many flames are too many flames?

And there has to be a fine line between honoring the dead at war in a war memorial and a city that looks like it's on fire, which is a problem that Delhi is facing.

There are just too many flames.

So, the Amar Jamanjyoti, as you correctly pointed out, has been burning for five decades.

Now,

it's been burning to remember all the people that fought in different wars fighting for the British Raj.

So it was inaugurated in 1931.

Now, 400 meters away from that, our new Prime Minister, lovely, lovely man, has built a national war memorial.

And he thinks that this is the war memorial where all the fires should burn.

So who gets a permanent flame is a big deal, right?

So I know both of you have talked about this, which is the role of soldiers from the colonies during the First and and Second World Wars.

And, you know, their contribution is often overlooked.

And, you know, we should remember them, et cetera.

There were many Sikh soldiers in World War I and two, fighter pilots from India, Gorkha Regiment, all of that.

Now, what Prime Minister Modi is saying is that if you've forgotten about those soldiers, then it's about time we forget about them too.

So,

you know, there's a lot of talk in your country about recognizing them.

And we're thinking it's time to join up with you guys and just take out that flame, really.

So if you fought in World War II in the Austro-Hungarian plains or North Africa, good for you.

But you've been burning too long.

So we're going local, right?

We're going very local.

So if you died in solving an interstate water dispute in India post-independence, you'll be remembered.

But if you built a bridge during the monsoons, you'll be remembered.

But if you fought in the Ardennes, you know, it's somebody else's problem.

There was a time when Indian soldiers had no idea what country they were in, who they were fighting for, for whom, when it was outsourced.

So, Prime Minister Bodhi is saying, Build a different outsourced flame.

I'm not running the outsourced flame.

So, you know, it's time for fire conservation, really.

And

it was in the Economic Times, it was covered that in this fire merger, there'll be a large number of cost-saving synergies from not having zoned fires and and there will be some layoffs so so that is the summary but but you know if if you you guys have forgotten about something why do we need to remember with a whole flame going even the olympics when it's not on the torch goes off so you know if uh yeah yeah well i mean it's i think it's because

much as we love to remember our history uh and by our history i mean the bits that we can prove are definitely 100 british and not things that we would totally depend on other people for.

Yeah, we're also very concerned for the environment.

And so the more we forget about parts of history and need fewer eternal flames to remember things, then the brighter our future becomes.

So I think there's a lot of things.

Exactly.

And, you know, you guys are doing it already.

There was a film called 1917, which had Sikh soldiers, you know, and so Hollywood is already doing it.

Why do we have to keep a whole flame going?

I mean, you know, I'm in Mumbai right now.

It's freezing in Mumbai.

It's

23 degrees in Mumbai right now.

And, you know, we're setting different things on fire.

We don't have any heating system here.

So, you know, people, my dining table is missing.

So

we need to redirect the fire where the fire is needed.

We're wrapping ourselves in furry animals.

This is where the warmth is needed.

We can't keep remembering a bunch of Gurkha soldiers who died in Rabat in Morocco fighting the Nazis.

I mean, that's your job, really.

Massive potato news now, and a giant potato.

Are we back on Boris Johnson?

Blamo.

Blamo.

Blamo.

Blamo.

Recover from that, BJ.

You party bad end.

A massive potato is has been caught up in a uh well a cheating scandal.

The potato,

it's not helping the Boris Johnson comparison.

It's having to have its DNA tested again.

Something

Johnson's had some novel

experience with.

It's having to have its DNA tested after smashing the record for biggest ever potato.

And now to prove it is indeed a potato rather than, I don't know, an alien life form

or, as it's from New Zealand, a rugby player.

It's having to have its DNA tested to prove that it is genuinely a potato.

It's tipped the scales at 7.9 kilograms, or in New Zealand terms, a thirteenth of a Richie McCall.

And it's absolutely mashed the existing record of just under five kilograms for a potato.

The Mega Spud record is being hailed as the most exciting moment in New Zealand history

since rugby star Buck Shelford played on for the All Blacks with a lacerated scrotum against France in 1986.

And I mean, what a performance from this this potato.

I've got to say,

it roasts to the occasion.

Although, if it fails the DNA test, I guess it could just jack it in and give up.

A sliver of potato had to be sent to the UK for DNA testing, and New Zealand potato fans

chipped in to cover the costs.

I mean, this is, I mean, it's quite literally huge news in the world of potatoes.

And it does make me slightly regret

a moment that my career went in a different direction than it could have been after I left university.

I applied for ran about 80 jobs before I finally found a really, really shit one working as a subeditor for a business publishing house.

But one of the interviews I went to was for another publishing house that produced a magazine called Potato Processing International.

Claimed to be the world's leading publication for the potato processing industry.

It made me think if only I'd taken that job in 1997 and stuck with it for the ensuing 25 years.

I could have had a big scoop on myself.

I thought that's what you were thinking.

That's what you were thinking while you were watching the England collapse on the last day of the final test.

Jesus, you know what?

Maybe potatoes wouldn't have been so bad.

You have to put in your time in potato journalism, Andy.

It doesn't happen overnight.

It's just...

You have to wait.

I just have one question for both of you.

And this is just a bit of a whine I have against first world problems.

Now, what happened to the world where you would just take things at face value?

Now, in India, if we found a huge potato, we would just see a photo of the potato and we'd say, that's freaking huge, right?

How can people just accept it?

In New Zealand, they had to do a DNA test.

What would the DNA test prove?

That it's not a dog?

Yes.

And again, you know, I've made up all these opinions.

by just looking at a photograph.

I haven't actually read the whole article.

This is 2022.

So, you know.

Yeah, we don't have time to read it.

No,

someone's got to summarize it in a dance on TikTok.

Come on.

I'm not getting all the details of this potato story unless someone's lip-syncing Megan the Stallion.

Misha's just summarized all world journalism.

Well, Megan the Scallion has just done a TikTok about the world's largest spring.

I don't know, Andy.

I'm still imagining a rugby player with an injured scrotum, so I'm way behind.

I'm really enjoying the fact that

Andy is.

I consider it the greatest

achievement of my career to have set Andy Saltzman up to do a Megan the Stallion pun.

I don't think anybody saw the career of Ms.

The The Stallion as fodder for Saltzman.

It's not her real name, though.

It's just a stage name she picked up from when she started in Pantheon.

Oh my god.

Andy, have you have you got 20 minutes of gear on Megan the Stallion?

Of course I have, Nick.

Of course.

Billionaire update and a report from Oxfam has said that the wealth of the world's 10 richest men has doubled during the pandemic or nearly doubled depending on whether you count the first bit when they actually somehow lost money

but still up by 70% however you measure it at least.

However their spiritual wealth has fallen by around 34%.

Elon Musk has just recorded and released a song entitled My Rocket Made Me Sad.

Oxfam's chief executive in Great Britain also pointed out that a new billionaire has been created almost every day during the COVID pandemic.

And I saw this story and I got really excited by this because, you know, if you're creating a billionaire every day, all it means is that, and I love my stats, we just need to keep this pandemic going for another 21 million years

and everyone in the world will be a billionaire.

We will have totally eradicated poverty.

I mean, that's not adjusted for inflation or Armageddon, but we just need to.

This pandemic is our ticket out of all the world's global economic problems.

If we are just patient,

you know,

it's always worth remembering that Andy Zalzman has written a book about economics.

Always, always remember that.

Never forget.

The interesting thing in that article is that apparently Elon Musk, your favorite person, and his thing is his net worth is up 1,000% in the last year.

And,

you know, and it said, you know, Bill Gates in comparison is up a paltry 30%.

He's at a tough paradigm.

It's difficult.

He's only at some 21 billion now.

Whereas, and here's my theory, guys.

I think that the reason Elon Musk is up a 1,000% is because he was on Saturday Night Live, because comedy is where the money is.

Is it?

Which bit of comedy, can you be specific, Adaba?

The one where you also have a rocket company on the side.

That's the mistake we've both made.

Our side hustles are all wrong.

Aduba's side hustling, writing Bollywood films, Andy's side hustling cricket stats, my side hustle in undiagnosed IBS.

These were not the right side hustles.

The report also added that gender equality has been set back during the pandemic.

13 million fewer women in work now than there were in 2019, and over 20 million girls at risk of never returning to school.

So here it is.

Women get more time off, and girls get let off their homework.

Yet more victories for the anti-patriarchy woke conspiracy.

Must stop reading below the line.

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

It's delightful to be back in sunny London.

We'll be back next week.

Bugles will be at the start of weeks for the next few weeks because I'm hosting the news quiz, which you can hear by BBC Sounds or other podcast providers.

Don't forget to book your tickets for my tour from late February through most of March.

There will be some London dates coming up in May as well.

They'll be announced shortly, hopefully.

Anything you guys have to plug?

I'm also on tour

from the 2nd of February.

I'm touring across the UK.

We are working on some New York and Los Angeles dates.

But at the moment, the only tickets that are available on nishkumar.co.uk are for the UK.

And listen.

If you happen to know

700 people that live in Ipswich,

it would be it would be really it actually if you know 700 people in ipswich

split it 50 50 and send half of them to blackburn because i know it's not i know it's not a logical commute but uh we could do so

ipswich and blackburn the people of those two places seem to be very committed to social distancing at my gigs very very committed

is i mean is that common between all town stroke cities whose football team had a surprising but relatively short-lived time as a major force in English football?

Well, I'll let you be the judge of that, Andy, when I tell you, Paul's not looking great either.

How does it feel?

I mean, let's go back a while.

Andy, we have any shows live or something.

I mean, look, I just want to start by saying it's always a delight to listen to the two of you go on about a prime minister

without the concern that your house might get burned down and be shot in the face.

For me, as a cultural experience, this is always a delight.

And that's why I go and see both you and Nish on tour all the time, because it feels like being out in jail.

And the only update I have is: after four and a half years,

The Empire, the show that I was on, got recorded by Amazon here and will eventually come out in April, I think.

There we go.

Everything has been plugged.

Thank you very much for listening, Bugles.

We will now have the return of lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

I've had a little hiatus while I've been busy in Australia.

If you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme, obviously have a one-off or recurring donation to keep this show free, flourishing, and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Andre Mayer is sick and tired of hearing about galaxies.

Look, says Andre, I appreciate that galaxies are impressively big and surprisingly varied, but frankly, I can barely get my head around the size of the solar system we live in, so I really don't see the need for anything in between that and the entire universe, which is confusingly unimaginable as it is.

So personally, I think we should ditch galaxies.

I mean, what's the point?

Barry Jones quite literally comes out in metaphorical hives when he hears the term precision engineering.

Barry explains his linguistic allergy thus.

Precision engineering suggests the existence, or at least the theoretical possibility, of imprecision engineering.

I know standards have broadly fallen around the world these days, continues Barry, but the day someone imprecisely engineers a bridge, an aeroplane or a lion enclosure is the day I want no more to do with my species.

Edward Hoare wonders what the next big revolution in home furniture will be.

The sofa was undoubtedly a terrific breakthrough, says Edward, and to be honest, I'm not sure what breakthroughs we've had since then, within the limited scope of objects to sit, lean or lie on, or to put stuff in or on, which, let's face it, is about as far as the remit of furniture goes.

But personally, I'd like to see a hammesk, across between a hammock and a desk, which dangles between two trees but provides a more relaxing surface for your laptop.

Jonathan Broughton Humphreys is suspicious of jobs that require an excessively tall hat.

Popes, bishops, conjurers, witches, wizards, those soldiers in London that wear the big fuzzy jobs, Abraham Lincoln impersonators, you name it, there's not a single one amongst them you'd call a regular, non-weird way to earn a living, says Jonathan.

It makes you think, doesn't it?

I know Lincoln wore his trademark stovepipe so he could keep a flask of soup handy for whenever he got hungry whilst presidenting the shit out of America, but other than that, I remain deeply sceptical.

And Nick Paprocky would one day like to conduct something, but is not sure exactly what.

To be honest, says Nick, I don't particularly mind what I conduct, but in descending order of preference, it would probably have to be a symphony, a bus, an investigation, and some electricity.

And whatever it is, he concludes, I want a little baton to wave around at people to make them do what I want.

That is absolutely non-negotiable.

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.