Sh*t away Scottie (4201)

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Oh,

bugglers.

Sorry that

on my laptop is not working.

That's the on between the W and R.

Not idal for podcast recording in English to but honst.

I'll give it a whack.

That's better.

On with Sal

better.

I'm Andy Altsman.

And I'm broadcasting

live from the shed.

Oh,

that's good news.

That last one came back.

I was about to do a bit about Dracula learning to do basic mathematics.

Could have been very awkward for a family show like this.

Anyway, welcome to Bugle issue 4201.

I'm Andy Zoltzman and never let it be said that

thank you.

It's Bugle as I said, issue 200 4201.

I'm here in London and the same cannot be said for either of my two guests today.

Both coming to you live from the world's most southerly hemisphere.

From Australia, within that hemisphere to be precise.

Returning for the first time in two weeks.

It's Alice Fraser and for the first time in four years the wonderful Sammy Shah.

Welcome to both of you.

Particularly Sammy,

well it's been too long.

It's great to have you back on the show.

How How are you?

Thank you so much for having me back, Andy.

I figured my last time I was on

four years ago now, I offended you by doing a pun run

and had therefore been iced out of the show.

And I appreciate you giving me another opportunity.

I shouldn't be more respectful this time around.

And, well, you are in Melbourne.

I am indeed, yeah.

Lockdown City, as we call it here.

We are the masters of lockdown.

We have perfected lockdown as an art, as a Zen Buddhist retreat approach to the COVID situation.

And we're doing great.

I mean, this was lockdown number five here in Melbourne,

which if you do something five times, I think this is a Malcolm Gladwell rule.

Now we are experts at it automatically.

So, yeah, we're just rocking this lockdown.

Unlike my friends in Sydney,

who are a mess, let's be honest.

Yes, of all the cities in australia and their stereotypical characteristics i don't think melbourne needed to be the one that was sitting at home writing sad poetry

that was a skill set they already possessed but for now sydney is developing that ability uh and well i mean how are things in in sydney alice i mean because you've are you in is it a fifth lockdown for sydney's or i mean is is this becoming competitive between australia's two big cities and you need canberra in between to you know average things out

No, so this is our second city-wide lockdown.

We've been doing the very pinpoint precision of the lockdowns up until this point, where it seems to have

gone wide.

Right.

And our defence wasn't good enough.

Well,

that's the only sport metaphors I know.

We'll no doubt talk about this a bit more later in the show, but here everything's fine.

We've opened up with barely a third of a million new cases a week.

So

just different approaches, different approaches.

I guess

history will probably be a pretty aggressive judge of both of them.

We are recording on the 22nd of July 2021.

On this day in 1894, the first ever motor race was held in France between the cities of Paris and Rouen after someone had a really great idea that you could put advertising logos on clothing and needed some kind of means to make that worth doing.

Officially it was a race for horseless carriages.

It included a one and a half hour break for lunch.

A very very French event.

And the average speed of the first car across the line was a dizzying 12 miles an hour.

But that didn't win the trophy because the trophy was given instead of the car which, quotes, came closest to the ideal.

Now, I mean, that might be the massive lunch break, the sort of philosophical end to the race.

Was this the most French event in history?

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

This week, moths.

It's International Moth Week this week.

So we have a full pull-out section about moths in which we ask, seriously, what's a fing point of moths?

They're like a cross between an unfinished butterfly and the remnant of a disappointing biscuit.

The moth is acknowledged even by the International Society for the Promotion of Moths as, quotes, a bit drab as insects go, and frankly, one of the many species that the world could do without.

Moths are, of course, most famous for eating people's clothes, but why?

No f ⁇ ing reason.

I think they're just jealous.

And also we look at great moths in history.

Jealous or horny, Eddie.

I mean it's so hard to separate those two, isn't it, Alice?

So often.

History shows that.

We look at great moths in history.

The 13th century Flemish Prince Bertrand the Strange owned a collection of 10,000 moths and would challenge his courtiers to correctly name them all or face immediate execution.

In the 1950s, pop legend Elsie May Sludget shore her career nosedive after eating a moth live on stage during an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show during a controversially provocative performance of her Billboard number one single, If You Dare to Fly Away.

And inspired by the Scottish king Robert the Bruce and his battle-predicting spider, early 19th century British general Sir Garmond Falhouk decided to abandon a planned attack on a hill fort in Andalusia during the Peninsular War after watching a moth unsuccessfully try to fly out of a window for 45 minutes.

It was a sign that all things end in failure, said Falhook to the subsequent government inquiry, without adequately explaining why he'd spent the next fortnight in Torre Molinos drinking Sambuka slammers.

And of course we look at the Tiger Moth aircraft, renowned as an aircraft in the 1930s.

But it has emerged that the origin of the tiger moth was from an attempt by former US President and enthusiastic wildlife slayer Teddy Roosevelt to breed a flying tiger that would be more of a challenge for him to shoot.

Roosevelt thought the unpredictable flutter patterns of the moth, plus the camouflage and ferocity of the tiger, would be, quote, a thrilling combination of natural wonders to savagely bring to death in great quantities.

And, of course, a quick feature on the Miami Moths, the shortest-lived major minor league franchise ever, which went out of business after appropriate enough, just over a week.

It seemed appropriate, said the owner, Crabon Hargelli.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week: Bugle Olympic special.

Yes, it's about to happen, probably.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics 2021 have, well, in fact, already kind of begun, sort of as we recall.

Some pre-opening ceremony events have already taken place, early matches in football and softball.

And the Olympics will soon be fully underway, unless they're not.

They'll be up and running unless they get disqualified after a full start or trip over their shoelaces and lie crying on the ground saying, why, why, why?

It's amazing that here we are.

We're recording on the Thursday.

The Olympic ceremony is tomorrow.

And no one seems to quite know if these Olympics will genuinely happen.

And I mean, even if they do, they are going to be the glummest sporting event in history.

What's the excitement levels in the sport-loving nation of Australia?

I mean, we are passionately excited.

We are on the edges of our seats.

We are watching that 90s cinematic trope.

Will they or won't they?

And why would they?

Sammy is

locked down in Melbourne.

I guess, you know, wall-to-wall sports got to be

a bit of a boon.

And Australia is a great Olympic nation.

Melbourne hosted it back in 56.

Sydney hosted it in 2000.

And, well, just this week, it's been announced that Brisbane is to host the 2032 Games.

I mean, what's the reaction?

I mean, we should say that Brisbane beat off strong competition from, let me just check the list, absolutely nowhere else whatsoever to land the

hosting rights, which are due to take place, as I said, in 2032, which is scheduled to be a week after Australia finishes giving COVID vaccines to the over 50s, I think, on current rates.

So what's the mood in Australia after this news?

There's just remarkable amounts of joy here, excitement.

There's one question that a lot of people have right now is: well, Brisbane is the only city that has been a contender for the 2032 Olympics, and it turns out that five people voted against even them.

So why do five people hate Brisbane?

What the f has Brisbane ever done?

Why do you think there was so little competition for the 2032?

Because it used to be that there were rafts of cities all wanting to bid for the Olympics.

I mean is it perhaps an unwillingness of cities around the world now to be saddled with billions of dollars of debt, a 72,000 seat Greco-Roman wrestling arena, a Randy Albatross of broken political promises around their necks and the nagging sense that things will never be quite as fun after the Olympics ever again?

So I mean it's almost

it's not just the money, it's the sense that

that'll be the peak.

There's nothing to look forward to.

I speak from London here.

I think it's because 2032 as a year is so far into a future that we know is not going to exist that at this point you might as well be talking about the year 3032 when it comes to having the next Olympics.

I can't plan things till next Thursday.

Every single plan I made for next week has been cancelled.

2032, sure, book whatever you want for 2032.

That's the year I I booked all my meetings, my tax accountant meeting, my meetings with my school, daughter's school parent teacher.

2032 is not a real year.

I think it's possible that they've been scared off by the plethora of bad things that have been happening to Tokyo, seemingly the best place to possibly hold the Olympics being very organized and orderly.

But after losing like seemingly every single person in a leadership position to the vagaries of them having done or said horrendous shit in the past.

I feel like people just don't want their histories raked up with that kind of vigour.

The Queensland Premier, Anastasia Palaszchuk, had said she would not attend the opening ceremony in Tokyo, where she's been for the announcement of the bidding process, because of,

I forget the reason.

It might be that was it that she wanted to finish a book?

No, chess club.

No, no, no, it was that massive global pandemic.

That's what.

So she wasn't going to go to the opening ceremony in Tokyo.

She said she would instead watch it from her room.

And

John Coates got, well, as I said, a little on the

smug man at Seesaw.

He said, you are going to the opening ceremony.

I am still the deputy chair of the candidature leadership group.

So far as I understand, there will be an opening and closing ceremony in 2032.

And all of you have got to get along there and understand the tradition parts of that and what's involved in an opening ceremony.

None of you are staying behind in your rooms, all right.

Maybe not quite in that tone of voice.

But I mean, this is

not a great start to Brisbane as a showcase of more modern Australia, was it?

It's a very Queensland thing to do.

One of the things you have to understand about Queensland is it is what's often been described as the Florida of Australia.

It is the kind of state, if ethnicity is, if Queenslanders can be considered an ethnicity, maybe it is time for an ethnic cleansing is something that we've often said about Queensland.

And this kind of like mansplaining overreaction from a person whose job title is literally deputy chair of the candidature leadership group, which might as well, he's one step above sundry custodian when it comes to useless job titles, telling the premier how to behave.

Alice, it was quite a curious message to send out.

This none of you are staying behind and hiding in your rooms.

A curious message to send out to a nation, 50% of whom are currently in lockdown.

Yes, I'm afraid that Australians are equally split between being annoyed that she's going, being annoyed that she said she wouldn't go, being annoyed that she didn't go and not realizing that she did go,

and just generally being annoyed at problems in their own personal lives that they are now projecting onto the wider political landscape because that's the only way we know how to express our emotions in these troubling times.

And it's that or punch your toaster.

Back to Tokyo 2020-2021, as it's, I forget what it's officially called now.

It's been a hugely troubled games for obvious reasons.

And

to the extent where now sponsors are getting wary of being associated with top-level sport.

Now, generally, sponsors want to be associated with top-level sport, whatever the cost, financially and to the ethics and spirit of sports and humanity in general.

But they're now getting

very worried about how unpopular these games have become with the people of Japan as the pandemic continues to muddle its way around the world.

And these sponsors are starting to vault out of the arena like Sergei Bubka escaping from jail.

Can you think of a more sad sporting event that's ever taken place?

I mean, it's terribly sad to watch these sponsors jumping ship.

Toyota, among others, they're downplaying there.

They're not showing up.

They're not coming to watch.

And it's almost like, Andy, they don't care about humanity running faster, jumping higher and achieving greater things.

All they care about is the swathes of people who will go and buy overpriced merchandise.

As if trying to set the tone for this was not difficult enough for the opening ceremony.

Preparations have been further smithereened today, Thursday, as we recall, when the show's director was sacked over a joke about the Holocaust he made on a TV comedy show back in the 1990s.

Now,

once again, this is a major failure in the initial vetting process, isn't it?

Because you would have thought these days that process would involve a question to the director of your Olympic opening ceremony along the lines of, did you ever make a joke about the Holocaust on a 1990s TV comedy show?

Yes or no?

But obviously that vetting did not happen.

It's almost like Japan's painfully insular tradition of hierarchical rigidity and the unquestioned authority of those in power makes for a slightly uncomfortable mix with modern public transparency culture.

If you were designing an opening ceremony for this games, how would you express everything that's come to be associated?

I mean, I can't really see how it can involve anything apart from getting 3,000 dancers forming into a giant teardrop and then slowly trickling down a giant inflatable globe.

It does make sense that there is a bit of controversy, though.

Yeah, because there is, you know, we've got the Japanese organizing the entire Olympic ceremony and hosting it in Tokyo.

And the head of the Olympics, of the IOC, the president, is Thomas Bach, who is a former Olympic fencer and German lawyer.

And the last time Germany and Japan collaborated over anything, a lot of people got really upset.

And so maybe this time around, our reaction is naive on our part, and we should have anticipated a lot more controversy.

I like that as a summary of the second war.

A lot of people got really upset.

Nicely down, downplayed.

One of the swimmers, Alicia Chaws on Facebook, and this really shows the lengths that athletes go to to succeed in top-level sport.

She wrote, imagine dedicating five years of your life and striving for another start at the most important sporting event, giving up your private life and work, sacrificing your family, and your dedication results in a total flop.

And I mean, sacrificing your family.

I mean, it's a bit old, but it shows the dedication, doesn't it?

If you want to work, I mean, it's always worked for Agamemnon back in the the day, of course, of the Trojan War, though.

I'm going to guess it would be quite a good strategy on the start blocks of a swimming race to just put your opponents off if you suddenly start performing a human sacrifice.

Then you think you might get an advantage when

the race starts.

That funny pingy sound sends the swimmers off.

Everyone's looking at something.

What the f are they doing in lane eight?

There are some new sports in London 2012, the Tokyo 2020-21 version.

We will give you a rundown now on these new sports that will be entertaining you on your TV screens over the next couple of weeks, as long as everything isn't cancelled.

Speed climbing.

Well, I mean, this is another sport that will have other species on the planet muttering, yeah, well done, humans.

You want to see how it's really f ⁇ ing done?

You can also apply to that anything that involves running, swimming, jumping, unarmed fighting, hanging upside down, plummeting into water, or most forms of vaulting.

But speed climbing is, well, that's coming in.

And I mean, Alice, you mentioned just before we came on air that

as lockdown continues, you felt like climbing up the walls.

Now you are going to literally be able to see people climbing up walls at incredible speed is this good or bad for you as a Sydney I mean this is so good for me it's speed climbing surfing karate and skateboarding are the four new sports so if you wanted to be cool in the 90s slap on a hypercolor t-shirt and send your yo-yo around the world this is the Olympics for you

Of course, it makes me wonder what's going to happen when the Olympics come to Brisbane.

What will the new sports be other than hat-wearing ballroom, which is where you do a dance in the sticky heat to give your testicles space to breathe, and

trying to run away from a crocodile, the sport in which only one person is the winner?

Well, there was a Monty Python sketch in which they had Olympic being eaten by a crocodile.

And, you know, like so many comedy sketches, it may become reality

in Brisbane.

It is important, though, that now with surfing and climbing and skateboarding and karate, they have finally catered to the oft-neglected hipster barista with a man-bun demographic that has been left out of the Olympics for so long.

The surfing is part of a new Olympic scheme to introduce sporting events which have featured in popular songs which have claimed that everybody was participating in them.

So hence, following the Beach Boys-inspired addition of surfing to the 2020 Games, Paris 2024 will include kung fu fighting and Los Angeles 2028 will see Talking return as a sport.

Of course, this began in the Winter Olympics.

The skeleton event was introduced at the Winter Olympics in 2002 after the success of the REM song Everybody Hurts, which of course was short for hurtles, but was abbreviated for rhythm.

Moving on now, and another billionaire goes kind of into almost into space to watch the world burn below him news now.

And well, it's been another great week for billionaires pointlessly going sort of into space.

We asked a couple of months ago on the bugle, what does the man who has everything get for the man who has everything?

And the answer was the yacht that Jeff Bezos bought himself that needed another yacht just to work.

Well, being the ceaseless investigative journalist that he is, Bezos has now added the question: where does the man who has everything take the man who has everything?

No doubt we'll have high, how,

when, and I'm not sure he'll get around to why because there are no satisfactory answers to that.

But the answer is to that.

He's took himself kind of into space.

Alice, you are our billionaires firing themselves upwards correspondent.

It's another great moment for pointless expenditure and things flying up into space.

Yes, indeed, Andy.

Jeff Bezos and his self-satirizing rocket have decided to add a cowboy hat to the post-fleeting flight press conference for maximum something.

Bezos said that the space flight reinforced his commitment to fighting climate change, that going into space and seeing the fragility of the earth below him reinforced his commitment to find it's like those people who when they have a child say I had a child and it gave me the revelation that you know it's not all about me and it's like it took that it took that to make you realize why do you think Sam Bezos the world's richest man financially if not spiritually has unnecessarily used a chunk of his unnecessary wealth to fly into space in a giant penis

Let's call it what it was, for basically just long enough to take a piss in zero gravity before then plopping back down to earth.

Look, Andy, I've been divorced.

I've been divorced twice, in fact, and it's not fun.

You do crazy stuff, you dye your hair blonde, you get a fitness instructor who convinces you to start drinking protein shakes, or maybe you sign up for a scuba diving course so you can finally confront your fear of shocks and then cancel the night before because you panic, even though the sign-up fees is non-refundable.

These are all hypothetical situations.

So, in that case, I do have a lot of sympathy for Bezos wearing a cartoonishy large cowboy hat and firing yourself into space in a rocket shape so obviously like a penis, it might as well have veins down its side.

That's just a cry for help.

That's all it really is.

And I mean, also, he was there.

It was so sort of unimpressively brief,

this trip, that the whole thing took 11 minutes.

And he did say at the press conference afterwards, the former Amazon boss and no-time happiness in the workplace champion of champions winner from overworked Underpaid Warehouse Staff Monthly magazine.

He said, It was a bit disappointing, to be honest.

I was hoping to be able to see all the forest fires, all the floods, all the failing crops, and all the forced migrations of the desperate seeking a viable place to live and feel like a maleficent deity.

But sadly, it wasn't really like that at all.

I can confirm, however, that the earth is probably round.

It turns out that 11 minutes of a good time is all that Bezos is capable of, which does explain his last divorce, finally.

Meanwhile, back on Earth,

well, the apocalypse continues apace.

Siberia is on fire.

There is catastrophic flooding in multiple places around the world.

Huge heat waves.

And and the BBC News, whether intentionally or not,

as they were covering the Bezos rocket launch, they also in the same sort of quarter of an hour time slot ran a story about Sudanese migrants paddling across the English Channel in inflatable rubber dinghies

in their desperation to find somewhere to live.

I mean, can you think of anything that two stories that

juxtapose more appropriately to highlight our strange and questionable priorities as a planet at the moment than those two?

Well, you know, Jeff Bezos did come back down to Earth and immediately give $100,000 to Van Jones.

So that's good.

Right.

Quite a famous news reporter.

What's he going to spend it on?

Probably good stuff.

Look, let's just assume that they're all doing these things benevolently.

I wish actually that they would do these things malevolently, because then at least we might get some results.

Even if the malevolent

went up into space and then bombed the rest of us into dust, at least we'd know once and for all what the intentions were, and there would be some change that was different from what we're currently experiencing, which is a slow death, a slow roasting death.

You're right, you're right, Sammy, you're right.

It is more depressing if we think they're doing their best.

Yeah, we've had some billionaires in space in the last two weeks, and not either of them has cackled maniacally when they've gone there.

That's a massive letdown for all humanity, you're quite right.

I feel they should leave that to Elon Musk.

I think that's funny.

I think he would think that was funny.

And it probably would be quite funny, but not as funny as it would be depressing, which I think is Elon Musk's sweet spot for comedy.

1960s blues guitarists news now and well also slightly related to COVID, Eric Clapton has announced that he will not be performing

in any venue that requires ticket holders to have had COVID vaccines.

The legendary axe wielder is

taking a curious approach to

the reopening of society.

Yes, he's released this statement, and also in the way that you know it's a legitimate statement, he released it exclusively to Italian architect and vaccine sceptic Robin Monotti Graziadei,

who put it out to the world through the reputable channels of his unverified Instagram account.

Clapton said that

he's calling it a discriminated audience if venues insist on people being vaccinated or showing a negative COVID test or proof of prior infection, which is the current plan for a lot of venues.

He's saying, unless there's provision made for all people to attend, reserve the right to cancel the show.

Clapton went on to say, I also insist that we reintroduce smallpox so that people who want to go to a concert bearing the hideous weeping flags of their independent spirit may mosh pustulantly with their co-concert goers.

I just, it's always so sad when people who are good at one thing turn out to be really, really terrible at another thing.

You know, who would have thought that impeccable guitar fingering skills and blowing your brains out with hippie bullshit in the 60s would be incompatible with logic and proportional risk assessment later down the line?

Clapton has also come out and made a statement that he's a big fan now of British politician Desmond Swain.

Swain, of course, also believes that the pandemic is overblown.

Swain has also been very publicly racist in the past.

He said he thinks blackface is just a bit of fun,

which actually makes sense when you realize that Clapton in the past has at concerts told audience members who were foreigners to leave the country and has said he was worried about Britain becoming a black colony and used a bunch of racial slurs.

It turns out the reason Eric Clapton shot the sheriff was because the sheriff wasn't white.

The thing you have to understand about Eric Clapton is it's important to note that he's freaked out at the response his body had to the vaccine, saying he expected to feel wonderful tonight.

Instead, I'm sorry, Andy, I have to do this.

Instead, he suffered the kind of pain that caused him to start, as the Kiwis say, heaven tears and heaven pains.

Tears in heaven is another song.

The thing he doesn't realize is the vaccine's response varies from person to person.

I mean, it took four years for you to come back last time.

I'm not interrupting.

I'm going down like a Viking.

Sorry.

The vaccine response varies from person to person.

It's all in the way that you use it.

He's, of course, come under a lot of criticism, and it makes sense for him to Layla for a while.

Layla, of course, thank you for that one, Andy.

I'll excuse myself now from the room.

It's worse when you explain them.

How does it feel to be?

I was disappointed with how few Eric Lapton songs I knew, by the way, and how many I had to look up.

I saw him at a charity event a few years ago.

It was a cricket charity event that I went to, and he did

played music afterwards, as he so often does.

And

sort of his theme.

We were standing about three yards away from him.

One of the greatest guitars of all time.

One of his political views and views on COVID.

It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life that I was watching Eric Clapton play as if if he was in my living room on the sofa and I turned around and the former England cricketer Alan Lamb was standing on a table waving a jacket round his head that then hit me in the eye and it was

a bizarre experience.

The freedom that Britain is now enjoying, Freedom Day as it was incorrectly named and arrogantly named by the government and certain sections of the media, on the 19th, the start of this week, basically all our COVID restrictions were released.

Masks, distancing, social gatherings, or based on the evidence of recent football tournaments, anti-social gatherings, as they should be called.

They're all now fine.

As I mentioned earlier on, we've had just a mere one-third of a million positive tests over the previous week.

I mean, how does that compare with the number of positive tests in Australia?

I think we had 120 today, which was high.

Yes.

So

in Melbourne, I believe we are at 22.

Yes.

Which is very high for us.

So, I mean, a third of a million is, I mean, we're doing better.

Like a bit more than that.

Yes.

A little bit more.

But I mean, I guess in Australia, the butterfly flaps its wings, one bat slightly coughs, and then 12 million people go into lockdown.

So it's just different different approaches to the unique chaos of COVID.

And the political strategy for the army have been much criticised for this, but

it's well constructed because they've just layer incompetence upon incompetence, inconsistency upon inconsistency, malpractice on malpractice, until people are just reduced to saying, oh, what the f is you done now?

Oh, just mean nothing to me anymore.

And it just kind of rumbles on.

And there we go.

Well, the Australian government is doing the schoolyard, why are you hitting yourself tactic of telling everyone that the only way to get out of this is to vaccinate our way out while also very cleverly not providing vaccines to us.

We also had the Prime Minister come out and make a statement that, hey, at least we're not doing as badly as New Zealand, which, by the way, is actually doing better than us in terms of vaccination rates.

So he was wrong about the one thing that he tried to say that he was right about.

Yes.

I mean, well, I mean, back here in Britain, we're sort of entering the latest of our many fingers crossed phases of this crisis.

And the government is once again channeling its inner Goldilocks and inserting Britain's collective fingers into into all the electrical sockets in the Three Bears house until they find the one that is just right.

And it turns out that, you know, Freedom Day, which has a touch of the Kim Jongs about it, whoever came up with that branding, they obviously missed out the words from responsibility because this is essentially what the government has just outsourced blame and responsibility for everything to other organisations, to people.

Sir Julius Pransbury, the Empire for Much Wittering and government minister for the wholesale abdication of responsibility, looking haggard and overworked as always these days,

issued this statement saying to the to the people of this country said do as we have neither said nor done please try not to get ill it'll probably be all right and all that vaccines

so so here we are it's um

but you mentioned uh the the uh you know australian uh prime minister uh scott morrison he has however uh cleared up uh a a story that needed clearing up um or didn't need clearing up depending on your version of uh of the story um alice you are our Prime Minister's having allegedly shat themselves in fast food outlets, correspondent.

Just bring us up to date with the latest.

Yes, Andy, this is a story that came out on the day that Melbourne went into its lockdown, that Sydney announced harsher lockdown regulations, people having to stay at home in more higher quantities and the shutting down of retail.

Scomo came out and clarified the story,

not in response to questioning, mind you, clarified the story that he had shat himself in a McDonald's in Engadine in 1997 by saying he did not in fact shoot himself in a McDonald's in Engadine in 1997 despite the plaque there claims differently

and I feel that this is not the kind of story that you would bring up to deny unless it was something that you had definitely done

It does speak to a certain lack of

quality conspiracy theories in Australia.

In America, conspiracy theories are that there's UFOs in Area 51 or the CIA killed JFK.

In Australia, the conspiracy theory is that the Prime Minister possibly shat himself in a maccaze in the 1990s.

I mean, that's, you know,

take what you got.

And, you know, only 9% of Australians are fully vaccinated.

despite all the advantages Australia has as a nation economically, as its geography,

and the control of the virus that it it managed to exert in the early months of the crisis.

But I would ask you this, as residents of Australia, would you rather have a Prime Minister who had never taken a dump in a fast food outlet, but also spanned up the most important challenge of his premiership, or a Prime Minister who took a live daily dump in a fast food outlet on national television, but could competently order a vaccine.

Which, I mean, it's quite a hard decision to make, isn't it?

Well, somebody who spent three and a half hours on the line to get a primary vaccine shot booked in for the 2nd of September, I would say, shoot away, Spunny.

He does make a lot of curry, by the way.

This is

one of the things I have to know about the Prime Minister here is that he loves making curry.

So he is, I'm no doubt, prone to shitting himself a lot more than he's likely to admit.

Well,

I think I can't think of a more appropriate story on which to bring the bugle to its summer hiatus.

I'm off on holiday for a couple of weeks, and the test matches begin.

You can listen to me on BBC's Test Match special radio coverage of that.

The Bugle will be back in August with full episodes.

At some point, we will put out sub-episodes over the next few weeks.

And there is a live bugle show on the 7th of September in London at the Underbellies London Wonderground site in Earls Court.

Chris Addison will be appearing live in person.

Alice will be appearing live via a screen

in person.

Is that the term?

And it will be also

the first live audience I've performed to in about 21 months.

So come and see me flounder around, hoping that, as people say, it is like getting back on a bike, but also failing to remember that I have always been really shit at cycling.

That is the 7th of September.

Sammy, any where else can people find your work online?

Well, I was going to say that you can find me doing comedy shows, but you really can't.

There's nothing everywhere in lockdown.

So

I suppose the best place to find me is on my Patreon, if I may be so mercenary, by saying patreon.com/slash Sammy Shah.

I put up stand-up comedy, I put up short stories, early drafts of ongoing novels and things like that.

Just a whole bunch of things that you can throw your money at me.

Throw enough money and I'll take a shit in the mackerels and I'll start

off this.

Things are dire here in Australia.

The Australian way.

I'm just trying to integrate into Australian society as best an immigrant can.

Alice, as well as The Gargle and The Last Post within the Bugle stable, where else can people find you?

People can find me on patreon.com slash Alice Fraser where I have my weekly tea salons as well as being a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts and blogs.

But you should also do do the voluntary subscription to the Bugle because I just invoiced Chris Skinner for the first time since February.

So if you're going to need it,

right?

Well, on that note, please do join our voluntary subscription scheme.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

You can join as a recurring donor or make a one-off contribution to keep this show free, flourishing, and independent.

Thank you very much for listening.

There will be output over the next few weeks and we will be back after the summer break.

Goodbye.

Hi, buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.