Satan takes the moral high ground (4204)

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Welcome to the Bugle Live.

This is this is my first show in front of a three-dimensional audience since the before times.

How are you all?

You are hooray, good.

Have you enjoyed the last

and two-thirds?

No, that is the correct answer.

It's been, well, let's face it, remorselessly shit on a global level.

But thank you very much for all coming here today to see the live bugle.

Have you, who's been to a bugle live show before?

Yes,

who has never been before?

And who has never listened to the bugle before?

Oh, this could be a slightly confusing evening for some of you.

So, what has brought you here, madam?

Oh, right, okay.

Is this

oh, oh, sorry, I forgot.

We need a microphone.

I think they're going for it.

Right, I was gonna say,

we did say only regulars at this gig.

So,

we're trying, it's more of a cult than a podcast at this stage, to be honest.

Well, welcome.

I hope you enjoy it.

It's really a scientific documentary.

And if the measure of the quality of a decade is how many live bugle shows it hosts in its first 20 months, then this has been the equal shittest decade in history.

Alongside decades such as the 1340s,

oh, plague fans, the

680s,

tough crowd, and of course, the 1720s.

Yeah, fair enough.

I am Andy Zaltzmann and if I've learned one lesson in life, then it's that every lesson you learn in life can be so easily forgot.

What was that again?

Never mind.

This is doubling up as Bugle issue 4204.

I mean it's not,

if you've not listened to the joke, we did skip out, what was it, about 3,700 episodes?

We should still do them at some point.

Well at some point we'll go back to it.

We did jump from I think 293 to 4001.

So, joining me today, I am very rusty at this, so I'm finding it quite, well, simultaneously disconcerting,

strangely emotional,

and it's also making me think that I've lost all the skills that I once had.

What do I have to do now?

Oh, yes, the rest of the

rest of the show.

Yes, so joining me today to boil the bones of the last week of news into a hopefully digestible stop.

Firstly, right here, right now, in person, please welcome for the first time in a Bugle Live Show Chris Addison.

Good evening, Andy.

Good evening, Chris.

Lashanatova, happy Rosh Hashanah to you.

Absolutely, yes.

I've had an awesome.

It's been

happy 5782.

Oh, yes.

It's a hell of a year ahead.

Yes.

I was just wondering, and you know, so obviously you're 3,700 years in the future.

Yes.

What's it like?

Well, if everyone here was offered, was it 5,782?

Yep, yep, 5,782.

That's the year that's Saturday.

Would you take a

3,800-year hibernation at this point?

I think that is a majority, Chris.

You've just had a 20-month hibernation, which you were complaining about a second ago.

I still haven't tidied my cupboards.

You're never going to tidy your cupboards.

So

how's your lockdown been?

Really good, actually.

I had a tremendous lockdown.

I put all my money into face masks.

So I wildly rich.

I did that suspiciously in October 2019.

I don't want anyone to read anything into it.

Yeah, it's been an absolute shit show, same as everybody else.

Does anybody actually think they had a good lockdown?

F

you.

I've been forced against my will to watch a ridiculous amount of cricket.

This is awful.

Have you spoken to anyone about this?

Jonathan Agnew,

Phil Tufnell.

Also, Chris was on TMS last week on Saturday.

I don't know if any of you heard it.

Death The View from the Boundary.

It was the bugle takeover of international cricket commentary continues apace.

We were so close.

I told you at the time, if we just pushed them out and locked the door, we could have done

a whole new series right into the evening session.

And joining us via the wonders of the internet, the physics-defying miracle that has enabled people the world over to share amusing pictures of animals doing amusing things within microseconds rather than having to do a painting of dogs smoking cigars and playing bridge before sending it around the world on a sailing ship and hoping the joke hadn't worn off by the the time it arrives.

It's a great advance for humanity.

Reporting to us exclusively live from tomorrow morning in Sydney, Australia.

Alice Fraser!

Hey!

Hello Andy!

Hello Buglers!

Hello Chris!

Hey Alice!

How's tomorrow?

It's good.

I spilled rice on my carpet.

Although, well, that's a Rosh Hashanah tradition, isn't it, Chris?

It is a Rosh Hashanah tradition.

Apples and honey and rice on the carpet.

I'm a bit out of the loop, to be honest.

Are you sure you haven't just got maggots?

I am sure.

I haven't just got rice.

Yes, I don't.

It's best to check.

And how's Australia doing?

It's pretty good.

It's spring-like.

We're in lockdown.

Everyone's angry.

It's turning back into Britain.

Pardon the spring light bit.

Right, so

this is the first live show since

the before times.

There are certain COVID protocols in place.

There were temperature checks on the way in from a hidden temperature gauge, and you averaged out at 36.5 Celsius, making the total temperature of this crowd, about 250 people, 9,200 degrees Celsius, which is one and a half times hotter than the surface of the sun.

You guys are absolutely cooking.

Coincidentally, also the melting point of news, which is ideal for this show.

This show is happening on the 7th of September, the 250th day of the year, yet again for the third time in the last four years.

On this day...

It's pretty good stats, that, 75%, you'd take that.

On this day, in 1695, Team GB professional pirate Henry Every sparked the first ever global manhunt by pilfering a cool £90 million worth of treasure in today's money from the grand Mughal ship Ganj Isawai in a brutal but effective bit of pirating.

And he's never been seen or heard of again.

So he's still at large.

326 years later, fair play.

That is committing to a new identity.

Have they tried Spain?

It's usually Spain.

It's usually Spain.

But anyway, if you are watching this live right now, or if you're listening on the recorded version, if you have seen Henry Every, please do report it to your local police station.

He's described as a Caucasian man between 4'8 and 6'6, aged approximately 362.

Good career move, though, to get out of.

I think if you're a 17th century pirate, you don't want to hang around too long.

No, no, and most of them didn't.

No, exactly.

Well, he was very much the Bjorn Borg of his day, that sudden retirement.

The difference being that Every would have been executed instantly if he'd been caught whereas Borg launched an underwear range so different so few similarities it's quite uncanny um as always

a section of uh the bugle is going where

oh no I was supposed to go in the what wasn't it not where do you want do you want to have another go let's have another go at it as always a section of the bugle is going straight in the

bin well I think it was where

I would have just gone in and let them do the bin I'm just just have another go right it's going in the bin right you you're ahead ahead of me on this one.

This week, in the bin, social media etiquette for f ⁇ ing numbskulls.

Are you a f ⁇ ing numbskull?

Then the chances are you might be struggling to get your social media etiquette right.

So, free with this week's Bugle, the f ⁇ ing numbskulls guide to entry-level social media etiquette.

Week one, learn the difference between valid constructive criticism and a death threat.

Have you ever thought about not abusing strangers?

Why not give it a go?

You might enjoy it more than you think.

Millions of people recommend it and statistics show that up to 97% of strangers are actually alright when you get to know them.

So unleashing a barrage of anonymized bile might not actually be a very nice thing to do.

If you're not sure, try writing out on a piece of paper what you were just about to post online, saying it to a real person,

and then judge from their reaction and the speed with which the police arrive to diffuse the situation, whether or not it is actually a good idea.

And also,

we give you a guide to what to, and most importantly, what not to judge and insult people for.

So, we put pairs of things together, and you have to work out if you should or should not judge and abuse people for you, one in each category.

So, this week, a person's gender or a person's war crimes.

Judge or don't judge, we'll give you the answer to that next week.

Chris, have you ever issued an anonymous death threat online?

Not online.

I'm old school.

I lost all the romance.

I'm single-handedly keeping the printed press going with my poison pen letters.

It's a lot of magazines I get through.

I think of them as secular fatwas.

Chris, could you clarify something for me?

Sure.

Poison pen letters seem self-defeating.

Surely the ink should be poison.

Yes, I've.

I've been hospitalised a number of times.

Alex, have you got any social media etiquette advice for any of our listeners?

Just don't.

All right, there we go.

It's quite deceptively simple when you put it in those terms.

So

that section is in the bin.

Right.

Jingle, Chris.

There we go, it's all coming back to me.

People said, so I've said to a few comedian friends,

you've not done a a live show for a while either.

No,

10 years.

I don't know.

People say I was like getting back on a bike, but I was fucking shit at riding bikes and often crashed.

What I always felt about stand-up is that you're rusty if you haven't done it for seven days.

20 months.

Yes, you become

a long time.

It's kind of Titanic level of

rust.

Yeah.

People are going to have to dive down and get you out.

You must know James Cameron from your advertisement.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're neighbours.

He lives in Bromley.

That avatar money.

All right, him

eradicanu.

Top story this week, trees.

So, right, before we get into the tree news,

such a fing game show crowd.

Woo!

Chris, I'm trying to take my career in a new direction.

Right.

Like Like Enzoltz.

Who likes trees?

Who thinks they're kids and deserve to die?

No, I felt about 50-50.

Well, the bad news is for trees.

You've gone in very early with that.

First live bugle pun.

And it wasn't yours.

Tree news this week, at least 30% of the world's tree species face execution.

So extinction.

What's the difference?

I can't remember.

Common, aren't they?

One of them has more admin involved.

One of them's more embarrassing because if you put a tree on a chopping block, it feels sort of cannibalistic.

Yeah.

Alice, you are our

ecological Armageddon correspondent.

You've been charting the inevitable death of this planet over several years on the bugle.

Just bring us up to date with the latest evidence of the inevitable end to all life on Earth.

Yes, indeed, Andy.

About 30% of trees are at risk of going extinct, which is a perfect example of an instance where people can't see the forest for the trees.

By which I mean

you will be able to see the forest because of the lack of trees, and what you'll see is a forest with 30% fewer trees.

Experts and hippies plan to spend the next while explaining what needs to be done to spare our planet a horrifying cascade of ecological cause and effect,

though by this point, we're so far down the cause and effect line of dominoes that it's basically effect and effect all the way down.

I assume their plan is something like stop chopping down all the trees, while big businesses and governments plan to wring their hands in public before doing the bare minimum to plan to plant the ecological equivalent of an embarrassing reforestation comb over.

I mean, this was the result of an international study.

Oh, come on.

International studies?

I mean, was Brexit for nothing?

How about we do our own study our own fucking trees?

This poses, so the loss of the world, a third of the world's tree species, poses a risk of anyone, I want to hear you.

Why did ecosystem collapse?

Basically, yes, in the bin.

In the rotting wooden bin.

Amongst the biggest and smallest threats to trees include forest clearance for farming, people carving hearts into tree trunks to tell someone they love them, industrial logging, beavers, the anti-brick lobby, the bench industry, artisanal chopping boards, unnecessary chopsticks, crucifixions, urban development, chess, and forest fires.

Chris, which are those are you most worried about?

I would be most worried about chess following the popularity of the Queen's Gambit.

I think

so, going to be bad for trees.

Things have been bad for trees for a few decades, Andy.

Their once unchallenged position as the world's favourite and most numerous tall, wavy structures has been undermined by the arrival both of offshore wind turbines and onshore Richard Osmonds.

Or Osmonds, Osman?

I'm not sure of the grammar.

The suggestion is that we can keep the tree species threatened by extinction in botanical gardens, but those places are just cruel.

Trees cooped up, not able to run around as they would in the wild.

We've all been to Kew Gardens in London and see the giant Californian sequoias huddling together for warmth.

It's not natural.

So we have to ask ourselves, do we even need trees anymore?

Almost everything that trees do for us, we found an alternative for.

We don't need to climb them, we have adventure playgrounds for that.

We don't need their fruit, we have greengrocers for that.

Yes, they used to provide us with logs for fuel and planks for building materials, but you can get both of those at BQ.

We don't need their shelter, we have Premier Inn, or if you've got absolutely no self-respect, Travel Lodge.

If we got rid of trees, think of the advantages.

We'd be able to see further, trains would be able to run all year round in this country instead of having to take autumn off in case one of them gets knocked into a ravine by a falling leaf or whatever that bullshit is.

The fire service will be able to stop spending thirty-four percent of their annual budget as they currently do on getting cats out of trees for little old ladies.

Teenage girls in eighties movies could put their bras on, safe in the knowledge there wasn't someone with a pair of binoculars in the branches outside their bedroom window, And 1970s glam rock stars could drive through barns without crashing their minis and dying.

Trees have to go, Andy.

Right.

It's time.

Okay.

I mean, but there's a lot though.

I mean, I'm certainly, I'm not sure they all have to go, but there's 60,000 species of trees and only 7,000.

Well, there's

oak,

beech, Christmas,

chestnut, family, chestnut, horse, chestnut, pantomime, horse, chestnut,

Pointy, family, and trigonoma.

But do not think we've got enough.

I mean, it is as a tree consumer, it's convinced.

You can't remember.

Ala, can you?

You can't remember 60,000 trees.

What did you say, Alice?

I said

God's own

kind of tree.

Yeah.

But I mean, in terms of stopping these trees going extinct,

any suggestions?

I mean, how do you make trees horny for each other?

I mean, that seems

to be

horny.

That seems to be one of the big problems, isn't it?

The trees aren't horny enough.

Trees, yeah.

Birth rates around the world are going down.

Maybe trees don't want to

settle down again.

I just don't want to commit.

I'm only 300, mum.

I want to play the field.

I mean, only this field.

I can't play any other fields.

I mean, what does a tree settling down look like?

Just spraying all its pollen gears in one direction?

I think

people would be less unhappy about the coming extinction of trees if we referred to that as tree jiz.

Tree jiz

as the conkers fall.

A game of tree jiz.

Sure.

Baked mine in an oven makes it really hard.

Family show, Chris.

Family show.

Not a family show.

It's called hay fever jiznos.

Happy jiznos.

Well, this is what happens when you don't do a show for every year and a half.

Yeah.

Lack of discipline, Chris.

That's what it is.

You should be keeping a tighter ship.

Other Chris.

Right.

Right.

I'll just write tree jizz down.

There are adopter tree schemes

where you can give money to a charity and adopt tree.

And we joined one, but it didn't really fit in

the rest of the family.

It insisted on having its own special food.

And it would never, I mean, never get out of bed and do anything.

It was a nightmare to fit in the car and family outings.

And whenever you took out a piece of paper to write something or paint a picture or play a game of hangman, it would burst into tears and cry, Granny!

It's worse than you think, Annie.

Even trees that are already extinct are in danger.

There are 11 325 million-year-old tree stumps in Victoria Park in Glasgow, which are threatened with decay because the building they're housed in is falling down, which will have a massive knock-on effect for the whole prehistoric fossilized ecosystem.

Because if those prehistoric fossilized trees disappear, then there'll be no habitat, for example, for prehistoric fossilized dinosaur bird hybrids such as the Archaeopteryx, which will be in danger of dying out again,

which will be 0 for 2 in the Survival of the Fittest League, the world's longest-running league, currently in its 3.7 billionth season and sponsored this year by Kazoo.

Mankind, of course, still the reigning champions, just about seeing off the challenge from microscopic viruses, which had a tremendous 20-20 season under the tutelage of their new Chinese pangolin manager.

Alice, on the subject of trees,

you know, spoiling the view, as Chris pointed out, this has been a huge tree crime in Australia this week.

Yes, indeed.

In Hobart, which is the capital city of Tasmania, which is the extra little island off the side of Australia that doesn't have the confidence to rejoin the mainland.

This is front page news in Hobart at the moment, which is the deliberate poisoning of almost a dozen trees that authorities suspect have been targeted to improve the coastal view.

So they've got little drill marks in them, and they're dying extremely dramatically and slowly, as trees do.

The only things more dramatic than opera singers in their death scenes are trees.

And

apparently, they're very rare trees that are dying.

And the act of vandalism has an estimated damage value of $185,257.

Which is very precise for an estimate.

Isn't it?

Isn't it just?

Like, where's the $7

come from in that?

Also, I mean, it's typical, isn't it?

Already fighting over the will before the trees have actually died.

I'm going to make a cyborg out of that one.

I'm not dead yet.

But it's not going well for Australian trees in general.

There was a government plan to plant a big fucking desert.

Aside from that,

there was a government plan to plant a billion trees in a decade, and three three years in, they've planted 1%

of those trees, and a senator told Parliament it would take 357

years to achieve the target.

By which time...

Here we were with 7.

This is starting to look very suspicious.

Government estimates just tack a seven on, so it sounds like they've done the maths.

You're giving away how I do my cricket stats.

Just put a decimal place in, people believe believe it.

It's amazing.

But by that time, in 357 years' time, the average temperature in Australia will be an estimated 145 Celsius

or 183 on court at the Australian Open Tennis, where players will be baked potatoes within three games.

And trees will be on fire by the time

they grow.

So, I mean, what's your...

What's your solution for the global tree crisis, Chris?

Cut them down.

Just cut the f ⁇ ers down.

I don't trust them.

them I've never trusted them sneaky bastards what are they hiding all that stuff underground come on

animals don't do that your dog you don't your dog doesn't stand by the door with its leg behind it going you can't see that bit does it

sneaky bastards fair point

right any more on trees Alice

so much but let's move on

I feel like I'm delving into something deeply personal.

Let's move on now to men deciding what women do with their wombs news now.

And

in

a ruling in Texas, well a ruling the American Supreme Court by a narrow five to four majority, the Texas law banning all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy go into effect.

This is actually the sort of Republican side of the American political seesaw, which is

a party that doesn't believe in state intervention in people's businesses or in people's

not being shot by deranged gun-toting lunatics, but does believe in state intervention in people's wombs, which, I mean, Alice, do you think this is...

Are we misrepresenting this?

I mean, it does seem slightly hypocritical.

It's such a peculiar law, Andy.

I don't know if you've looked at the details of the law, but it allows bounties for snitches.

Like a weird pro-life video game where you just whack someone who's helping and their coins transfer to you.

Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

Oh, no, then one of those coins was a sperm, and you have to quickly gestate your new baby to term and look after it for 18 years, even though you don't know where that coin has been.

If your grandmother was right, all coins have been up someone's butthole.

Sorry,

you're right.

Look, it's so badly written as a law.

You have to assume that they assumed it wouldn't pass.

It's like his very dog who caught the car and then had to to figure out how to administer a rule that lets you basically just take $10,000 off someone involved in helping someone in distress.

It's completely incoherent, almost impossible to enforce, unwieldy.

It's like if someone just transcribed a drunk uncle's pro-life rant onto a napkin and then slammed it down in front of the Texas legislature and went this whole thing before puking into a pot plant.

That's basically how the American Constitution was written, isn't it?

I'm sure the founding fathers were fing happy.

It was written in a Frank and Benny's on a Friday night.

I just want a sane and rational society where everyone gets all their tubes pegged at puberty, and then you have to do a test to get a child license, and it's a one-question test, which is, do you want to have a child?

And then they randomly select one social media post you've made, and you have to name your child that post in full.

Well, that would be tricky for me.

That means my first child would have been called die, motherfucker, die.

DMD Zaltz.

And six weeks is, I mean, that is

absurdly early, isn't it?

Before some people have realised they're pregnant, or at least, you know, certainly come to terms psychologically with the implications of pregnancy on your life, your lifestyle, your responsibilities.

I know when my wife and I found out that she was pregnant in 2006, well, it took me a good

decade and a half and counting to get my head around it, to be honest.

You mean if I want to go out and watch sport on my own, I've got to monetize it?

What the f?

I mean, Chris, I know you're a massive fan of the brutal inhumanity of American personal interest politics.

What's your well, the thing is, my problem with this law

is that it makes it even more difficult to ask that age-old question: Am I in Texas or am I in Saudi Arabia?

Oil in the ground?

Czech.

Large areas of desert?

Czech.

Distinctive headgear?

Czech.

Religious lunatics are standard?

Czech.

Somewhat punchy attitude towards immigration?

Czech.

They're talking, but I can't understand what they're saying.

Czech.

Hatred of women, masquerading as moral high ground.

Czech.

Really?

The only way you can tell now whether you're in Texas or Saudi Arabia is to order some food and see whether it comes with barbecue sauce or hummus.

And the tigers as well.

And the tigers.

Lest we forget.

Look, let's try to take some positives from this situation.

I realise that that's like saying to somebody who's been wrongfully imprisoned: hey, at least you don't have to pay any bills and the clothes are free.

But nobody ever gained by being relentlessly negative, obviously apart from the billionaire owner of the Daily Mail and Jeffrey Boycott.

But for a very long time, it's been a huge concern that medical procedures in the United States are ruinously expensive.

And to some degree, this law solves that problem.

It's a particularly American approach to solve the expense of medical procedures by banning medical procedures, but it's a little bit like solving the problem of being overweight by sawing your legs off.

But be careful what you wish for, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Well, you don't have to be pro-choice to see that some of the arguments are completely off the rails.

My favourite one that I saw recently was the guy who said that if women can't abortions, if women can't get abortions, sorry, they'll be more selective about the men they sleep with and only bang men who they would be happy to have fathered their children.

And so all other men will have to step up their game, which is such a cute argument from somebody who's never met people before.

I think the problem for the pro-choice movement in fighting this law is that it's very hard to argue that a six-week old fetus is non-viable when by that stage it has roughly the same mental capacity as a Republican voter.

The Republican Party, by the way, is technically no longer registered as a political organisation, but a handmaid's tail reenactment society,

which has the double benefit of allowing them to circumvent rules on donors and make the hoods they bought for their wives tax-deductible.

Most decent people believe that you don't really have a right to make laws concerning women's bodies if you don't have a woman's anatomy.

But of course, the largely male legislature of Texas was able to get around this on a technicality by being a bunch of

thing.

The best way to fight this horrific tendency for largely male legislatures to make decisions about women's bodies is for women to say, okay, fine, fine.

Well, then you make all the decisions then.

The whole thing would very quickly stop if the likes of Texas Governor Greg Abbott were being wrung up every two minutes by a woman saying, Is this milk off?

Or, hi yeah, I'm Justin Nando.

Should I go with macho peas or peri-salted chips?

Greg, hello, sorry to bother you.

I was just going to send you something for your birthday, and I was wondering, do you think it should be a dog or a cat that I get the turd from?

Look, I know plenty of people who are kind, normal people who have feelings about abortion or aren't sure what they think.

And to those people, I would say, you're right.

It's a really hard ethical position to be in if you think women choosing not to carry a pregnancy is murder from day dot, which is actually what a blastocyst looks like.

But it's a really fascinating trolley problem for philosophy class.

And until we can measure the weight of a pending soul, and unless the issue is situated inside your own body, just pretend the unborn child is like collateral damage in a drone strike.

Oh, wow.

You know, that seems quite comfortably in the realm of quite sad boo-hoo, none of your business.

That or throw your pocket money into artificial womb technology, and then every unwanted baby can be put grown in a bag and used to colonize the stars or whatever.

It's good to have a dream.

Amen, brother.

But well, luckily, the Satanists are standing up against it.

My people.

Yes, the Satanic Temple has launched legal action

against the ruling.

I mean, Chris, I know when we were first working together, you were dabbling in

the occult.

Yeah.

I'm 74.

I mean,

it's come to a sorry pass in American politics when the Satanists are on the side of good.

Yeah.

Yeah that's bad isn't it?

If it turns out that Satan's one of the good guys, if Satan thinks what you're doing is a bit evil, you probably need to have a long, hard bath with yourself.

The good news for me though is I might finally recoup some of the money I lost that time I got drunk and ordered 4,000 What Would Satan do wristbands?

Well Satanists are sort of the kid in school who decided to be shocking for fun because conforming is for idiots and then they realised there was a profound moral point to be made and started community organizing without giving up on body modification.

I'll see it time to move on to a happier story now, do you think?

Afghanistan news now.

Picking up on a story we were reporting on exclusively last week, big global scoop, the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

As we left it last week, we're still waiting for the official traditional, come on, everyone, it's not that bad speech from the American president.

And that came soon enough

after we recorded last week.

Joe Biden, who recently won the prestigious Bugle President of the Decade So Far Award,

tried to verbally paper over the political chasms arising from America's withdrawal from

Afghanistan.

Who's enjoyed the Afghanistan crisis?

Yeah, oh, strange.

How have we been advertising this gig, Chris?

Fickle.

He said in his speech, my fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over,

missing out the key words are bit of

before

and it's not entirely obvious, is it, that a new era of peace and harmony is absolutely lathering itself all over Afghanistan, is it?

Afghanistan, Afghanistan, more like.

Am I right?

It's the end of another round in the centuries-old game of Central Asian fk about.

Its winner stays on, and Afghanistan are undefeated, having seen off the British, the Russians, and now the Americans, with Afghanistan now entirely occupied by old-school hyper-religious warlords and Texas legislature wannabes, the Taliban, who take their name from the phrase, you can absolutely have that human right, Taliban it.

Anyway,

welcome to the bugle,

but gotta pay the piper.

Anyway, following America's latest defeat in a land war in Asia, when will they learn?

haunted Madame to Swords exhibit Joe Biden made a speech

which was less JFK's Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You and more Shaggy's It Wasn't Me.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, he said, adding, and I'll leave half of them off the plane.

President Biden said it's time for America to stop nation building abroad, which is fair because it has quite a lot of nation building to do at home right now.

When the Americans went into Afghanistan, hoping to leave the country as a democracy like their own, I don't imagine that they were expecting that that ambition would be met because by the time they came to withdraw, Republicans would have eroded American democracy to to the point where you genuinely wouldn't be surprised to see people in pickup trucks with guns parading through Fort Lauderdale shouting death to the west coast.

He also said he will turn the page on American foreign policy.

But as anyone who's read a book will know, turning the page

is not always a recipe for improvement.

For example, when I was reading my one-year to one-page history of the 20th century, 1938, England score a record 903 for seven at the Oval.

1939, ah!

Tess cricket cancelled!

Or my book of photographs of politicians wearing unexpected clothes, Nelson Mandela in the number six Springbok jersey at the 1995 Rugby World Cup final, turned the page, Boris Johnson in a in a gimp outfit straddling a Spitfire.

I mean, that's just you don't want to see that, dude.

Or just reading reading the newspaper last week, you know, tales of global desolation.

Think you can't get worse than this.

Turn the page.

Michael Gove dancing.

And also, he also added that America must learn from its mistakes, which,

I mean, that is about the most un-American thing to do, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, America is very much built on not learning from its mistakes.

Exhibit one, gun crime statistics.

And I mean, it is kind of odd, isn't it?

A country where, you know, with its gun, you know, unpasteurised cheese illegal in many states, guns, it does make you think maybe there was possibly some mix-up in the early drafting of the

open carry unpasteurised cheese.

It's possible.

They were having lunch in 1790, and they just, well, well, anyway, as I said, they were hammered when they wrote it all.

I mean, it could have been down to that time when that deranged Frenchman wandered into a shopping mall with 80,000 rounds of brie and force-fed them to the locals till they all died died of coronary illness before he finally turned the camembert on himself.

Alice, what's your solution to the Afghanistan crisis?

Well, Andy,

if I have one, I'll tweet about it.

That seems to be the protocol.

But Joe Biden, a man who looks like he's being replaced piece by piece, beginning with the teeth and currently mid-brain, has said

that he doesn't want America to be caught in a forever exit, which is like the opposite of an Irish goodbye

when you're trying to leave a party.

But I just think you shouldn't have gone in if you didn't have a plan to get out.

It's my strategy with all dates.

I don't go on a date unless I already have a plan to break up with them.

Just got it in the back pocket.

I mean, it has been a messy transfer window in Afghanistan.

It's fair to say it's not gone quite as well.

Not as well as Spurs has done, Chris, is it?

They've had a good transfer window.

No, I mean, we haven't signed any Afghan players yet.

Matter of time.

He also announced that America would not be the global police anymore, which, given what we know about how they approach policing in America, is probably a good thing.

I mean, I find it hard to warm to the Taliban as a franchise.

Give it time.

I mean, they seem

just a little on the humorless side.

I mean, say we'll talk about our political leaders that you like to go and have have a drink with them in the pub.

And I'm not sure that's necessarily what you want, but I think the Taliban take it too far the other way.

And I know we're suckers for nostalgia as a species, but brutal, misogynist, medieval theocracy, I think it's taking it too far.

I think the 1970s should be your absolute cut-off point.

And I found them quite graceless in victory as well.

And I mean, you compare.

I mean, I don't mind confident.

You saw Virat Coley at the Oval.

You know, he was always confident, but he wasn't

you know really sticking it to to England England and they could learn from sports obviously you know you wouldn't get someone at Wimbledon after the Wimbledon final saying I've defeated Novak Djokovic the great Satan

because obviously Djokovic never loses but

right and all modern are you excited about the more moderate Taliban though that's

the that's been promoting themselves as a more moderate Taliban which is well actually exciting isn't it it's like a a more luxurious, unlicensed endoscopy

or

a more relaxing barrage of javelins through the windscreen on the A303 or a more elegant swarm of wasps at a child's birthday picnic.

So,

right, I think we're done.

That's it, please say.

That is the most showbiz phrase.

Right, I think we're done.

I think we're done.

To quote Bruce Forsyth,

we've gone over our contractually obliged hour, so if you can only remember the peak 60 minutes of this show and not the bits where I've been floundering around trying to remember what the it wasn't supposed to be doing.

Well, it's been an absolute delight.

Have it speaking to human beings

who I'm not blood related to or

are former international cricketers, with all due respect.

Some of you may be either of those.

I don't know.

But anyway, thank you very much for coming.

Thanks to Chris, as always, for making everything happen there.

Chris,

the producer.

Thanks to Chris Addison once again.

It's been

lovely working with you again after all these years.

And thanks for getting up so f ⁇ ing early in the morning once again.

Alice Fraser!

And

do also listen to the gargle and all of the last post and everything else Alice does.

Anything to plug?

Wait, let me think.

Nope.

Oh, there we go.

Thanks for watching.

How's your career going, Chris?

Nothing to play.

Oh, listen to our Radio 4 show from 18 years ago.

Oh, yeah.

If you can find it.

There's quite a lot of it on YouTube.

Yes, there is.

Although some of the people who co-starred in it are now in jail.

That's the pitfalls of getting people who were then celebrities to play themselves in comedy sketches.

Anyway.

Yeah, but that's a fun guessing game for me.

It's a clue.

It wasn't Craig Doyle.

He's fine.

Now,

right, that's it.

Thank you very much for coming.

It's been a pleasure talking to you all.

Thank you for coming to Google.

Thanks, Chris, Chris, Alice.

Thanks, the underbelly.

Goodbye.

Hi, Buglers.

It's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about 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.