Partial Recall (4203)

Speaker 1 I will be in Australia for the next few weeks, hoping that the cricket can provide the distraction for everyone that it has so successfully provided for me since I was six years old.

Speaker 1 If you want to come to my shows, there is a Bugle Live in Melbourne on the 22nd of December, where I'll be joined by Sammy Shar and Lloyd Langford.

Speaker 1 And I'm doing the Zoltgeist, my stand-up show in Melbourne on the 23rd of December. And we've just added a possibly optimistic extra show in Sydney on the 3rd of January.

Speaker 1 The 2nd of January show is sold out, but please, please, please come on the 3rd. My UK tour extension begins begins at the end of january all details and ticket links at andysaltzman.co.uk

Speaker 3 the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world

Speaker 2 hello buglers and welcome to issue 4203 of the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me andy zaltzman coming to you exclusively live and in zero dimensions from the shed here in South London.

Speaker 2 We are recording on August the 30th of August. That is a new date system using to please our listeners on all possible sides of the Atlantic.

Speaker 2 In the year 2021, we are still using the old system of years, counting up from the birth of Jesus Herbert Christ, the influential Middle East-based entertainer, rather than the new system of counting down to the end of the world, by which system it is the 30th of August 2021.

Speaker 2 Well, what a happy coincidence. Nope, that is the end of the world, not the end of civilization, which could be significantly closer.
How do I know that?

Speaker 2 Well, good journalists never reveal their sources, as I discovered during a very frustrating queue at the Berger Van at the National Society of Investigative Reporters annual conference.

Speaker 2 Joining me this week from San Francisco, California, it's NATO Green. Hello, Nato.
How are you?

Speaker 3 Hello, Andy. Hello, Buglers.

Speaker 3 It's wildfire season in California, which means this is the time of year where I monitor air quality index stats like you monitor cricket scores.

Speaker 3 Every minute I'm tracking all of the sensors in my neighborhood to tell me when I can complete a full respiratory cycle

Speaker 3 because the smoky haze is drifting down from the mountains.

Speaker 3 This summer, Andy, I was able to, thanks to the power of the vaccines, see some of my family who I hadn't seen in a year and a half.

Speaker 3 And I spent some time with my niece, who's three, and I was wearing a bugle t-shirt and we were playing on the floor, and she pointed at my bugle t-shirt, and she pointed at the drawing of your head, and she said, is he angry?

Speaker 3 And I said, just at Jacob Reese Mog for some reason.

Speaker 2 And she said, he's a cunt. But she's three, so it's okay.

Speaker 2 Well, that's a

Speaker 2 heartwarming story. And if any bugle listeners want to get a hold of a bugle t-shirt to wear and terrify their three-year-old relatives, do go to the Bugle website and click the merch button.

Speaker 3 Minor said in Prado, please, man.

Speaker 2 Also,

Speaker 2 joining us from the very same continent that I'm on, Europe, it's Mark Steele. Hello, Mark.
How are you? I'm fine, sir. I'm fine.

Speaker 2 Listen to that story about anger and it sort of connects me because my son has been at the Reading Festival and he came in this morning at half past six. was a stand-up.

Speaker 2 He was doing a show there, but also he was sort of, I don't know what else he was doing. It's best not to ask.

Speaker 2 But he was, and I remember the last time I was at the Reading Festival, it was the most wonderful display of anger I think that I've ever seen. Because I, you know, I love watching bands.

Speaker 2 And I went to something that was on at about 11 in the morning and no one else is up at 11 in the morning.

Speaker 2 And there was about eight people in this tent and this band was so magnificently angry and I couldn't hear it. I couldn't understand a single word at all.
It was just like, What are you? What are you

Speaker 2 doing?

Speaker 2 And I thought, oh, this sounds great. I don't know what they're on about.
And I swear, the only words that I could actually work out was at the end of this song.

Speaker 2 He just went, What are you, you finger? School spoke.

Speaker 2 Anyway, we are recording on the 30th of August, August, which means by the time most of you listen to this, it will be, or will be very nearly being, actually, September.

Speaker 2 And what a month September is, the joint second shortest month of the year.

Speaker 2 Not for September, the shelly-sallying around, elongating the year that we see so often from the likes of July, March, or August, which is dragging on yet again as we record.

Speaker 2 But also, September lacks the ostentatious time disrespecting shortness and variability of February. It's just an Ornid, solid month that gets the job done in a bog standard 30-day time span.

Speaker 2 But could September be under threat? Rumour has it that researchers found that focus groups think people find traditional months a bit boring and confusing.

Speaker 2 So classic months like September could soon be a thing of the past as the year gets split back into 10 months, each with 110-hour days, with each hour made up of 50 50 second long minutes.

Speaker 2 In Roman times, of course, September used to be the seventh month of the year, hence the name, which in Latin means seventh ember, because of course months used to be measured by lighting different sizes of fire at at the start of the year that would burn until the end of their prescribed month.

Speaker 2 And if September keeps dropping two places down the month order at the current rate of once per two and a half thousand years by the year 9500 AD September will have merged with next March.

Speaker 2 As always a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin

Speaker 2 this week letter writing. In the bin 1st of September is World Letter Writing Day.

Speaker 2 For our younger listeners, a letter is, and I know this is going to sound f ⁇ ing ridiculous, a form of communication which people use to write words on sheets of paper using a pen.

Speaker 2 Look up all those things in a dictionary, sorry, on a dictionary app if you don't know what they mean, and send it via a postal system with a stamp stuck on the front.

Speaker 2 A stamp is, oh, there's no f ⁇ ing point. Anyway, our section in the bin is a free letter.
All you have to do is provide a sheet of paper and a pen.

Speaker 2 If you don't have a pen, as again, our younger listeners may not, you can use your finger dipped in ketchup.

Speaker 2 And we provide you with some free words and phrases to get you started on your epistolary efforts, including, dear,

Speaker 2 how are you?

Speaker 2 I am fine. Fortunately, the fish were all unharmed.
Gradually readjusting to normal gravity. Thank you for the scimitar.
It looks like a really good one.

Speaker 2 Thus narrowly escaping a painful encounter with a goat. It is great to be home again after such a surprisingly elongated trip to the seaside.
I have always feared your immutable power.

Speaker 2 Hopefully the replacement terrapin will not prove too expensive this time and looking forward to seeing you again on your release.

Speaker 2 Do use some or all of those phrases in your free bugle letter in the bin this week.

Speaker 2 Top story this week, America news. NATO, you are quite literally in America as we speak, as you have been for most of your life.
Bring us up to date with everything that is happening.

Speaker 2 Well, in America in general, but firstly in your home state of California.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 Andy, Mark, Chris, we have a recall election coming up of Governor Gavin Newsom, and I am

Speaker 3 boiling with rage.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 3 I think I might have written 17 hours of commentary. So if you and Mark need to just go for a walk around the hedge while I scream into the void about how mad I am about the recall,

Speaker 3 you have time to take a break. Chris may have to clean it up in post.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 3 but here's what's happening. California is headed for a recall election of Governor Newsom on September 14th.
Ballots have been mailed. Polls are looking close.

Speaker 3 And if you thought that what passes for American democracy wasn't stupid and dysfunctional enough, if you thought American democracy didn't do enough to empower the most retrograde infantile tribalist urges, may I present to you the California recall system in what is otherwise stereotyped as an island of progressive, competent governance in a sea of vomit.

Speaker 3 Here's how recall elections work. And this is the second one we've had in my lifetime.

Speaker 3 The first one was in 2003 when we elected Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran on a campaign of having just done a Terminator movie where he mashed a woman's head into the toilet and his housekeeper.

Speaker 2 So that's something for every voter. Yeah.

Speaker 3 The recall election is a two-question ballot only.

Speaker 3 Question one, should governor newsom be recalled if 50 plus one of those vote voting vote for that then he's recalled and we go to question two question two is if newsom is recalled which one of these 46-flinging baboons should become governor instead

Speaker 3 we have lots of options and then the top vote getter of that group regardless of their vote becomes the governor so you like maths andy the way that the math works is that the recall goes through with 50% plus one of the vote, which means that 50% minus one of the vote goes to Newsom.

Speaker 3 And mathematically,

Speaker 3 depending on how the vote splits up among the aforementioned 46 baboons, we could end up with a governor that half as many people want to be governor than the current governor who just got recalled.

Speaker 2 Or if they say the same. Yeah, right.
If it works out evenly.

Speaker 2 Thanks. Thank you for running the numbers.

Speaker 3 It's amazing that Americans have have the kutzpa to lecture Cuba for having a sham one-party democracy when we have government by id.

Speaker 3 Now, a lot of Democrats are mad that the recall is a waste of $250 million when Newsom is up for re-election literally next year.

Speaker 3 And I can't imagine hating anyone so much that I wasn't willing to wait another six months to stop hating them.

Speaker 3 Or they're mad at the threat that Newsom could be replaced by a reactionary racist who hates government so much that he wants to abolish lanes on the I-5 freeway to make freeway driving a sort of choose-your-own-adventure type experience, but also doesn't understand the government enough to know that the federal government runs the freeways and not the state, and the government doesn't get a say.

Speaker 3 Uh, I hate those things, but as I've said on here before on the bugle, I hate Gavin Newsom. And I hate Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 3 Most people didn't become aware of him until he ran for governor in 2018, but he's from San Francisco, so I've had to deal with his bullshit for 20 years.

Speaker 2 Um, I was reading about one of the candidates, Larry Elder.

Speaker 2 Oh, good times.

Speaker 2 A right-wing radio host who spent 27 years honking into the foghorn of syndicated radio, who doesn't believe in a number of things. He doesn't believe the gender pay gap exists.

Speaker 2 He doesn't believe in climate change, which he describes as a croc, and doesn't believe in gun control, meaning that...

Speaker 2 logically he believes in guns being out of control, which is a tough one to get behind if you're a fan of people not being unnecessarily shot to death.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 would you like him as

Speaker 2 governor of California?

Speaker 3 No, I mean, people keep asking me, like, who do you put for question two? And there's no good options.

Speaker 3 There's like the guy who thinks that we're going to solve our drought because we have significant parts of the state that are literally running out of water by piping water from the Mississippi River without understanding that it has to go through thousands of miles of desert and mountain to get there

Speaker 3 and requires the agreement of all the intervening states.

Speaker 3 Would you like the people that want to round up homeless people on, put them on barges and send them out to sea in floating concentration camps? Would you like the person who wants to

Speaker 3 just let the state burn down in the hopes of some sort of

Speaker 3 Phoenix-like renewal?

Speaker 3 It's like, if we get to question two, we're done for.

Speaker 2 Are they all serious?

Speaker 2 Because we have here,

Speaker 2 there's a tradition here of people like, there's a bloke called Lord Buckethead, and he stands at elections and he just puts a sort of a bin liner thing, a sort of little kitchen bucket bin thing on his head.

Speaker 2 And he doesn't.

Speaker 2 It's a joke. It's not a very funny joke, but it's a joke.
But they're not really serious. But I get your mad people seem to be quite serious.
Mark, have you not seen who our prime minister is?

Speaker 2 Yes, you make a good point.

Speaker 3 When Boris Johnson first popped up, wasn't there some part of you that was like, this has to be a bit?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 no, you make a very good case. In other American news, the Supreme Court has been busy, NATO.
You are our Supreme Court correspondent.

Speaker 2 I know you harbor a lifelong dream of being appointed to the Supreme Court to safeguard America's future.

Speaker 2 And the Supreme Court is, you know, the decisive voters in the Supreme Court are one of the legacies of Trump. How is that going for America?

Speaker 3 For Trump, good, for America, bad.

Speaker 3 In a nutshell, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court issued two six to three rulings last week against the Biden administration's controversial more good, less bad initiatives.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 first,

Speaker 3 they ruled against the White House on immigration and evictions by way of an obscure procedure called the shadow docket.

Speaker 3 Originally rarely used and only for emergencies, the shadow docket became a popular tool by the Trump administration and conservative judges to issue sweeping policies in the middle of the night with no explanation, no written signed decision, no oral arguments, and on an accelerated timeframe.

Speaker 3 What could go wrong?

Speaker 3 And so the court blocked a Biden decision to suspend a Trump policy that required immigrants to wait in Mexico until their immigration hearing.

Speaker 3 And the policy hadn't been used during the Biden administration, hadn't been used for many months at the end of the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 But the court wants to put it back on immediately because of one judge in Texas that they want to uphold. And it's a weird argument because the, so first of all, it's not even up to Biden.

Speaker 3 by the way, like just to implement this. They want him to implement the policy immediately.
Even if he wanted to, he has to negotiate with the Mexican government.

Speaker 3 And the Remain in Mexican policy depends on the Mexican government agreeing. So the Mexican president, Lopez Obrador, could just say no, and then they can't do anything.

Speaker 3 So it's like weird to me that the Trump Supreme Court's ingenious plan to stop immigration is to put Mexico in charge of our immigration policy.

Speaker 3 That's like some next-level racist jiu-jitsu.

Speaker 3 And the same people that are mad that there aren't enough workers willing to work at low wages are trying to make it harder to get more workers willing to work at low wages into the country.

Speaker 3 This makes me think that the right wing, apropos of our earlier discussion about put-ons, that the right wing was an elaborate plan by left-wing performance artists to infiltrate the American state by pretending to be the most incompetent fascist ever in order to accidentally drive up wages by letting 600,000 Americans die of COVID and then stopping immigration.

Speaker 3 Maybe Trump was the Kaiser Zose of raising the minimum wage.

Speaker 3 And we spent all this time worrying about the threat of Russia undermining,

Speaker 3 but half the U.S. used to be Mexico.
And it would be amazing if the result of that was that they took it back.

Speaker 3 Trump threatened that there would be taco trucks at every corner. And seriously, I f with taco trucks.
I'm super into it.

Speaker 2 But I mean, in terms of the history of America, I mean, America was founded on an eviction, you know, the eviction of

Speaker 2 the British. So, you know, surely this is something you should be you should be clinging to.
I mean, this is like, you you know, the right to bear arms.

Speaker 2 These are these kind of curious 18th century phrases that, you know, it is your right as an American to willfully misinterpret to the disbenefit of people today in order to commune with your founding fathers.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 Deeply unpatriotic of you, NATO.

Speaker 3 I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 And just in terms of the Supreme Court, as I mentioned, these three justices appointed by Trump, giving a six to three Conservative majority. Is it starting to look like

Speaker 2 putting the future of American lawmaking in the hands of people appointed by a certifiable lunatic might not be long-term a sound strategy?

Speaker 3 The jury is still out.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 And will, under this court, never be allowed to return.

Speaker 2 One final piece of

Speaker 2 American news.

Speaker 2 Havana syndrome has been rearing its head again, NATO. I know

Speaker 2 this is a topic close to your heart. Can you just explain what Havana syndrome is?

Speaker 3 Yeah, sure. So Vice President Kamala Harris was delayed on an official visit to Vietnam because of suspicions of this Havana syndrome.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the Havana syndrome began, so named because it began affecting diplomats and spies at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba in 2017, prompting President Trump to close the embassy.

Speaker 3 Mark, you may not know this about me.

Speaker 3 Immediately after that, I moved to Havana with my family. So

Speaker 3 I was living in Havana when all this was happening. At the time, they called it sonic attacks.

Speaker 3 And the Cubans were so insistent that they were not doing anything to the Americans that they invited the FBI to come investigate.

Speaker 3 And you have to realize what a big deal it is for the Cuban government to invite the intelligence service of a country trying to overthrow them to come investigate.

Speaker 3 It would be like a cheesecake inviting me to investigate its shortbread cookie crust.

Speaker 3 A gutsy move if you want to survive. And so, the

Speaker 2 invited ISIS to come and investigate, we've got a really, really difficult problem, and we've asked for ISIS to send its best detectives.

Speaker 2 Oh, that would make the greatest reality TV show that we've ever recognized.

Speaker 3 Sherlock Holmes, ISIS Edition.

Speaker 2 Moving on to Britain news now. And

Speaker 2 well, exciting news from the Prime Minister,

Speaker 2 Mark, who, as we've documented on this esteemed podcast of historical record, swore the hypocritic oath on taking office, whereby he undertook not to be prevented from saying or doing things for fear of being accused of hypocrisy.

Speaker 2 And now, obviously, people don't really mean oaths, but he has really embraced his hypocritic oath as Prime Minister. I mean, Boris Johnson is to hypocrisy what whales are to plankton murdering.

Speaker 2 murdering it's just his nature he doesn't even think about it it just happens in spectacular quantities oh yeah sorry yeah no no this is a this is

Speaker 2 just a marvellous little quote from him from this week because there's a there's a sort of benefits ceiling and it went up a little bit over the course of the pandemic and he it's been removed again because uh the claimants can't be continued claiming this sort of extra bit that they were getting in the in the pandemic and so on but there was a marvellous thing he said because I prefer that people increase their wealth through their own efforts and not through handout.

Speaker 2 Not through handouts. Boris Johnson,

Speaker 2 his teeth were probably given to him by a bloody wealthy donor. There's nothing.

Speaker 2 This man had, it's only weeks ago that he was being investigated because he had 200,000 pounds, 200,000 pounds to spend on on doing up his flat that was already the flat where the bloody prime minister lived.

Speaker 2 So it wasn't some shithole with all mold creeping across the corner and mushrooms and earwigs everywhere.

Speaker 2 How do you spend £200,000 on doing up a flat?

Speaker 2 Are the bloody the wallpaper, the bathroom tiles made of Arsenal season tickets and they get Beyonce round to do the electrics and the bloody, all the plastering was Rockford cheese bought from a bloody farmer's market and the water's bloody pumped through by some device made by Heston Blumenthal or something.

Speaker 2 And instead of a doorbell, they've got a real-life opera singer, and you press her on the nose and she sings the magic flute. How the f do you spend all that?

Speaker 2 And then he wouldn't say where the money was coming from. And it ended up, it was a bloody handout.
It was given to him by a Tory bloody lord called Lord Brownlow.

Speaker 2 And I thought he must just think, well, why can't he? If claimants are in need of

Speaker 2 finance, they should do what I do. And presumably that he thinks that they just go, when they're at the launderette, just ask the woman who does the service wash, can you give me £52,000

Speaker 2 for wallpaper? And that's how you get wealth through your own efforts. Ixo facto bogus vivendi coitus interruptus

Speaker 2 so just to read between the lines mark you are suggesting perhaps that Boris Johnson and David Cameron have not found their own personal success through sweat, talent, toil and meritocracy.

Speaker 2 Is that well?

Speaker 2 Does it really amount to sort of, you know, this is

Speaker 2 the way this system has worked. You work hard and you show a bit of acumen and a bit of initiative and up the ladder you rise.
And these... They're idiots.

Speaker 2 If they were in any other, if they worked in the car wash or something, people would be going, oh, for f ⁇ 's sake, what are you doing?

Speaker 2 What are you

Speaker 2 doing? You've sponged the wrong place. You've sponged the building instead of the car, you idiot.
What did you learn at school? How to stick me cock in a pig's mouth?

Speaker 2 Well, that's not going to help you.

Speaker 2 Well, this does feel like this episode's becoming a competition.

Speaker 2 Who's politicians? Oh, shit. And it's tight.
It's tight. I would.
In fact, I'd swap with Mayan Ma. I don't know who I wouldn't swap with.

Speaker 2 they should buy him shouldn't they in the transfer window and a cheeky little bid has come in from britain for the military dictator of myanmar

Speaker 3 i i i feel like our countries are in a race to uh see who can be first to single-handedly demolish the myth of white superiority

Speaker 2 yes

Speaker 2 well long since long since past here

Speaker 2 So Boris Johnson, as you suggested, has floated to the top of the political pond by clinging to a turd of privilege. But

Speaker 2 it is very extraordinary, this idea of people's wages rising through their efforts rather than handouts. That link between wages and effort is at best tenuous.

Speaker 2 Compare, for example, a nurse versus the CEO of a FTSE 100 listed company. I mean, it's fair to say that the CEO does not work,

Speaker 2 does not try 120 times harder than a nurse.

Speaker 2 Now, NATO, as a union representative, have you ever told the workers that you represent that if they just put in you know a thousand percent more effort they could be waltzing home with ten times their current pay packet and just pull your finger out

Speaker 3 right yeah no i uh that's why i usually tell them that the best thing that they could do is to go on strike and shut these motherfuckers down

Speaker 3 that that that uh this is this is uh you know i'm i'm rebuilding marxist labor theory of value in the streets which is

Speaker 3 You don't have your money because someone else has it. And fortunately, we know his name and we can walk to his house right now.

Speaker 2 Not just, yeah, just put it in, put it in a bit harder for the next 30.

Speaker 2 Um, Britain is running out of European lorry drivers. Uh, Mark, as our

Speaker 2 Horlidge correspondent, are there any possible reasons why in Britain post-Brexit there are fewer people coming from the EU to do the job?

Speaker 2 But I know, I don't know, it's an absolute puzzle. I mean, we have a perfectly fair, reasonable rep referendum on brexit during which one of the main arguments from the leave campaign is

Speaker 2 bastard foreign

Speaker 2 working bastards coming over here in our country we're better off with that and all that and and you know then certain people bloody pick up on that builders and that you know i used to love the arguments from builders that go thing is all the remaining polished builders come over here we can't keep up because because

Speaker 2 they'll say to someone, we'll come round on a Wednesday, and then they come round on a Wednesday. We can't keep up with that, can we?

Speaker 2 So the suggestion has come that

Speaker 2 these haulage companies hire more British lorry drivers, but then the problem is that it takes some time to train the lorry drivers and to get the license to drive

Speaker 2 these vehicles. But I mean, Mark, I mean, should you need a special license to drive a 25-tonne lorry if you are British? Because surely being British is license enough in itself.

Speaker 2 I mean, being a member of the nation that has transported more goods around the world than any other, disclaimer, fact may be false, is that not proof that you can handle a five-axle articulated lorry?

Speaker 2 I think so. I think if you can ride one of those little Valo motor things that the Parisians sent us, that people are now sort of,

Speaker 2 you know, those things that go on pavements and in the road and manage to upturn. They upturn lorries.
That's probably, that's probably dealt with about a thousand of them.

Speaker 2 No, you know, those, and they go through the co-op and through your house. And, you know, those annoying people.
I think if you can ride one of those,

Speaker 2 that's probably enough, isn't it? Or a golf buggy. Golf buggy, yeah, because that's got a bit of stuff on the back sometimes.
Yeah, just clubs.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it can't be much to a lorry, can it?

Speaker 2 There's red tape. Red tape that says that you need some vague understanding of how gears work before driving a 20-ton lorry up the m6

Speaker 2 that's holding us back as a nation pallets um the business secretary quasi quoting has rejected calls to relax immigration rules claiming that it would be a short-term temporary solution for sake isn't that what politics is all about

Speaker 2 short-term temporary solutions are the reason we left the eu in the first place to get away from a long-term lasting solution to the thorny issue of Europe killing each other and industrial numbers every one or in an unusually chilled out century two generations and

Speaker 2 also you know we we voted for brexit in order to take back control of the controls we already controlled anyway but more so I think but we did not vote for Brexit to bring an end to the God-given British right to filch useful people from other countries when we can't be asked to generate enough useful people ourselves whatever happens to be required at the time whether it's doctors surgeons lorry drivers, number four batsmen, or donors to political parties.

Speaker 2 Now, that is our right, our right to find what we need from the world.

Speaker 2 In other British

Speaker 2 political news, some very exciting news about Michael Gove, who we've discussed

Speaker 2 in various bugles over the years.

Speaker 2 He has been seen,

Speaker 2 quotes, dancing alone in an Aberdeen nightclub whilst quotes merry um now

Speaker 2 I mean it's

Speaker 2 this is this is just not a headline I expected to see Mark Michael Gove dancing alone in a nightclub uh I mean is it a sign of the end times do we think

Speaker 2 I've got a terrible feeling this is

Speaker 2 gonna be good for him right

Speaker 2 isn't it Doesn't it make him look vaguely human, which he isn't?

Speaker 2 Yes. I mean, it could be...
I mean, I guess is Michael Gove dancing alone publicly in a nightclub better than Michael Gove dancing in the privacy of his own dungeon,

Speaker 2 as he normally does.

Speaker 2 I mean, I guess it would be more worrying if he was dancing not alone. That would make it

Speaker 2 really concerning. Well, his wife's left him, isn't he? So I suppose.

Speaker 3 It means that it sounds like he is more fun in a nightclub than, say, Andy Saltzman, who I can't imagine dancing in any capacity in the nightclub.

Speaker 2 No, I don't. No, I don't know.
My nightclub stats are pretty poor, to be honest.

Speaker 2 Not many visits, not a lot of dancing.

Speaker 3 My favorite part of the Michael.

Speaker 3 I don't know anything about this person. I don't even know what Aberdeen is, but I read the story.

Speaker 3 My favorite part of the whole thing

Speaker 3 in the article describing Michael Gove dancing alone in the nightclub is that it's that the article said that his arms occasionally swung in time to the music.

Speaker 3 Like he was hitting every six beat or something.

Speaker 2 Yes, I mean, it's a, it's an understandably upsetting concept for many people, Gove dancing. It's an image that, frankly, is now scarred into the subconscious of all who've seen it.

Speaker 2 It's just something that doesn't seem right, like a pole dancing pope or indeed a nightclub DJ becoming a cabinet minister, which is sort of the flip side of that.

Speaker 2 There are reports unsubstantiated that he claimed he didn't have to pay the £5 entry fee to get in because he's Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Speaker 2 There are other reports also unsubstantiated that when he started dancing, the faces of everyone else in the nightclub melted and their harrowed screaming souls evaporated into the ether.

Speaker 2 That is just a rumour we should emphasise. It's not the first time a prominent Conservative has appeared at a surprising music venue.

Speaker 2 Eerily reminiscent, Mark, of course, when Enoch Powell threw his underpants onto the stage at a small faces gig in the late 1960s and made a call-me sign at Steve Marriott, or when Norman Tebbit punched sex pistols from a Paul Cook in the face at a gig at the Hundred Club in 1976 while shouting, I've never felt so alive.

Speaker 2 And who can forget Margaret Thatcher, miming along to Sister Sledge's He's the Greatest Dancer in a top of the pops recording shortly before the 1979 general election in which she became Prime Minister, viewed as a crucial moment in winning over the electorally important disco fan vote.

Speaker 2 yeah, I think New Labour probably as well. They were very, they were very nightclubby, weren't they? Peter Mandelson and people like that on top of that.
But it's funnier when it's these, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Pretty Patel.

Speaker 2 All right, give it up for my main man. You all know him as

Speaker 2 Gavin Williamson, the notorious G-A-V-I-N coming at you.

Speaker 2 In sadder musical news, the Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts, as Banker's final drum,

Speaker 2 has died at the age of 80. He's hit a drum or cymbal an estimated half a billion times over the past 60 plus years, probably more or less, based on some rapid mathematics.

Speaker 2 The Stones, none of whose members went on to record Mull of Kintai or the Frog Chorus, thus giving them an overall win in their rivalry with their contemporaries, the Beatles, have managed to overcome their disappointment at never being selected as Great Britain's representative at the Eurovision Song Contest to become one of the most influential groups in the history of rock and roll.

Speaker 2 And I mean, they did try to get into Eurovision, despite penning such classics as Gimme Shelter, Sympathy for the Devil, and the Roly, Rolly, Roly, Rolly Stone, theme tune for a kids' cartoon that was never released after the incident during the filming of the video, in which a five-ton boulder crashed into a car showroom in the Italian Alps and destroyed a vintage Alfa Romeo once driven by Alberto Ascari.

Speaker 2 I digress. Anyway, Watts was

Speaker 2 one of the most, I guess, influential rock drummers of all time. Marky, are you a Stones? Are you a Stones fan? Yeah, I am.
And yeah, you're right about Charlie Watson.

Speaker 2 He was a jazz drummer. And

Speaker 2 that's one of the reasons it was so

Speaker 2 one of the many reasons why I think the Stones are so extraordinary. In fact, Gimme Shelt is a classic example of it because

Speaker 2 it's not classic rock drumming.

Speaker 2 So it's

Speaker 2 not that I can possibly be technical, but it's sort of

Speaker 2 off the beat. So

Speaker 2 it sounds a bit peculiar. It's a very, very, very intricate song.

Speaker 2 What I thought was just, oh, when he died, and I was sort of seeing all the comments from people, and most people just, you know, many, many people have gone along to the stadium shows.

Speaker 2 I've never been to one, which I think is the most stupid thing. I've never got gone.

Speaker 2 Probably, because from about in about 1984, when they first started doing these massive 50,000 seat stadium shows, I thought, oh, I don't want to see them. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 They're too old and past it now.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 they are these shows everyone who's been to one pretty much says they are amazing except you get the snobbery that you get in any sort of culture and people going oh no that's no good it's all soulless you don't you can't enjoy music if 50 000 other people are having a marvelous time as well that ruins it to really see it you needed to see them in a scout hut in penrith in 1961 a year before they were formed, when they couldn't afford any instruments.

Speaker 2 And Charlie Watts used to bang a Brazil nut on a dart ball and Nick Jagger didn't have any microphones. So he had to just write down satisfaction on a sheet of paper and hand it out to people.

Speaker 2 And you had to whisper it yourself. That's when you really get to enjoy it.
Oh, these

Speaker 2 people. And it's the left who are the worst.
They can't stand anything being popular. It's just

Speaker 2 awful.

Speaker 2 Well, if you want to see the Bugle Live in a non-stadium venue before we hit the stadium circuit in an estimated two to three years' time, there is a Bugle Live show on Tuesday, the 7th of September at the Underbellies London Wonderground venue in Earls Court.

Speaker 2 Tickets available on the internet. Chris, have we put a link on the website or not? We have put a link on our new website, which is now live.
Oh, yeah. New website.

Speaker 3 andy how would you feel if you were standing on stage and you got to hear you you got to say where and hear 50 000 people say in one voice in the bin

Speaker 2 oh yeah with lights and stuff and there was a hundred foot high andy zaltzman on the screen

Speaker 2 Yes, matter of time. Matter of time.

Speaker 3 There was a stage show with actual hair.

Speaker 2 And then there was loads of people who were listening to the first ones going it's rubbish now you won't want to go and see it now you had to go and see the third one and the sound didn't work and it was just silent it was much better then that was just me sitting on a bench complaining about the world

Speaker 2 Well, that brings us to the end of this bugle. Enormous thanks to Nato and Mark.
Nato, any shows coming up people might like to see you at?

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 3 As usual,

Speaker 3 please follow me on Twitter at NATO Green, Instagram, Mr. Nato Green.
I have a couple albums out. The best way to support the arts is on Bandcamp.

Speaker 3 Check out the Whiteness album on Bandcamp or wherever comedy can be streamed and downloaded.

Speaker 3 If you are in Northern California and you want to see me live, I will be appearing on September 19th, Sunday at the 40th Annual Comedy Day.

Speaker 3 It's a tradition where we have five hours of free stand-up comedy in the park.

Speaker 3 It's like our company picnic comedy festival that we do every year. So looking forward to the return of comedy day at Robin Williams Meadow on September 19th.

Speaker 2 Mark, you have your own podcast now. Yeah, I'll do a little bit of a sort of, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 This doesn't sound like a rival, you know, like when someone, one of the people in the Godfather breaks away to form their own family.

Speaker 2 Yes, it's called What the F star, star, star is going on. And

Speaker 2 yeah, we've done 10. We've done 10, which puts us only 4,103 behind you.
So if we do eight a day for the next 30 years, does that

Speaker 2 work the right direction? Yeah, so there's that. And then, oh, and I've got a book coming out.
And

Speaker 2 one of my shows about towns will be, there'll be another series of that soon. And

Speaker 2 stuff like that.

Speaker 2 There you go. Do

Speaker 2 buy, stroke, go to all of those. And the new live show, 7th of September.
Buy your tickets instantly now.

Speaker 2 I will be on tour next March, delayed from

Speaker 2 what I've mentioned. I'll be going November, Stroke, December.
It's now going to happen in March, almost certainly.

Speaker 2 So, further details to come.

Speaker 2 In the meantime, we will play you out with some lies about our premium-level subscribers to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme or to make a one-off or occurring donation of any size.

Speaker 2 Go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Speaker 2 Travis Karrata is not particularly excited about the prospect of living in an extraterrestrial colony. I can't help thinking it's not going to be all it's cracked up to be, says Travis.

Speaker 2 Everyone who ends up there is going to be smug as hell about having escaped to a new planet, which I think would pull pretty rapidly.

Speaker 2 And I don't know what the food would be like, but I reckon it's unlikely to be be as good as here.

Speaker 2 Samantha Lazelle is also not likely to be volunteering enthusiastically to be on the first spaceship to blast off to another world.

Speaker 2 I reckon the novelty would wear off pretty fast once it became clear that the infrastructure will take some time to match what we enjoy on this planet.

Speaker 2 And I'm all about the infrastructure, me, continues Samantha. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

Speaker 2 It's what makes our species so much better than the others, with all due respect to the termites and bees, who have, I will admit, some serious infrastructural chops.

Speaker 2 Joshua Summerhays, however, does not share this skepticism and is prepared to lay aside some lingering concerns about it taking potentially many, many generations to get wherever it is we're going.

Speaker 2 I get a bit bored after three hours on a train, to be honest, Andy, says Joshua. Joshua, however, would love to be in the first batch of humans to arrive at a new far distant home for humanity.

Speaker 2 What a great opportunity to develop some new recipes with whatever crazy fruit and vegetables we find, enthuses Joshua. I'm not eating alien, though.
Almost certainly not.

Speaker 2 Gemma Down would be right alongside Joshua on the rocket.

Speaker 2 I'm not that fussed about living on another planet, says Gemma, but I reckon in the time before Batch 2 arrives, we could play some awesome practical jokes on them, like all learning Klingon, or building a 100-metre votive statue to former child star Mickey Rooney, or all wearing 18th-century clothes, or potentially getting someone to dress up like Amelia Earhart and putting her in charge of the whole gaffe.

Speaker 2 Something to really make them think something weird is going on.

Speaker 2 And finally, Tim Strickland is undecided on whether to apply for the mission. Let's face it, says Tim, anyone who's ever watched a sci-fi movie knows these things aren't a cakewalk in the cake park.

Speaker 2 I mean, if it's not alien mega beasts eating you for breakfast, or surprise volcanoes belching out poisonous lava, or the new sun running out of fire, the chances are some tool in the crew is going to try to turn the whole thing into his own personal fiefdom.

Speaker 2 And I can't abide fiefdoms, so put me down as a maybe.

Speaker 2 Here endeth this week's lies. Goodbye.