AUKUS Gets Awkward (4205)

The Bugle, Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 4205 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World, the show where news comes to die.

I'm reporting to you from the Shed of Truth.

I'm Andy Zoltzman.

It is for the first time in history, Monday the 20th of September 2021.

And I'm joined this week to discuss their latest novels by Hampshire's very own Jane Austen and a man who's just published his debut work of fiction, Mickey the Magic Teapot.

It's former American president Calvin Coolidge.

Calvin, starting with...

What do you mean they can't make it?

What, neither of them?

Is this an internet thing?

Do they not have Zoom?

They don't have Zoom?

Well, what the f ⁇ ?

Dead!

Both of them!

God's bad.

Have we got backups?

Right, we better go to the bench.

Joining me this week, all the way from the world's most aquatic hemisphere on one of the very rare landy bits in Sydney, Australia, it's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Alice.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

How are you?

Thanks for stepping in for Coolidge at such short notice.

I'm very well.

How are you?

I've made a career out of being the second person people calling not a bad niche to fulfil.

I'm well here.

There are extreme winds outside, so if you hear whooshing noises, it's not a metaphor.

Also, joining us this week, stepping in for Jane Austen from elsewhere in London at this time, not his regular horn, so hopefully less prone to any monsoon flooding than when he joins us from Mumbai.

It's Anuvab Pal.

Hello, Anuvab, how are you?

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Alice.

So far, it's not flooded here in Hampstead, where I am, but I cannot guarantee it.

Thank you for letting me step in for Jane Austen.

I I have been working on my novel, Pride, Prejudice, and Some Samosas,

which is the follow-up work to her classic.

We are recording on the 20th of September.

This week is International Week of Happiness at Work, which is a bit insensitive in the first week that I've haven't had to watch any cricket for money for a very long time.

But to mark International Week of Happiness at Work, we're in the Bugle, giving you tips on how to share happiness in the workplace.

So whenever your boss asks you something, respond with a hearty and prolonged laugh.

Between 30 and 60 seconds should do the trick, followed by a little dance.

Also, we suggest you attend workplace meetings in fancy dress.

If, for example, you're at a meeting when you have to announce to your colleagues that a swathe of redundancies will result in many of them losing their jobs, do so whilst dressed as the Pope or a Transformer or ideally Darth Vader.

It could really just take the edge off things.

Also, we suggest that

to really make yourself happy at work, you wear an I Love My Job t-shirt and a headband combo.

Now, in some professions, this could lead to, I guess, some situational awkwardness.

For example, if you're an undertaker, a spy, an anesthetist, an assassin, or home secretary.

But people will surely appreciate that you're just trying to enlighten the mood for everyone's sake.

And our final suggestion is you combine one of your favorite non-work hobbies with your professional responsibilities to bring some more joy to the workplace.

Happiness equals productivity.

So if you are, for example, a forensic pathologist who loves Irish dancing, or a primary school teacher who dabbles in haruspacy of a weekend, or a motorcycle courier who enjoys archery, or even an airline pilot whose top hobby is parachute jumping, don't be afraid to combine work with pleasure in this international week of happiness at work.

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

This week, well, we'll reveal the contents of Prince Philip's will.

It was announced in the last week that the details and contents of Prince Philip's Will will not be revealed for 90 years

under British law because, well, it's basically just the traditional reason of no reason, but it's the royal family, so suck it, Trotsky.

But we are the Bugle are not going to be hide-bound by such law.

So we're going to exclusively reveal exactly what is in the will, which we've not yet seen.

£10,000 of Philip's fortune is going to the British Young Dukes Organisation, which seeks to identify young boys with the potential to become dukes and give them all the training they need to make it all the way to the top on the Duke circuit.

A ceremonial mechanical donkey donated to Philip by American billionaire Jay Farthing Mamshaw to commemorate the Duke attending the Texas Donkey Wrestling Championships in 1964.

Well, he has bequeathed that to the British Equine Combat Sports Association.

They're of course hoping to have both donkey wrestling and a horse dudo in the Olympic programme by the time of the 2096 Games.

The city of Edinburgh, Prince Philip's very own personal fiefdom, of course, which he ruled with a benevolent ruthlessness over more than seven decades,

he's asked for that to be given to his native Greece, and Edinburgh will become the capital of Greece in 90 years' time.

In the year 2111, the northern Greek city of Thessalonica will replace Edinburgh as the seat of the Scottish Parliament, and the two cities will be physically exchanged over a 20-year period beginning in 2101.

Philip also leaves a collection of over 2,000 foreign banknotes and coins collected during his overseas trips as the number one ranked duke for Team GB since 1952.

And they all feature hand-drawn pictures of his wife Elizabeth on them.

A confidante explained, He became so used to seeing his missus on notes and coins that when overseas he could become quite distressed at seeing money without her on.

So he always took a marker pen with him around the world so he could quickly draw her onto the local currency before saying, That's better.

Incidentally, Prince Philip would always introduce his wife to new people at parties by saying, This is my wife, Elizabeth II.

She's quite literally on the money.

And finally, Prince Philip also has bequeathed the BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell to the British Museum.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week, AUKUS gets awkward.

Alice, I mean, huge ructions in the global world, if indeed the world is global, with the AUKUS deal, which is Australia, UK, and United States, which involves a deal to build nuclear-powered submarines for the Australian Navy, involving the UK and, as I said, two of its alumni, Australia and the United States.

I mean,

how has this gone down in Australia?

This hugely exciting I mean, I think it's going to be one nuclear submarine for every Australian by the year 2034, if I've read the details correctly.

Well, let me paint you a picture, Andy.

After a few mysterious hints in the news about big news coming down the pipe, Australia, the UK and the United States announced, all together, a new formation of the megazord, that is post-colonial English-speaking national alliances in pursuit of a mutual goal of pissing off the French,

arranging for very expensive submarines to be built in Adelaide, a city which until now was known, well, not at all outside of Australia, but inside Australia mainly for its wankers, who are proud of being free settlers when the rest of Australia is filthy convict stock.

Also, Adelaide is famous for scheduling the world's second biggest fringe festival at the same time as Australia's biggest car race, leading to one weekend of every Adelaide fringe festival where car revving noises are the background of the show, and your audience is 100% guaranteed to be made up of c who want half-price tickets, but they make up for the other half of the ticket that they didn't pay you by doling out big lumps of free ctiness during your comedy session.

Well, I mean, the partnership has been set up to try to counterbalance growing Chinese power in the Asia-Pacific region, I'm very reliably informed, and also to confuse the hell out of whales during mating season.

Oh, lordy, that is absolutely ripped.

Hold my plankton.

The submarines will, of course, be baggy and green to mark them out from other countries' submarines.

And yes, it replaces a multi-billion dollar deal for French-made submarines.

I mean, why has Australia opted for non-French subs?

Obviously, the French give you a more stylish but more laid-back submarine, maybe more artistically aware, whereas the British-American submarines are brasher, you know, hard-working subs, but with maybe less ocean-going flair.

Yeah, look, I don't know why they've made the decision, Andy.

I can only speculate that the French were not maybe doing as good a job as they

had suggested that they were going to do during the thing, and also that it was an incredibly stupid idea to have the French build our submarines in the first place.

And also that we want to suck up to the Americans.

And also that the UK is desperately looking for allies in a world suddenly that has withdrawn from it only

half as much as it has withdrawn from the world.

The French describe it as unacceptable behaviour and a stab in the back.

Well, they should have thought of that before making us all vote for Brexit, shouldn't they?

France's defence minister, Florence Parlier, has called off talks with her UK counterpart.

And the British Foreign Office Minister James Cleverley told the BBC that all bilateral relationships go through periods of tension, which is a bit like a husband telling a wife that all marriages have the odd rocky patch after setting fire to the family home and moving in across the road with a new different wife.

Well, if the French were

really willing to hold out a hand in the interests of international cooperation, they'd stop pretending that French is the lingua franca and admit that it's English and always has been.

Boris Johnson, trying to calm the troubled waters, as only he can, said, our love of France is ineradicable.

Now, I mean, the evidence of Johnson's life and career...

Maybe he may have some experience experience with that.

I mean, the evidence of Johnson's life and career to date suggests that there is only one love in his life that is truly ineradicable, and that is the kind of love that requires a mirror.

China described the deal as irresponsible and narrow-minded, which is a little bit rich, isn't it?

Narrow-minded from a one-party state.

You don't get much more narrow-minded than that.

At least we have two parties being equally narrow-minded against each other.

And describing as irresponsible.

China has over a thousand coal-fired power stations belching planet-destroying blurt into the atmosphere and a bit of a thing for ethnic cleansing, which is not the most hyper-responsible way for a country to treat its citizens.

So I'm not sure we can take that criticism from them lying down.

Anuvab, you had another query.

Yeah, no, I'm learning about marine warfare.

I just want to talk about ambassadorships for a second, because one of the results of this diplomatic imbroglio seems to be countries pulling ambassadors out of other countries.

And I just want to say to kids, ambassadorship isn't all that it's meant to be, kids.

You know, no matter how glamorous your parents say ambassadorship is, you can be withdrawn at any time.

You know, what if the ambassador had just moved to Australia?

You know,

you know, with France and Australia fighting, what if you do your kids, you've just put your kids in school and now the submarine things happen and you have to move out.

It's not as glamorous a job.

And I don't know if you've been reading, but France decided to turn around and say, we don't need Australia.

We're going to replace this with a deal with India.

Now,

we in India weren't even looking for submarines.

And

you have to look at this as the worst case of rebound.

You just got dumped in a park.

You look around and see a homeless man on fire eating a newspaper.

And you tell yourself, that can be my new life partner.

I think that's the role we're playing now in this submarine embroiler.

Well, I mean a lot of the criticism of this deal is that we are sucking up to the Americans who we followed into disastrous war after disastrous war in the last hundred years and also the UK who we followed into disastrous war after disastrous war in the previous years and

that we're doing ourselves a disservice by trying to fight with China who are you know a massive dominant superpower and we haven't got a chance and it's going to turn us into a client state of America.

And all of those critiques are good, but also AUKUS is funny to say.

And of course, you are partnered now with one of the great submarine technology nations.

I mean, Britain's always been pioneers in submarine technology, evolving from the, well, the pioneering 16th century submarine, the Mary Rose, which worked okay for a little while as a submarine, a few technical issues with being able to resurface in less than 400 years.

But it was certainly ahead of its time.

And then, of course, the Titanic, one of the largest subs in history, although we were designed for left-in-dependent on icebergs, be able to drop down below surface level.

So, I mean, you know, we're a nation that's got a great heritage and shown an ability to learn and improve.

Which leads me to a quick question, Andy, Alice.

Is there an official aquatic language?

Like, you know, like the official language of business is English.

If you're in a submarine, are you even allowed to speak French?

Or is English the official language of any sort of maritime warfare navigation?

Interestingly, the official language of underwater is whale noises, which is confusing and confronting for everyone involved and surprisingly sexy for some.

Technically, it's called Welsh, Alice, as a language.

No, Andy, I've gotten in trouble before for making fun of the Welsh language, which I apparently is an incredibly loaded thing to do.

So I refuse.

It's a beautiful language with just the right amount of syllables.

Just can't call it whales noises.

Anyway, that's all I'm saying.

All I'm saying to both of you is, as Indians, we can't be expected to speak French just because we're underwater.

India news now, and Anne, we've had some hugely exciting news emerging from India about the development of India's first electric highway.

Just bring us up to date with that and exactly what it means.

Alice Andy, we have a very enterprising roadways minister.

His name is Nitin Gutkari, And

every day he promises to build a certain amount of highway.

I don't know about roadways ministers in your country and whether they make Twitter announcements.

But Nitin Ghatkari is a wonderful, very enterprising minister who has two main focuses, weight loss and building highways.

And he gets on Twitter, and this is a fact.

He gets on Twitter every week and says, you know, we in this ministry are going to build this much highway this week.

And most of the time, he's able to do it.

Now, his new thing is between the cities of Delhi and Jaipur, he wants to build an electric highway, which means a highway where only electric cars would be allowed.

It's a bit of a tough task given 96% of our country is still coal-powered.

And, you know, we use petrol.

But this is a good ambition.

And he's going to keep us updated on Twitter.

I will have you know that there are still large stretches of Indian roads, as you would know, where a highway is actually missing.

So

I think a good start would be to finish the highway before we commit to what kind of car can be on the highway and whether it's petrol-driven or electricity driven.

And there's over 300 million registered motor vehicles in India.

Look at the government figures, and half of them are classified as miscellaneous,

which is a gloriously broad term, which I assume involves all the

auto rickshaws that take people around cities.

But I mean, that's a hell of a lot of miscellaneous things.

That's true.

But also often when I'm driving down the Indian Highway, and I don't know if this happens in the developed world, I look out of window and I often wonder, what is this?

Is this a car?

Is this a wild animal?

Is this a car on top of a car?

Is this four cars on horseback?

You know, and I think the miscellaneous gives you room, you know because i guess what you guys are looking at it's bland stuff right you're just pointing out a toyota or a honda you know i think that we need to go back to the basics on an indian highway the first question you ask is what is it

and then it then aiming for a lane and it's miscellaneous

and it's on fire

Elsewhere in Asia, some very exciting political news.

The boxer Manny Pacquiao is to run for president in the Philippines.

He's running for the centre-left People's Democratic People's Power Party, which is also the party of incumbent president and extrajudicial killings fan, Rodrigo Duterte.

And Pacquiao has had a glamorous boxing career.

He's the only boxer to hold world titles across four different decades, from the 90s to the 2020s.

He's been champion in, I think, five different weights.

I mean, is this the future of global politics?

Just, you know, because politics is increasingly confrontational and pugilistic.

So why not get people who have been top-level pugilists to do it?

It's really just the logical endpoint of

our political civilization.

Well, this story is so magnificent that I can't bear not to cover it.

The headline was what caught my attention at first.

Boxer senator Manny Pacquiao to run for Philippine president.

I love that.

That has a slashy career, boxer senator.

If you didn't know Manny Pacquiao, you're either not a fan of boxing or not a fan of Filipino politics or not a fan of unlikely intersections of blood sports and blood sports.

Pacquiao has come out with some just brilliant quotes.

I am a fighter and I will always be a fighter inside and outside the ring.

He said that in his speech, raising the hopes of a nation that watching government question time will become a pay-per-view

spectacle of extreme punchmanship.

And then he went on to say we need government to serve our people with integrity, compassion and transparency, which I find disappointing because I was hoping that he'd serve our people in six rounds of a minute each or whatever it is.

Well, I mean, it's 12, three minute rounds of highly skilled fistic pugilism.

That's what he's really specialised in.

But the fact that he said that, Alice, we need government to serve our people with integrity, compassion, and transparency does suggest that he has not watched the news in, what, 95 to 99% of the world's countries over the last, what, 20 to 6,000 years.

I mean, that is, I mean, admirably idealistic, but hopelessly naive, isn't it?

I mean, yes, one would imagine that an election where your opponent is on trial for crimes against humanity would be a landslide victory, but that is not the timeline we're living in, Andy.

I think it's going to be a hard-fought battle.

And I'm sorry that I got the number of rounds and minutes in boxing wrong.

I was counting by the amount of time that I can bear to peep through my fingers while I watch men try to murder each other.

I don't have that many hot takes on the political situation, but I do have a great screenplay idea for the next Rocky movie

where he enters the deadliest game of all.

Apolities.

Wouldn't be the first sporting leader at the moment.

George Weyer, president of Liberia, was FIFA World Footballer of the Year in 1995, although, of course, more famous for scoring three goals across the two legs of Manchester City's League Cup tie against Gillingham in the year 2000 before going on to lead his country politically.

And Imran Khan, one of the, I would say, top 10 greatest cricketers of all time, led Pakistan to the World Cup in 1992, 1992 now Prime Minister of Pakistan which is unquestionably a tricky job now hosting the bugle is of course notoriously high powered and very very complicated but even I would admit that Imran Khan has a tougher job than I do and of course let's not forget Inatio first Khan to go into politics

true

yes I mean some of them have ended quite violently

let's not forget Inatio Akaturu

who whilst deputy prime minister of the Cook Islands took part in the Commonwealth Games lawn bowls competition in 1990.

So I mean sport and politics do have crossovers.

Wasn't the president of Ukraine a comedian for a long time?

Yes.

I don't see comedy as a sport, though.

That's a fair point.

I see it as a replacement in my life of the fact that I was shit at sport.

Although that would be a good kind of comedy if you're shot at the end of a set, if you're not good.

I think that would be tough.

Yeah, I think that's a risky path to go down.

COVID news now, and the UK has announced its plans for dealing with COVID over the coming winter.

Plan A involves not really having a plan and hoping that not really having a plan works.

Plan B is to come up with a plan if the plan A of not having a plan fails.

And plan C just leaked is to stand on the white cliffs of Dover shouting, come on then, let's see you at any virus variants brave enough to even think of trying to infect Britain.

Plan D is to ban all mentions of COVID and the hope that people will forget it exists and not contract it.

Can't be coincidence that no one got COVID before it started being all over the media.

Plan E is to coat the entire country in wax.

No one's quite sure how, why, or if that would work.

And plan F is to actually make people wear masks, but that is an absolute last resort in this country at the moment.

The government's also announced that children aged between 12 and 15 will be offered a COVID jab in addition to the gradual crushing of their lifetime hopes and dreams that was already on the table.

And

we're in a strange position with COVID in Britain at the moment, that we're essentially just ignoring it and pretending that it no longer happens, despite the fact there's still a lot of people infected with it and quite a lot of people

dying from it on a daily and weekly basis.

And again, it's sort of the

we seem to be in almost parallel universes with the Australian way of dealing with things, Alice.

Yes, yeah, despite clear calls from the British public that they are definitely over COVID and have finished, thanks.

And may we leave the table, please.

Professor Tim Spector, who's the lead scientist on the Zoe COVID study app, has called for tougher measures to be put in place now that he has noticed that the UK is winning at being the worst affected for COVID-19.

I think there's 31,000 plus new recorded cases, which is quite a lot and has raised the unpalatable shadow of facts of death rates and exhausted NHS staff pleading for sanity in a world gone mad.

And Professor Spectre, which is short for Spectre of Christmas Future, has called for the government to launch the emergency plan B early,

which would involve lots of people online having tantrums and

you know, just questioning vaccine passports and probably not being able to have unprotected sex with the secretary at the Christmas party unless you're both wearing masks, which, to be frank, you're probably both okay with because Zoom filters are super flattering and you'd forgotten how each other really looked.

I just, Andy Alice, I've been a visitor in the UK for about three weeks now.

And for the first time after about two and a half years, I went to the theater.

And one of the requirements of the theater was to have a lateral flow test before entering.

And the gentleman before me didn't have one.

And the usher said, well, if you were to take a lateral flow test right now,

what do you think the result would be?

And he said, I don't think I'd have it.

And he said, well, then welcome to the play.

And I think that

what I really like about your country is...

It's a lateral thinking test.

Is that there is this fair conversation about medical tests.

And I think you can extend this to all things.

You know, you can say, if you were to take a blood test, do you think we'd find that you have kidney storms?

You know, that kind of thing.

If it was more conversation, I think medicine would progress.

Even in the quarantine forms they made us fill out, one of the questions was, how do you plan to spend the next week in quarantine?

And

then our question after that was, and after that, how do you plan to spend time generally?

So

these were the...

Basically, what are you doing with your life type question?

We don't want drifting.

Do you think your mother would be disappointed in your choices?

We want people who are all business, going to get shit done.

Exactly.

And I feel the moment parenting and philosophy enters medicine, we're in a good place.

There were some accusations that the government was not setting the greatest of examples.

Its

plans include, and I quote, reminding people to let in fresh air if meeting indoors and to wear face coverings in crowded settings.

And if you look at any footage from the House of Commons on the Conservative benches,

and the House of Commons

in London is notoriously a not big enough room.

It is not fit for purpose in an almost infinite number of ways, from the incredibly childish confrontational politics that it fosters to the fact that it is in a creaky old

moulding building.

And even look at footage from cabinet meetings.

Again, you know, 30-odd people crowded around a table, none of them wearing masks.

So it's clear this recommendation is not so much

a case of do as I say, not do as I do.

It's more a case of could you maybe sort of do as we sort of sometimes say if you want or don't or do as we don't do, if you can't be asked to do as we sort of say.

We're all on the same page, hands in, go, Team GB, beat the virus.

So everyone knows exactly what's going on.

And booster jabs are being brought in as well.

Booster jabs, coincidentally, Michael Gove's favorite nightclub DJ.

And for those who don't qualify for booster jabs, there will also be free booster comments sent by text message from the NHS app, including messages such as, You look great, well done on that thing you just did, and Chin Up, who needs a future?

Sorry, andy what was the dj name again booster jabs terrific

he uh he can only bang out the classics

uh sean penn versus covid news now and um like many of the world's leading uh film actors sean penn is is not a fan of covid

but he is a fan of people uh getting vaccinated if they want to see his new film flag day

in cinemas.

And he's urged only those who've been vaccinated to go and see the film in cinemas.

Alice, you are the Bugle's Sean Penn correspondent, and you've been keeping track of his life ever since he was born 61 years ago for us.

What's Sean hoping to achieve with this intervention?

I think what he's hoping to achieve with this intervention is to either lower or raise vaccination rates, but it's difficult to tell which until the Rotten Tomatoes reviews of Flag Day come together.

The problem, of course, with Sean Penn trying to make any kind of political statement is that Sean Penn is so good at acting that nobody knows if he really means it or not, or in fact, who he is

to give them this message.

Most people receiving the message think it was just a bus driver or a local postwoman who told them the information, failing to recognise the deep emotional impact and slightly dangerous shower of awards that is the only giveaway that you're in the presence of Sean Penn's best method acting.

So I'm not sure how effective his assertion is going to be.

And what do you know about the film Flag Day that is

coming out?

Because it's passed me by, to be honest.

So

do you know what it is?

It's not a golf thing.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about Flag Day except that it's a holiday of flags.

Right.

that

does or doesn't have a flag of its own.

Right.

It's not like on a journey.

Right.

Probably.

Yeah, not a a film about two ships in a

chase across the oceans abusing each other via semaphore.

I would pay to watch that, to be honest.

Well,

he's got his son Hopper in the film in Flag Day.

Right.

But actually,

it's also just Sean Penn.

He doesn't have a son.

Right, okay.

And I feel it's exactly that story, Andy.

And in fact, I think Sean Penn is playing one of the ships.

He's done playing animate objects, as Alice described.

And I think he's going into the inanimate object territory.

He got an Oscar for Apollo 13, didn't he?

As

the rocket.

He did.

He did.

I mean, it sets a bit of a dangerous precedent, though, doesn't it?

If actors are starting to

issue...

restrictions and ultimatums on who is allowed to go and see their films in film theatres.

Clearly, Sean Penn is doing this

for noble purposes, to try to help stop the spread of COVID.

But what if Vin Diesel suddenly says that he only wants keen gardeners and Macrame enthusiasts to go to his next film?

Or Scarlett Johansson bans people from watching her next movie until they've eaten all their vegetables and had a piece of fresh fruit for dessert.

I mean, is this a world?

What if Bradley Cooper suddenly bans people who don't own a fedora from watching his forthcoming 2022 blockbuster Dominoes of the Never Dead about a professional domino player who defeats zombie hordes in a series of games of dominoes.

Look, I think that should be the future of cinema.

I think there should be films exclusively that only Divorce's can go to.

I think there's lots of them.

I think if you're an influencer, if you cannot create a niche cinematic audience, what have you even done?

Yeah.

Fair cool.

I mean, I feel like this is the reverse of the Milo Yiannopoulos tactic of calling ahead to get your show banned to raise publicity for your shows.

British politics news now, and well, since we last spoke to you a couple of weeks ago, there's been a cabinet reshuffle.

Boris Johnson has

chucked out some of his less adept ministers and some of the more adept ones as well and brought in some that are probably equally as good stroke shit.

Now it's clear that Johnson is consolidating his power base but it must be said there is total madness in his method.

He's now sacked 27 cabinet ministers since becoming prime minister in July 2019.

That's one a month essentially.

It's just more unstoppable ministerial lurch and churn as people who've barely finished adjusting their swivel chair to the right height in one job then get shuffled on to a new department.

There's no sense of long-term stability, no sense of expertise or planning.

Some might say there's an overwhelming whiff of affectless f ⁇ quit playing party games with the nation's future, but they of course would be cynics.

But then on the flip side of that, I mean maybe this will work because I mean let's look at Emma Radhu Kanu, who we will talk about more later, who's just won the US Open tennis and at the age of 18, but didn't specialise in tennis until relatively later on.

She did loads of different sports as a child before specialising in tennis.

So just imagine how unbelievably good these shuffled cabinet ministers will be in five to ten years' time when they finally settle down to something they have a discernible shred of expertise in.

I was going to to play a game with you, Andy, where I listed a series of names and you had to buzz and tell me if they were promoted or demoted or loaded into a missile and fired at the moon.

Then I realised that the moment I tried to pay attention to the interneission politics of British politics, I fall asleep.

So I had a nap instead.

I mean, you would have said a couple of weeks ago that the novelist, reality TV star, marriage equality opponent and former kind of politician Nadine Dorries seemed objectively to have as much chance becoming Secretary of State for Culture as the average 18-year-old from Bromley had of winning the US Open without dropping a set.

But hey, we live in strange times and both of those things have happened.

Nadine Dorries in 2018 put out a tweet highlighting her credentials to be the new Secretary of State for Digital Culture, Media and Sports.

She's the official name of the department.

I'm going to put this to our listeners.

Can you guess which of the following tweets she put out that showed she was the ideal DCMS Secretary of State for this Boris Johnson government?

Did she tweet A, that the BBC was a biased left-wing organization which is seriously failing in its political representation from the top down?

Or did she tweet B, gee whiz, I absolutely dig digital, I crave culture, and I'm mad for media and smitten by sport.

In fact, if I had a dream event, it would involve Andy Murray and Jessica Ennis throwing Stone Age axe heads from the British Museum at each other while singing Shakespearean sonnets to the tune of some banging Edward Elgar hits reported on objectively by 10 to 12 independently owned newspapers, whilst everyone involved wears a digital watch.

Give me a D, C, M, S.

The correct answer was tweet A.

There was a statement issued just before the reshuffle

which said the Prime Minister will be appointing ministers this afternoon with a focus on uniting and levelling up the whole country, which is...

I mean this levelling

catchphrase has become something that is just wheeled out.

In fact, there are rumours that Robert Buckland, the Justice

Secretary of State, was sacked because he refused to have I am levelling up the country tattooed onto his forehead.

And despite being described as both competent and popular by colleagues,

he was sacked.

He crossed two red lines there.

But anyway, but leveling up.

This is the thing about levelling up is in some video games it's good, but what if we're playing Tetris?

Great.

And leveling up is just increasingly menacing indication that you have less and less space and time to move.

I mean, I'm looking forward to Nadine Dorrie's putting a documentary together with men who were funny in the 80s to finally get to the bottom of why comedy isn't allowed to say anything anymore.

Well, she did say that she said comedy is being destroyed by lefty snowflakes.

Correct.

I mean, look, Andy, Alice,

as a scriptwriter, I have a question here because it seems like the new cultural secretary and the powers behind her seem to be missing a kind of Britishness from your televisions and from your films.

And, you know, I've spent a bit of time watching as a script writer some of your TV shows, and I tend to agree with them.

Look, I think there's too many Norwegian crime dramas,

too many loosely veiled Rupert Murdoch biopics about succession.

I went to see something at the Victorian Albert Museum, and it was a massive exhibition called Epic Iran.

And who wants to see that?

Apart from the entire sold-out show and the lines that snaked around High Street Kensington, there was nobody there.

and therefore if with your permission because i love old british things as you know um

i've tried to i'm going to pitch to the two of you a couple of screenplays that i that i think could work with the new culture secretary and and this sense of britishness um now what could be more british than india um

and i i thought the best way to combine britishness would be to bring in a little indian favor so here are a couple of the screenplays very quickly for you to judge if you consider yourselves important commissioners at the BBC.

Absolutely.

This is the first thing.

I think the cultural secretary will like this.

William the Conqueror in Bollywood, the Battle of Hastings is a dance-off.

Sherlock Holmes in the adventure of Downton Abbey, the case of the mysterious vegan who came to tea.

A tale of two dishooms.

Classic Dickens meets 21st century London dining.

And here's one where I've sort of combined combined all the great Britishness into one film: A Passage to India with a Room with a View with a Jewel in the Crown of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, or Where is Tom?

This is a film.

And finally, if they're up for some mathematics and great Britishness, non-binary Shakespeare.

I mean, of course, not as how people identify, but as the mathematical definition.

So, all of Shakespeare's plays told with the numbers one and zero.

Hamlet, for example, would be tragedy of 0010011.

That concludes this week's Bugle.

Thank you very much for listening, Buglers.

Alice, anything else to tell our listeners about in your extensive portfolio?

Yes,

of course, you can find me as always on Twitter and Instagram at at illustrative, A L I T E R A T I V E or my Patreon, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser.

There I will be going for six weeks on what I'm calling Eternity Leave, where I stare into the bleak bleak abyss of

the reality of mortality and also we'll be having a baby.

But we've got backup versions of the gargle coming in there, so you don't have to worry that you'll miss even a step of my cutting-edge magazine style satire.

Yeah, well, good luck.

Good luck with that.

Arivav,

are you intending to create a new human being?

That's a very good question, Andy.

I'm in London doing some shows for the next three weeks, which people can follow on Twitter.

But

currently there are no plans in giving birth within those three weeks but that might quickly change

because it's COVID schedules are changing

that concludes this week's bugle best of luck to Alice

for full report in due course we'll now play you out some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers to join them or to make a one-off or occurring contribution of any size to keep the bugle free flourishing and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Peter W remembers being advised, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, and would like to reject that advice forthwith.

Peter elaborates, I would rewrite the advice to say, when life gives you lemons, do some research on where the lemons came from.

For a start, you need to check the exact provenance of the lemons, why are you suddenly being given free lemons and are they from a reputable lemonist or are they perhaps magic lemons?

And if so are we talking good magic lemons or bad magic lemons?

I mean diving straight into lemonade manufacture is at best naive.

Monica Heintz, who it should be noted has neither solicited nor received a free batch of untraceable lemons, would make lemonade in those circumstances but would not see that as the sole option for her lemon heritage.

Yes, says Monica, I would juice the lemon flesh to make lemonade, but I would also use the zest for making a premium level cooking product.

I would extract the seeds to plant a full lemon orchard, and the piths I would use to develop a sustainable clothing fabric of some kind, which I'm pretty sure is possible these days.

If you only make lemonade, you're a fool.

Danielle Mouchamp, and apologies for any mispronunciation there, would divide her consignment of fate-given lemons into two.

The first batch, says Danielle, I would donate to a local scurvy awareness charity, if they still operate in my area, and with the second batch, I would make an art installation involving a pile of slowly rotting lemons, which mulched down to nothingness, to reveal beneath them a giant barrel full of the lemon-based Italian liqueur limoncello adorned with the words don't drink me in bright lemon yellow paint.

I don't know what it would mean but I think it would definitely mean something.

James Hataway chimes in, if I received a large batch of lemons I would at the dead of night take them to a nearby forest and leave them in a pile.

Then the following morning I would call the police and local news outlets claiming that I'd seen a prominent politician walking towards the woods with a sheep muttering the words and now I will find out if Beelzebub himself has granted my wish to be able to turn livestock into lemons, before cackling maniacally.

I reckon most newspapers would run with the story, they're absolutely desperate for good copy these days.

And finally, before Vanestia Innis Rose embarks on a scheme for maximizing the utility of her consignment of lemons, she would like to check whether the lemons are a single one-off bequest by life or the beginning of an eternal, never-ending supply of lemons, and if that were the case, whether she would be able to request a regular arrival of a specific number of lemons or would just have to accept random unscheduled lemon drops as part of her life moving forward.

Frankly, says Vaniestia, this would be a logistical nightmare, even though lemons have a relatively long shelf life as fruit goes.

But I reckon if I could be guaranteed 10,000 lemons a year, a thousand a month from February to November, with December and January off, I could integrate a lemon trading scheme into my schedule.

And yes, I would use the summer batches to make lemonade.

I mean, why wouldn't you?

Here endeth this week's lies.

Goodbye.

Hi, buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you 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.