Little Pink Things (4213)

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4213 of the Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world, albeit a world that seems increasingly to have its visuals viewed through a thoroughly smashed kaleidoscope of confusion, recrimination and introspection.

Happy times!

I am in Australia, in Sydney to be precise, just a few miles north of where in 1770 Team GB's Captain Cook landed, narrowly missing out on the title of being the first person to discover this ridiculously massive but heroically uninhabitable continent by a mere 60,000 years or so.

Another near miss for Great Britain on that one.

And who should I have bumped into here?

But someone who until recently sported a very impressive bump, fresh from her recent sprogification.

It's Bugle new parent of the month for October 2021.

Alice Fraser, Alice, well, A, congratulations, and B, hello.

Hello, hello, thank you.

Hello, Andy, hello, buglers.

I am, yes, I'm now one less person than I was a few weeks ago.

Oh, congratulations for going back down to just one rather than two.

Excellent.

It's an extremely strange feeling, but not as strange as it was before.

I should say we are recording in Alice's flat in...

What is...

I mean, is cupboard too grand?

I mean, it was a laundry, and now it's my podcast studio, but it is very much a one-man podcast studio, and by one-man, I mean one medium-sized lady.

It's also on the sixth floor of a block of flats, and the weather here is

weathering.

British rather than Australian.

Yes, you seem to have brought the wind.

And also we overlook the ocean.

It's windy.

So this may be a more buffeted-sounding bugle than normal.

So, I mean, how have you enjoyed your first month and a bit of baby control?

I feel very happy and lucky I have the best baby in all the world,

which, you know, I think.

Yeah, if anyone wants to challenge that claim, do email.

I have been training my baby for baby fights, and I reckon my baby's going to win.

First of all, she's fing massive

for which I take all credit for.

I feel very pleased with myself.

I have not had a lot of sleep, so if I'm not as funny as I usually am, turns out that my funniness was sleep-reliant.

And if I'm more funny than I usually am, this could be a spiral that ends badly.

We are recording on the 26th of November 2021.

Sunday, the 28th, will be Aura Awareness Day.

Oh, really?

And to mark Aura Awareness Day, which is obviously a huge day for everyone around the world, we are giving a free extra 10% aura for all bugle listeners.

This is in addition to the regular extra aura provided by just listening to this soul-inspiring newscast every week.

This does come with a caution: aura additions are cumulative.

If you exceed 200% of your regular aura, you may be swept up to heaven in a golden chariot.

The bugle cannot be held responsible for any apotheoses resulting from claiming the 10% extra aura offer.

If you start hearing ethereal music, please seek help immediately.

I've once had a lady read my aura while she was waxing my undercarriage.

Right.

Yeah, she said, you have a sad energy about you.

Feet together, knees apart.

And I said,

because you know, if somebody says that about you, you want to make them happy.

So I was like, oh yeah, my grandmother died like a year ago.

Right.

And she was like, don't worry, she's watching over you right now.

Really?

Which is

not a little bit of a finished.

Which I was

not as reassuring as I think she thought it was.

Well, that's a lovely story.

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

And this week, appropriately enough, we have a baby tips section.

Obviously, the best advice you can give to any baby and its parents is to listen to the bugle as often as possible.

So

from a very, very early age.

I went to the hospital this morning and had to leave her at home and I genuinely suggested just playing one of my podcasts to her if she got crazy.

We have given baby tips on the bugle before, but advice always changes when it comes to these things, doesn't it?

As it's been true through history.

I mean, back in issue 243, we did share this piece of advice.

When baby pukes on your clothes, resist the revenge impulse to counter-vomit on its clothes.

That came from the Royal Society of Personal Vendettas.

I think that still stands.

I mean that stands also occasionally if you are feeding a baby, your baby will vomit on your tits.

And it's hard not to take that as an insult.

Yes, I mean I've been vomited on

not just by babies actually, by

an audience member at Cardiff University at a stand-up gig.

Wow.

Didn't vomit on me, but his vomit did reach my shoes via splatter pattern.

Compliment or insult?

I thought it was either.

It was right at the start of the gig.

I mean,

if it was an insult, he made his mind up before the gig what he thought the evening was going to provide.

And also, of course, we gave the advice back in the issue 243 to unburden yourself of all the criticisms and complaints you're likely to want to direct at your offspring when they're older.

But as we know,

humans become more sensitive to criticism with age.

So what I'd advise you, Alice, is to before your baby can interpret language and can't really tell if you're saying, I love you so much I can't spell schnitzel anymore

or I'm Napoleon Bonaparte and I'm totally addicted to bass or buy tickets to Andy Zoltzmann's recently announced Australia shows four dates Adelaide two in Melbourne and one in Sydney more details later in the show and of course his UK tour in February March your baby doesn't know which of those three things you're saying so you might as well just you know just all the all the insults you want to give the child through their life, get them out and stack them up.

Yeah, that's not bad.

I find I have very little conversation for the baby.

You're meant to talk to them because it's good for their brains and everything, but I find I'm not good at talking to myself.

What baby tips do you have or our section in the bin?

Well, here are insights that I've had into babies that if you are going into having a baby, you should probably keep in mind.

Your baby is somewhere between a sort of a transcendental hope for the future, bright spark, inspiration to your life, and a barely sentient tube.

And we'll flip rapidly between those two states in some sort of quantum flux.

As a mother, this is the first time I've said the phrase, as a mother.

And I'm not sure I count.

Sure, I made a baby in my body, and I'm currently its only source of nutrition, care, and comfort, but I haven't had a moral panic about rap music or video games or gender non-conformity.

So, can I really be considered a real as a mother, mother?

I don't know.

I don't know if this is a tip as much as it is, is just it's a weird thing to be food.

Yes.

Eat of this milk for it is my body.

It's a very mundane task being food but when Jesus does it it's a big deal.

Those are my tips.

I've got a couple more new tips to add to those old ones from back in the bugle past.

Record every noise your baby makes.

I don't know if you've been doing that because new research has suggested that babies cry in Morse code.

So if you hear a short cry, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.

It's quite a classic pattern of crying, which is slightly extended to that.

That actually spells in Morse code, wah.

But you have to record it just in case your infant has been sent from a deity or deities with a secret message for humanity conveyed through their mulings.

So keep tabbed on that, Alice.

And also, the chances are that you're going to have a falling out at some point.

with your child and you want to be able to threaten your progeny with cancellation because you've got proof that they cried something offensive in Morse code when they were three weeks old.

Just put that aside.

Well, I have actually incidentally recorded some of my baby's noises because I've been doing what I'm calling NFTs or night feed thoughts on my Patreon, where in the middle of the night, in order that these people don't stop supporting my lifestyle, I record my philosophical 3am baby feeding thoughts.

And turns out my baby eats quite loudly.

So she's upstaged me in the comments section.

Everyone's like, great noises.

Also, tips on how to get rid of unwanted attention from cooing passers-by.

Just a few simple phrases.

Yeah, if you just want to get rid of

people giving excessive attention to you and your new child.

Phrases such as, oh, it's not mine.

It just came with a flat I'm renting.

The baby's name, the Antichrist.

Why are you running away?

It's just short for Theodore Anthony Christopher.

Why do people always react like that?

Or you could say, yeah, I had my COVID jab, and then like a week later, out of the blue, I just go into labour and here we are.

Did you know about half the babies in the the local crest are the same?

Something's going on.

Anyway, how are you?

Or keep a portable speaker hidden in your PRAM or other Param babulatory vehicle

or in any kind of baby carrier or behind the baby's head with a playlist of these phrases

to make it look like you have a talking baby.

It's very nice to meet you.

Can we do lunch sometime?

Call me.

Or, help, help.

I'm a 43-year-old American intelligence agent trapped in a baby's body.

Or, what's your view on QAnon?

Personally, I think there's something in it.

Option four: Between us, can you shout me a burger?

I hate milk.

Well, look, it is

true.

It is true that a baby is an absolute magnet for women of a certain age.

I think that babies must be deadly to old ladies because they are drawn to babies like moths to a flame.

And I feel obliged to fend them off for their own safety.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week, the world is going mad about COVID.

A couple of things happened, well, sort of pretty much the minute I arrived in Australia.

One we'll touch on later regarding the cricket, but also protests all over Australia about

COVID.

And specifically in favour of more people getting ill and dying, it seemed to be.

The so-called freedom rallies, people protesting for the freedom to both suffer and spread avoidable illness, which I guess is one of the most precious of all freedoms when you think about it.

It's what our antecedents fought so many wars for.

These have been happening all over the world, but particularly in Australia, where the case numbers have been, I mean, you've been absolutely hammered by, but I think we've had 50 times more cases than Australia.

And you're not really even making much of an effort to catch up.

How do you explain these this this this phenomenon?

Look, I think Australians don't know when they're onto a good thing would probably be the other than brunch.

We appreciate brunch very much, but certainly we're getting a lot of propaganda from America and the UK and Canada and Australians lack an identity of our own, so we just sort of think that we're the same, which we aren't actually.

So I should point out these protests are sort of against COVID regulations and lockdowns and forcing people to have vaccines.

Yes, which A, we're not doing.

We're not forcing people to have vaccines.

There are sort of private businesses that are doing vaccine mandates, and also all of the lockdowns are mostly ending as we hit these vaccine targets.

So it seems like a little bit of a late, late

rally.

And this this is not huge numbers of people, it's sort of thousands of people across Australia, which is quite a big country.

But the anti-vax protests are just one of these fascinating modern phenomena where all of the different sides of the debate, of which there are about six, all of them are calling each other Nazis, including the Nazis.

I saw a man on a train, I was overhearing his conversation, and he was saying he had a swastika neck tattoo.

So, first of all, important piece of context for this little piece of conversation.

He had a swastika neck tattoo, and he was calling the Australian government fascists.

Which,

I mean, you can't accuse someone of trying to perpetuate the Fourth Reich

if you look like you approve of the Third Reich.

I just.

Yes, I mean, that's, I mean, at best, a tainted brand, certainly.

So, I feel like this can be all contextualized by a man that I used to know.

He used to live in the suburb and he sold nut butter from a small shop, and it was like really fancy, expensive, delicious nut butter.

It was made with macadamias and coconut oil.

It was absolutely delicious, and it cost like $12 and it was amazing.

And he would wear shorts only, and you would go in and buy the nut butter from him.

He would call everybody captain, and he maintained firmly that everyone needed to do six shits a day

for optimum health, and that you needed to begin your day by drinking a litre of salt water.

And his walls were lined with pamphlets telling you about how there were parasites in the water, and the government was controlling the radio.

And he was a delight.

He was a delight.

Throughout my teens, I would go in and have a chat with him, and he would tell me about how often I needed to do poo.

And

he enriched the society of which he was a part.

He was a figure in the community.

The problem is that now the internet means these people can find each other

and organise rallies.

Right.

And that makes me sad.

Yes.

Because Captain Nut Butter, one lone nut butter salesman propounding the virtue of six shits a day enriches a community, but they should never be linked up, I think is my theory.

Six shits a day, that's a logistical nightmare.

It is true.

Try to do emissions trading of some kind.

He just thought no disease could linger in the body if you were doing that much.

And I have to say, my baby does significantly more than that.

Yes, I've seen it.

Very healthy.

I've seen your baby in action.

Yes,

highly efficient system.

Some fairly extraordinary things have happened at these protests.

There were chance to hang the Premier of Victoria, Dan Andrews, who's trying to pass the legislation in Victor.

That's another thing with Australia that

it's a country, but it's a sort of federation, isn't it, of different states with their own governments and then the national government on top.

And it seems to be causing quite a lot of confusion

with COVID.

But people who are brandishing nooses and gallows at these rallies, they're kind of measured, sensible healing, and forward-thinking language and actions that really helped dispel the sense that everyone involved in these protests is a certifiable platinum-grade fkwip.

They also chanted Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi, which

is a whole cricket chant, isn't it?

It is a cricket chant.

As far as it goes, it's sort of very patriotic, but also implies a lack of confidence that you haven't got someone's attention yet.

Well, actually, what turned out to be they just wasn't complete.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi.

They missed out the three Vays after the the Aussies.

Standards have fallen, Andy.

It used to be Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.

I beg your pardon.

I beg your pardon.

I beg your pardon.

I mean, I guess, you know, some people have legal concerns about the proposed pandemic bill, and Andrew's drawn apart in terms of transparency, accountability, potential future misuse.

But those types of concerns about legislation generally not best expressed by death threats or staging mock executions.

I think that undermines an argument, John.

Your political message.

Yeah, it worked.

Look, it worked for the French Revolution and it hasn't worked since.

Right.

I think.

So that's looking more the exception that proves the rule rather than

yes, and also I don't think post-French Revolution France was that great a place to be.

No, no.

And also in Australia, surely you don't do mock executions, you do mock transportations to the other side of the world, surely.

Maybe not such an arresting visual if you're a c thinking about your Instagram page, but still.

When the Brisbane crowd at a protest in Brisbane was asked by a speech-giving protester, and I apologise to the likes of Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, the guy who stuck a flower in a tank in Tiananmen Square, Rosa Parks, and many others who've braved the establishments and powers of their time and place to drive human progress forward for using the term protester

about these people.

But the Brisbane crowd were asked what they thought of the Queensland Premier, Anastasia Palaszchuk, and someone shouted, Hang the bitch.

So clearly able to cling on to misogyny as well as fitted delusionism, which is impressive multitasking in a way.

I applaud it.

Right.

Out of context.

That's going to look bad.

People are wearing My Body, My Choice t-shirts.

Now, many things I would endorse that sentiment, but the problem is the subtext is your body also my choice when people are refusing to have the vaccine.

Yes, that would work if human pregnancies were done like fish do them.

And you had men walking down the street spraying clouds of permeable

segment into the air.

People will get ideas.

There was a protest here in Sydney as well.

You didn't join in?

I did not, other than witnessing the man with the swastika tattoo on his neck and his

very curious scandy noir crime novel.

Well, either he was full of irony or he was unself-aware from the neck down.

Maybe he hasn't noticed.

I don't know what's on my neck.

It's possible that it was put there as a prank some years ago and he's never no one said the

people are slow when you've got food running down your mouth after a meal.

People generally won't tell you what they, yeah, or someone's wearing a beret and you're not sure if it's on purpose.

The accidental beret, it's one of the greatest fashion faux pas.

It's not just Australia where people have been protesting, violent protests in the Netherlands of all places.

Surging cases have led to tightening government restrictions and the prospect of further controls on the unvaccinated, which has understandably riled people who like to think of themselves as vectors of the sacred will of Infexo the ancient virus god

very important to the people of the Netherlands of course there was a pile of blazing bicycles at a protest in the Hague in the I didn't even know you could set a pile of bicycles on fire which shows how angry people are and it really it is one of those very adding insult to injury things because it takes the environmentally friendliness of bicycles and completely f that out the window.

I think there's something, I mean, it's maybe not quite as haunting as the weeping penguin, but the burning bicycle I think tells us a lot about the world we live in today.

Yeah.

Yeah it's really taking your carbon footprint and pissing in it.

Cricketers failing not to take pictures of their own penises news now.

And Alice it was fifteen minutes after I landed in Australia that the Australian cricket captain Tim Payne resigned after it emerged that he had shared a photograph of his

gentleman's gagruches

with a lady, consensually,

apparently, but the lady was emphatically not his wife.

It's a curious, rather sad tale.

So he resigned, he'd been captain for about three years.

He came in after the ball tampering scandal of 2018, see Bugle 4064, for details.

The idea was that he was supposed to lead a new better behaved, more open, more honest Australian team, but he's now had to resign because of these photographs of his of his groinels.

It's a confusing story because, I mean, of all the many design flaws in on God's Earth, the

male gonadulums have got to be r right up there aesthetically, surely.

Yeah, you don't you don't I mean you'd b okay.

One oughtn't to lead with the junk, I feel.

I feel I I feel like the whole sort of courtship process is as a pre-apology.

If your penis is the most attractive thing about you, you have a problem.

Or an incredibly attractive penis.

But you know what I mean?

It's just sort of not

the thing.

Yes.

As far as I know, the thing that I very much enjoy about a sexting scandal is that we find out what middle-aged men think, women think is sexy, and they're wrong.

I feel like

instead of firing people from their jobs you should give them a reading list, you know,

Napoleon's letters to Josephine or

Frida Carlo to Diego Rivera or just some Shakespeare, just

the best of grinder, anything

with some spark and flair.

Right.

It's just so embarrassing to read sexting scandal sexts.

They're not good quality.

So why not send

a nice photograph of Michelangelo's David's junk?

Because

it's beautifully sculpted.

There's a bit more to it, really.

Yeah, yeah.

Or do something.

Okay,

I would forgive a sexting if it had creativity involved.

Yes.

Although that said, there was that senator in America who sort of flopped his into a glass of wine or something.

Do you remember that?

Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean,

it is confusing, you know, the etiquette of what you're supposed to do at a wine tasting.

Put some googly eyes on it.

As a result, the sad thing, this was dealt with, sort of dealt with at the time, that they decided it didn't contravene their disciplinary procedure.

It was a bit confusing.

This was before he was Australian captain, and he's dealt with it with his wife and family at the time.

Now it's been dredged up

through the merciless prism of modern media.

So it's all kind of sad.

And English cricket at the same time in the build-up classes is being torn apart by a very belated attempt to reckon with its racism problem.

And none of it is going well for anyone.

And the glory of the cricket is being somewhat overshadowed by a mixture of extremely serious problems in the game and a ridiculous story about our cricketer's Willie.

Yes, well for s for a long time cricket managed to cruise by on being an artefact of colonialism somehow untarnished by the seedy underbelly of colonialism.

So it's not surprising that this particular angle is coming up now, but

I hope that you guys can work your way through it probably over the course of slightly longer than other people would want you to.

Another puzzling thing is that, this is in 2017, you thought by then all sports stars would have been given the basic training of any sports team at any level above completely amateur and hopefully even that.

And that lesson one, don't send people photographs of what I believe Bob Dylan described as your jingle jangles.

And none of you will ever be able to listen to Mr.

Tambourine Man in the same way again.

So the new Australian captain, you know, we talk about nominative determinism.

This is, I don't know, nominative irony.

Pat Cummins is the new captain and he's a very impressive man, Pat Cummins.

Despite having the name of a sexting scandal,

maybe because he's had to rise above that and become become a hugely impressive cricketer, hugely impressive young man.

He had years out of the game injured and studied.

He's a sort of ideal role model.

But he said, I'm not perfect in a press conference today.

And

I don't believe him, to be honest.

I mean, look at him.

He's an extraordinary, extraordinary creature.

More on this story, and indeed the entire Ashes series in the Bugle Ashes Earncast, in which Felicity Ward and I will chronicle the latest installment of this great historical sporting rivalry, which dates back to 1882.

You'll be able to get that on the internet, as indeed most podcasts are.

It's going to be very good.

And if you want to listen, there will be a link to the show in the show notes to this.

I'm reliably informed.

I assume you all make your own notes on all Bugle shows anyway.

We'll have guests on it as well.

And no doubt, at some point, cricket will break out.

So far, in the old days, Alice, teams used to take about six weeks getting here by the boat.

They'd play about two months of cricket, and then finally, if anyone remembered, they'd actually get around to playing an England for Australia game.

And now England's stuck in a hotel in Brisbane trying to play a game basically against themselves, but that got rained off.

And Australia are discussing junk.

It's not a classic build-up to an Ashes series.

No, but there will be a pyre of vanities.

Is it a bonfire of the vanities?

I don't know what I'm talking about.

A funeral pyre of vanities.

That's when the vanities have died, which may happen at some point in human history.

Another factor in the Ashes, which no doubt we will be covering in the Bugle Ashes Earncast, is the presence of La Niña,

the cold and wet weather system which has turned Australia entirely grey as far as I can work out.

Yes,

yes, it is wet, it is damp, it is moist, it is chilly, it is not going to be a bushfire season.

So it's all upside from my perspective, but obviously you coming to Sydney expecting beautiful, clear, sunny skies and our normal weather are deeply disappointed.

It's only this week, so I'm blaming you, really.

The talk of once-in-a-century rains splotting down on parts of Australia over the past week.

But the problem is, once-in-a-century events are now happening approximately once in a hundredth of a century.

Yes, it's called time inflation.

Okay, I mean, this is a new angle on global warming scepticism, Alex.

It's not global warming, it's time inflation.

Time inflation.

You know how time passes quicker as you get older in sort of this race towards death?

And that affects weather more than

the weather is having a midlife crisis.

It's fine.

It's absolutely fine.

I mean, it's not good for the Australian brand, though, is it?

The classic combination of sun, sea, sand, and startlingly obvious warnings of impending catastrophe, the four S's, but now it's just kind of damp and wet.

Yeah, you're not even going to get skin cancer from looking outside as an Englishman.

What's the point in coming?

When I used to do surf life-saving, English people would come and

we had profiling of English people that was about the way that you approached them because they would be drunk and passed out brick red on the sand and you had to wake them up to tell them to put sun cream on.

It's part of our duties, serve lifesavers.

And you had to approach them by touching their foot with your foot because they would come up swinging.

I feel that's an indictment on your culture.

Well, add it to the list.

Just try to help them.

Britain news now, and well, it's been absolutely delightful to be away from Britain over the past few days because the news was dominated for a while by Boris Johnson giving a speech that really was another proud parade of his lamentable unfitness for high office, medium office, or even low office.

And a speech of the Confederation of British Industries began with the usual blustering platitudes, complaints about the state of the nation, despite the fact that his party has been in charge of the nation for most of the last 40 years,

absolute denial of any form of reality and responsibility, selective economic nuggets of potential half-truths, before it then descended into the equally traditional, fumbling, incoherent, and pointless verbal twattery.

And at one point, he started extolling the virtues of Pepper Pig World,

the theme park based on the children's cartoon character Pepper Pig.

He said, it's very much my kind of place.

It has very safe streets, discipline in schools, and a heavy emphasis on new mass transit systems.

He missed out a few things on that list that are clearly his kind of place, massively underfunded public services, dog whistle politics, and carefully constructed social divisions.

So, maybe something for the theme park to work on.

I mean, you missed a trick that Peppa Pig is the sad, gritty reboot to the colonial classic, which is salt pork on a convict ship.

Of course, of course.

Why is it with Tory leaders and pigs?

Other news now, and what's some exciting news from the Trump family.

Alice, you are the Bugle Trump family correspondent.

I know they've been in touch to congratulate you on the birth of your child.

What's the latest from them?

Well, this is Lara Trump, you know, coming out of left field.

She's not the normally front page Trump, but she is named in The Guardian as a Fox News contributor and wife of Eric Trump, which seems redundant.

You cannot be one of those things.

If you're one of those things, you are necessarily the other, I think.

Eric Trump wouldn't marry someone someone who couldn't contribute to Fox News and vice versa.

Anyway, Lara has claimed that the rising cost of the Thanksgiving turkey is part of a liberal plot

to ruin Thanksgiving and chip away at American traditions which's an impressive plot if I can pull that off.

Yes, so basically Thanksgiving turkeys are becoming more expensive due in large part to things like supply chain logistics and labour shortages.

But this idea that it's a liberal plot to ruin Thanksgiving has confirmed my suspicion that those who claim to be free market capitalists have no idea what free market capitalism is or entails or might look like for them, which is to say, you know, more expensive turkeys after a fing pandemic.

It's a conspiracy.

I'm prepared to believe it.

It would be quite a weird way of going about it, really.

I mean, is it...

If you were running that conspiracy, Alice, to destroy American tradition and

society in general.

Would putting $1 on the price of a turkey be really the fastest route from A to B?

Look, it wouldn't be the move that I would choose.

What would you choose?

If I wanted to ruin Thanksgiving, I would remind people of what happened to the Native Americans.

Yes.

So rather than Thanksgiving, apology giving, maybe.

Right.

And you wouldn't have a turkey for that.

I mean, what would be a more apologetic meat?

I feel like turkey is probably the most apologetic meat, actually.

Possibly some sort of wet fish.

Or flappity salmon.

Flappity salmon.

Yeah.

He's a Republican.

He's so interested

propounding this

theory.

No, I'm going to have to explain.

Do you know how this is if you have smoked salmon, you can get sort of smoked salmon in chunks?

Yeah.

And then it's sort of quite nice.

But you can also get

flappity smoked salmon.

Flappity smoked salmon.

Which is my least favourite thing.

I can understand that.

It's so sort of.

Flappity.

Flappity.

Yeah.

That's not what you want in anything.

i just provided a bad insight into the way my brain works don't think i've ever called it that out loud before

contest of the week news now and um well jp morgan the celebrity bank um is um trash talking the chinese communist party and it's i mean it's like you know two boxers saying they're going to knock each other out and JP Morgan has claimed that it was going to last longer than the Chinese Communist Party and then after realising quite how much business interest it had in China, hastily rode back on that and said, no, you're doing really well, Chinese Communist Party,

as you were.

Yes, so that J.P.

Morgan had just done a deal to be the first some sort of bank in China doing some sort of banking thing that other people have not been allowed.

That is beyond the level of economic expertise that this podcast requires.

The first full foreign owner of a securities brokerage in China.

I pretend I don't know these things because I want to maintain some self-respect.

But

so there was a party, this man said he thought that JPMorgan Chase would last longer than the Chinese Communist Party and then was immediately forced to abjectly apologize.

He said, I regret my recent comment because it's never right to joke about or denigrate any group of people, whether it's a country, its leadership, or any part of a society and culture, which Andy, I think, is something both of us need to

seriously think about.

It's not just JP Morgan that's taking on China.

Australia appears to be on the very brink of war

with the mighty Chinese military.

Peter Dutton, the Defence Minister, has been accused of sabre-rattling, no less,

in what may be a distraction tactic in the build-up to next year's

general election.

And I mean, it's a curious gambit, isn't it, for Australia to sabre rattle because they don't really have militarily a sabre.

They've ordered some submarines that are going to be ready in 25 years.

So they sort of have a sabre.

Not so much a sabre as a cardboard tube saying there may be a bit of a sabre in this in two and a half decades' time.

So yeah, the rattling of a sort of a box of tic-tacs at this point.

Yeah, so basically Dutton and many other politicians at the moment, I think all around the world have realised that strongman tactics are popular, given that people have been faced with the absolute failure of democracy in so many forums of life, mainly in it's nice to think that we could be run by the people until you meet the internet and see what people are like, kind of way.

So

a lot of these men are deciding that they need to be strong men, the problem being that essentially most of them are weak men, particularly in Australia, where if you're in Australian politics, it means you are in Australian university student politics, which is not the forum of strong men.

So, I mean, just describe Peter Dutton for those who haven't avidly followed his career, and I know you have as a huge fan.

I've seen all the posters you have in your

above your baby's cop and everything.

Because to me, he looks like he's basically just auditioning for a role as a baddie in a Bond film.

Is that a fair assessment?

Yes, he is probably one of those people who is a baddie in a Bond film for about 30 seconds before the real baddie dumps him into a pit of crocodiles.

He's sort of a sad background baddie.

The worst kind.

He's the kind of person who would be listed in the credits as sort of baddie number three.

Right.

Still on the podium.

He said over the next decade, China's nuclear warhead stockpiles, estimated to be in the 200s last year, is projected to reach between 700 and 1,000 warheads

over the next decade.

We just wait, wait, another decade and a half after that, those submarines are going to be ready to counteract that.

But also, you can see why Australia is getting worried because 200 to 300 nuclear warheads, you'd probably think China's got bigger fish to fry.

But with a thousand, they can just go willy-nilly.

So Australia then gets in the foreign line.

Well, given that our defensive strategy is wait for America to save us, I don't think

this is the kind of behaviour of the person in the schoolyard who knows their big brother is coming to pick them up.

Well, that brings us to the end of this extremely windy bugle.

I don't know how much of the wind you'll have been able to, but it felt like we're

on some kind of 19th-century ship.

I mean, yes, it is a very small cabin.

The wind whistling through the eaves.

Apart from the ridiculous amount of recording equipment balanced on a small table with two laptops.

Showbiz!

This is Showbiz!

Well, my normal desk is

currently covered in my current work equipment, which is all my breastfeeding paraphernalia

Alice's breastfeeding paraphernalia podcast will no doubt be coming to a podcast app near you soon

I'll be pumping it out

where you will also be able to find the Bugle Ashes Earncasts with Felicity Ward and me the only coverage of the ashes you'll be able to hear apart from

the BBC radio coverage that I will also be part of and all the TV stuff that I won't be the gigs that I I mentioned earlier on the 14th of December at the Rhino Rooms in Adelaide.

On the 21st and 22nd of December I will be performing at European Beer in Melbourne.

and on the 4th of January at the comedy store here in Sydney.

I'm hoping to be able to sort out a live bugle or two along the way as well so I'll keep you updated on those.

I will be doing satirist for hire at all of those shows as I will be at my UK tour in February and March.

Details on the internet, my website does have the UK dates on it, and I will soon put the Australia dates on andy'sultsman.co.uk, the greatest website.

It's won so many awards.

Least updated website there you got for that.

It's pretty good.

Most pointless website.

Is it a website website?

Do come along to them and send your satirical requests if you are coming to those gigs, fourteenth in Adelaide, twenty first and twenty second in Melbourne, fourth of January in Sydney, to satirise this at satiristforhire.com.

Alice,

you have some things to plug.

Yes, I agreed to do a show on the 9th of December at the comedy store in Sydney.

It's meant to be a new show with some old bits.

But you've been kind of busy with other stuff.

I've been kind of busy with other stuff.

So

the idea of getting back into onto stage and doing comedy when my my whole life has been looking after a very small person is daunting at best.

So do come along, buy tickets to that if what you want to see is something very strange.

Also, the Australian geese will be my first stand-up since

we did my Soho run together, which ended in January of 2020.

We're really giving this the hard sell.

Yeah, come along if you want to be part of a human experience.

That's what I can guarantee.

There are Bugle Christmas jumpers available via the Bugle website, the must-have fashion accessory of the millennium so far.

I mean, I can't guarantee I won't leak.

That's your subtitle.

Put it on the posters.

Well, that's it, Alice.

It's uh it's been lovely to see you.

Uh, having not seen you in person since the well, the pretty much the before times.

Yes, since the before times, since we did the that Soho run and hung out at Christmas at your house.

Yes, and uh well, well done again for um

you there.

Undiscovered folly artist.

Thank you for listening buglers.

We will be back soon with another bugle.

The schedule may be a little up and down over the next few weeks due to my crazy cricket schedule but we will be putting out bugles as often as possible.

Hello, I, Andy Zaltzman and the magnificent comedian and certifiable Australian Felicity Ward are teaming up again for the Bugle Ashes Urncast.

Felicity and I are going to spend the next few weeks watching Joe Root's heroic England roar to a sensational against most of the odds victory victory over the wilting baggy greens of Australia.

Stroke, watching Joe Roots' pleasingly plucky England put up a surprisingly decent showing against Australia before losing by a much more respectable margin than they might have done.

Stroke, watching Joe Root's England slump to the now traditional quadrennial humiliative thwacking by Australia.

Delete, according to A, national allegiance, B, level of optimism, C level of delusion, and D, cold, hard, history-endorsed probability.

So join me, Felicity, and our guests as we document for all posterity this momentous 2021-22 series series in the Bugle Ashes Earncast.

Yes, the Bugle and Crickets are coming together again, but this time without anything else getting in the way.

Available in every single proper podcast app.

Warning: the Bugle Ashes Earncast may feature some or all of the following: speculation on crickets' various existential crises, advice on what parts of your body not to share pictures of, further discussions on how to turn a watermelon into a hat, and stats.

There will be stats.

Probably quite a lot of stats.

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.