Bonus: Hot Rod, Dragster and a Tiny Revolution (4197a)

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle sub-episode 4197A for actually it turns out we had to take a week off this week due to Andy not quite getting his diary right.

So instead this week we have some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers, some information about a new way to support the Bugle and its stable of shows, a big old chunk from one of those shows, Tiff Stevenson's Tiny Revolutions, in which she interviews renowned podcast host, cricket statistician, fashion model and stoical media influencer Andy Zlatzmann, and we time travel back exactly a decade to any guesses, yes, 10 years ago this week, via the magical technology of the Bugle archives.

We are going to kick off shortly with some lies, and ironically that is not one of them.

Now, the right to have a falsehood about you disseminated to the entire listening universe is one of the things that marks the Bugle out from other podcasts, such as My Strange Fork, in which celebrities remember misshaped pieces of cutlery from their childhood, The Bollard, a new 150 three-part series trying to get to the bottom of a mysterious dent in a bollard by the side of the road in a sleepy English town, and What If Dennis Rodman Had Been a Potato?

Fairly explanatory show, that one, and a damn good listen.

But anyway, as you know, the Bugle is entirely funded by you, the listener, and listeners who sign sign up via thebuglepodcast.com have long enjoyed through DonorBox, which is basically like Patreon, the opportunity to get mentions on the show in the form of lies, merchandise, and most importantly, a general sense of well-being and eternal beatific bliss for supporting this fine work of art and ruthlessly factual historical documentation.

But there is now another way of supporting the show financially, a second option alongside DonorBox, through which you can, of course, make a one-off or occurring donation of whatever vastness you want.

Now, as of this week, you can also support the show directly via Apple Podcasts.

In brief, it's an alternative way to make a monthly donation.

Unlike DonorBox, you won't be able to get special subscriber merchandise or lies on the show out of it, but you will get to hear the full Bugle family of shows advert-free.

You subscribe simply by going into Apple Podcasts and searching for Team Bugle.

Our new channel, Team Bugle, also includes The Last Post, The Gargle, and Tiny Revolutions, shows which currently carry advertisements, but they will be completely ad-free on this channel.

So if you love the Bugle and its siblings, then please support what I guess I can now call the Bugle Network via our website or Apple podcasts where you can subscribe today.

If you already support via DonorBox, there's no need to change.

These two options will continue to operate alongside each other.

Anyway, before we hear more from me and Tiff on Tiny Revolutions, here are some lies, as I said, about existing Bugle premium-level voluntary subscribers.

David Park thinks that one of the unexpected upshots of space travel is likely to be that people don't bother so much about kitchen refurbishment anymore.

You never see people having their kitchen done up in sci-fi film, says David, and I can see why.

The logistics would be an absolute nightmare, and unless they really get on top of light-speed warping, or whatever it's called, you'd have to load up your spaceship with alternative kitchen designs before you even blast it off.

It just isn't happening.

Justin Edwards finds the various meanings of applause a continual distraction in life.

You can clap to say well done, says Justin, or to say do do well, or to say hurry up or pay attention or make sure this music stays in this exact rhythm, please.

Now that is far too many different possible meanings, continues Justin.

When an audience applauds at the start of a show, for example, I often think, oh no, I've missed something really good, but when a sports crowd applauds, I'm always annoyed that the players don't immediately stop what they're doing and listen to what the grown-ups are about to tell them.

I'm very confused.

Rowena McMullen is disappointed by the evolution of squirrels, or as Americans wrongly call them, squirrels.

They've got so much going for them, points out Rowena.

Terrific problem-solving skills, a responsible attitude to long-term investment, a strong visual brand, and impressively springy legs.

I can't help thinking that they really could have been someone, species-wise, if they'd bothered putting a bit more effort into evoluting and a bit less effort into nibbling.

Although, of course, there's no reason the two can't go together.

Rowena concludes, I just think they've got the balance wrong, and if they ate bigger mouthfuls, they'd probably get bigger too, which would help.

Of the many words that Nicolette Hardinger would like to see come into common parlance, perfumance is right up there to describe someone or something that does something aromatically impressive.

Nicolette cites as an example, that's terrific perfumance from the chef, which you could say when a particularly fine-smelling plate of food arrives at the table.

Nicolette would also like the word bar loss to emerge as an alternative to rip-off, being the opposite of a bar gain.

Inspired by the multi-use magnificence of the Swiss Army knife, Ailsa Dunbar has been working on a design for a Swiss Army ladder.

For a start, says Ailsa, I don't think enough people carry ladders with them full stop.

I personally never leave home without one.

And amongst the additional features on my new Swiss Army ladder are a leaf blower that flips out from the right hand side, a parasol that pops out of the top and a fishing rod in case you ever need to go fishing in a pond the other side of a large wall.

And finally, David Hauker would love to have antlers.

I think antlers would be so useful for the human head, says David.

I'm not especially combative, so it's not about having an inbuilt set of cranial weaponry, but I think they'd be so useful for hanging stuff on hats gloves scarves charging cables packed lunches in bags doughnuts unused headphones you name it I reckon on a windy day you could even rig up a system of sails to your antlers and use them to get you extra speed on a bicycle or scooter as well

that concludes this week's lies now as promised something from the Bugle stable of podcasts on tiny revolutions Tiff Stevenson has interviewed amongst others some or all of Armando Ianucci Rich Hall and Cleopatra, queen of all the Egypts.

Well, two of those, to be precise.

And to that list of illustrious guests, this week, Tiff La Inquistadora herself added me.

So let's talk about how the bugle came about, first of all.

Like,

because there's such a legacy in podcasting, I guess, in terms of what you were doing there, like the earliest sort of people that I can think of that were doing podcasts in the UK is sort of you and John doing the bugle.

Yes.

Well, to be honest, it wasn't a grand plan to think, oh, here's a new medium that can be really great for comedy.

We should do something.

We were offered a deal by the Times to do, I think it was 13 episodes, and they basically just gave us a blank canvas.

But the idea was that we had a have a sort of transatlantic

feel to it with John, who'd been doing the daily show for just over a year in America and me

in Britain.

And obviously, because

we'd worked together for years before John went to the daily show, we'd done live shows together, we did a couple of radio series together,

that it

was a really great thing to do, particularly for me because he'd obviously was working on the world's leading satirical comedy show.

But at that point, there was not a great deal going on in my career, Tiff.

But

when John went to to do the daily show in 2006, we'd been doing two series for Radio 4, which had both been cancelled.

And we was just about to do

a two-handed Edinburgh show at the stand.

And John was offered the Daily Show job, well, I don't know, it was a couple two or three weeks before that.

I can't quite remember.

And also, we found out that

my wife was pregnant.

So it was all in the space of about three or four weeks.

So it was a time of considerable upheaval.

so that the bugle started the following year and we were just offered a deal and to do this show and had the idea of sort of forming it like an audio newspaper and in fact in the early days it was more I think we did it more in sort of sections like a Sunday newspaper

and it's become a little looser over over the years and the podcasting world was considerably smaller then so it was I think easier to to make a bit of an impact particularly as you know John had already quite a profile in the States from the Daily Show, and we were hosted by The Times, which so they paid us to do it so we could devote the time to doing it, which was very rare in podcasting, I think, in those days, to be paid to do it.

So we treated it like a radio show, and we would try and write a good show every week.

And within a few weeks, even when we only had a few thousand listeners, I started to notice that people would come up at live shows and say, I've listened to your podcast, which, you know, I'd done quite a bit of Radio 4 stuff with much bigger audiences and it never really

no one said that

hadn't really translated into live audiences in the same way I think that's because people consume podcasts in a in a different way to radio and I think that's one of the reasons that it's been so hugely successful as a medium

not just for comedy but in you know

it's a it's a very sort of personal medium and people if you if you start listening to it you listen to it in a more committed way you tend to be actively listening to it rather than the radio being on in in the background.

And

obviously, now a lot of radio shows become or are podcasted by the BBC and other people that

that started to become more of the case with radio as well.

But at the time, it was clear quite early on to me that this was a really

fantastic medium for comedy, not just because

with audio, you can be really creative quite easily.

You can make things sound amazing in a way that making things look amazing on

on tv or or you know any kind of visual medium is a lot harder and so it there's it was a kind of it was a great blank canvas for us the times you know didn't never interfered with what we were what we were doing um and i think actually in time they probably forgot that we were still doing it because the person who commissioned it had moved on so we had we had four years

uh with them before they uh ushered us onwards but yeah that was yeah i mean it that slightly saved my career to be honest because I was going absolutely nowhere at the time and

my I think my stand-up would probably stagnate I think you know I've been working with with John in doing live shows for two or three years and and for that to just sort of ended abruptly because he got the job in the states and that left me slightly floundering around thinking well what do I do now

so the bugle was uh your saviour it was to a large extent I think

did you set out to make it as

as uh political and satirical?

So you wanted to do an audio newspaper, but was that your intention?

Did you sit down and kind of both of you go, right, we want it to do this, this, and this, or we want it to speak truth to power, or we want to be silly?

We want to, you know, did you, did you sit down and kind of hash that out with each other?

Not really.

Or did it just form?

Not really.

That was basically the way we'd...

done comedy together and individually really um anyway so it was really just i guess an expression of that the radio series we did did a thing called The Department on Radio 4 with Chris Addison that was

a real mixture of politics and silliness.

And in our live shows as well, we'd add, you know, we'd try to blend that.

And I think that, you know, it's quite an effective way of doing political comedy if you levered it with nonsense.

Or, you know,

you present a serious point in a ridiculous way.

And, you know, you see that John has sort of carried that on through his stellar career in America.

So, yeah, the bugles were, you know, we'd both done topical political comedy for several years, so it sort of made sense to

do that.

And

again,

if it was just banging on about politics for 40 minutes, it might get

a little heavy.

So we all tried, always try, and that was the nice thing about the format of it being loosely a newspaper meant that we could throw in sport and

even a cryptic crossword in the early days.

One clue a week, long-term buglers may remember.

Some real long game happening there, if you want to.

That was this week, but ten years ago was a different time, and the world was a different place.

Well, it was the same place, but not as old, and with some similarities to today's world, one of which was that in Syria, things were going very, very shitly indeed.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 157 of the Hot Rod and Dragster Show, still

officially known as the Bugle.

But John, I reckon we need a bit of rebranding.

We need to

soup up the Oliver Zaltzman brand.

And Hot Rod and Dragster.

I mean, that's that's that's that's a strong double act name, that is.

Which one am I?

Well, you are Hot Rod.

Oh, okay.

I wanted to be Dragster.

You can't have that, mate.

That's mine.

Andy, the Dragster Zaltzman.

That's me, Life in London.

Top story this week: Freedom!

We won't let you down, freedom.

Though, actually, we might let you down, freedom.

In fact, we are definitely going to let you down, let you down.

Middle East Uprising update now.

What's that?

I don't know that song.

George Michael.

Yes, you do.

Yes, you do, Andy.

It's a George Michael classic.

Oh, it's my school song.

When you say you don't know a song like that, you lose musical credibility, Andy.

Not everything is Bon Jovi and Boney M.

I'm flattered by the suggestion that I had musical credibility before that.

If it helps, it was Robbie Williams' debut solo single as well, Andy.

Oh, was it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Now, Chris has lost musical credibility by going the other side of knowledge.

Anyway, Andy, freedom!

That was the cry of William Wallace Braveheart shortly before the British tore him limb from limb.

And if you think about it, in many ways, he got his freedom, Andy, as we generously liberated his extremities from the oppressive ties of his torso.

And did he say thank you?

Did he f ⁇ ?

He just died, the ungrateful Scot.

Well, that cry of freedom has been sounding out across the Middle East over the last month with similarly brutal results.

It's like the dictators of the world once went to a hypnotist show and the hypnotists told them that if they ever heard the word freedom, they should cluck like a chicken and open fire on their own people.

Well,

we in the rest of the world have been trying so hard to ignore what is happening in Syria, Yemen and Libya as much as we can.

It's like that amnesty technique that adults sometimes use with children.

I'm going to turn my back and when I turn back around, I want to see a stable democratic government here.

Except this time, whenever we turn around, it's just Gaddafi flipping the bird and pointing at his own bare ass.

I guess the big takeaway is, it does seem that we are currently in a lot more wars than we're giving ourselves credit for.

We're running a pretty impressive number of explosive physical discussions with countries in and around the Middle East.

Well, it's a pretty messy situation in Syria.

President Assad is certainly living up to the first syllable of his name.

And, of course, it's hard to know exactly what's going on because the Syrian government has refused to allow most of the foreign media access to the country.

Although it did say that the bugle could go in, but unfortunately, I've been busy this week, and John's a chicken.

Chicken.

So, grow up, Parrot, go over there.

But anyway,

so once again, the United Nations John has sprung into action like a coiled doughnut and has responded to the unfolding catastrophe in Syria by debating with itself whether or not to tell Syria that it's being a bit naughty.

Now, understandably, such extremely strong words have caused a split in the

UN Security Council.

And Brazil, China, and Russia have said that they're worried about hurting Syria's feelings at a time when it's really not feeling very good about itself already.

Brazil have suggested a compromise whereby any resolution is delivered to the Syrian government in the form of a video of kids juggling footballs on the beach at Rio de Janeiro.

China has offered to deploy 2,000 peacekeeping infantry troops, but only one's made of terracotta.

And Russia wants to airdrop vodka over the entire country to help it drink its way through its problems.

Funny how countries always fall back on what they know best in times of crisis.

We in Britain we've offered to send in Vera Lynn.

We'll meet again.

Don't know where, don't know when, but there is a prop possibility that it might be in a few years' time in The Hague.

in syria at the moment uh there is clearly a looming humanitarian crisis on a very depressing scale of all the global cities that you do not want to be living in at the moment the town of jizir al-shagur is right up there and in real estate terms is it worthy

I think it is, Andy.

In real estate terms, it's very much a buyer's market there.

To put it indelicately, there may be some unexpectedly open plots of land to build on there very soon.

The problem is that 120 Syrian troops were reportedly killed there over the weekend in protests and the authorities have made it clear that they will act decisively and forcefully to restore control.

And just to be clear about quite how chilling that statement is, when President al-Assad acts decisively, things get broken.

When he said he was going to change the TV channel decisively, he ordered tanks to open fire on his television set, then bought himself a new plasma screen that was preset to the channel he wanted instead.

The army are now advancing on Jizra al-Shagur after what it claims was a lethal attack by rebel protesters on government troops, which others have claimed was a lethal attack by government troops on government troops who didn't want to launch a lethal attack on rebel protesters.

And it's left many fearing a repeat of the 1982 hammer massacre when the current president's father ordered a scorched earth policy resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of his own people.

But still, John, these people should count themselves lucky.

They don't know how good they've got it.

Being fired on by their own military, hounded from their homes, having their electricity, water and food supplies cut off, because at least they did not have to go through the soul-shattering trauma of applying for loads of Olympic tickets, but not getting very many of them due to overwhelming public demand and the random nature of a balloting system.

Oh, Andy, I'm sorry.

But it's time we in Britain.

I'm sorry, Andy.

We need to rise up, John.

We cannot sit back and take this kind of oppression any longer.

What about our human rights, John?

What about my fundamental right to pay over the odds to watch minor sports I habitually have no interest in?

Where is Amnesty International now, John?

It's all gone fing quiet.

Sod Syria, there are loads of Arab nations, but there's only one London Olympics.

And for too long, people selling sports tickets to us have told us how to live our lives.

But no longer, Britain.

Rise up!

Let's lay our own eggs, wield our own spoons, and hold our own People's Olympics.

Even if the IOC's armed forces try to stop us and the government suppresses the foreign media from reporting it, we have to take a stand, John.

These people people in Syria are they are frankly eating a very friendly omelette by comparison with what we in Britain have been through this week.

Well that almost brings us to the end of this week's sub-bugle.

We will be back next week with a full bugle.

There are a few more weeks off coming up here and there during which we will put out the bugle live review of 2020 just in case you were missing that absolute shithead of a year.

But before we go, also from 10 years ago there was a story to gladden the heart of nominative determinists everywhere as Anthony Wiener's Wanger made the news and sparked this literary masterpiece with which we will leave you until next week.

Goodbye.

The Congressman's penis, of course,

was John Grisham's as-yet-unpublished debut novel.

And I'm delighted to say that we've got exclusive serialisation rights.

Oh boy, the wish was penis.

Chapter 1.

It was 4.30 a.m.

Sound of a dog barking rent the Philadelphia skies.

Mickey Stantonio opened a resentment-filled eye.

Fing dog, he spat, stretching his arms and throwing his novelty doggy alarm clock at the wall.

The dog barked again.

Balls, frouted Sant Stantonio.

That was actually a real dog.

I'm gonna have to buy myself another alarm clock.

Stantonio stood up on his bed and bounced up and down, shouting, Wee until he fell awake.

That's better, he juntled.

Good morning, Mickey Stantonio, PR, he greeted himself.

Accent slightly changed from the beginning here.

I seem to have it.

I'll stick with it.

Hugging himself like the long-lost friend he was to himself.

He looked at his bed.

His empty, empty bed.

Oh my god, where's Janet?

he whispered to himself.

Oh yeah, he remembered.

She left me twelve years ago and emigrated to Namibia.

Stantonio removed and incinerated his pajamas, bed sheets, and teddy bear.

No trace of him would be left in this one-star boutique motel.

He put the kettle on, took it off again, and chuckled to himself.

That putting the kettle on my head joke really works better when someone else has said, put the kettle on before I put the kettle on my head, he admitted, drinking a cup of cold and unbrewed tea.

Just then he saw something in the middle of the table.

He approached it cautiously.

Shit, he said, what the f is this?

It's wooden, flat, seemingly with no writing or distinguishing marks on it.

Though hang on, that is the middle of the table.

But hang on, what's on it?

Stantonio, the 48-year-old private investigator, table tennis aficionado and erstwhile owner of a five-foot-long iuana reached out to pick up the unexpectable parcel what the f is this he repeated he opened the box his eyes widened each his eyes widened each other in amazement at what lay within shit on a pineapple tree he growled it can't be can it it can

it's a congressman's penis

but he growled Which congressman?

And which of his penises?

I better take this down to the lab and have it checked out.

Twenty minutes later, Mickey Stantanio PR was sitting in his favorite cafe, Menopausal Brenda's on 13th and Gooch.

Before him on the table set two coffees and a penis.

So

so Mr.

Penis,

what's your story?

Opened Stantanio, casually flicking a bacon rasher into his mouth.

The penis lay motionless on the table.

Stantanio thumped an eggy fist on the dispassionately formica surface.

That's your game, is it, Penis?

I want to know whose penis you are, why you're not on that person anymore, and how you came to be in my hotel room.

There was a timber of desperation in Stantanio's voice that morning.

48, divorced, broke, lonely, and with a congressman's penis staring him in the face over

a plate of grits.

This wasn't the life he signed up for when he joined the force back in 58.

And the last thing he needed today of all days was to have to take fingerprints off a congressman's penis.

He missed his breakfast, leaving his solitary sausage understandably untouched on the side of his plate.

He had his flaws as a man, did Mickey Stantanio, but he also had a sensitivity to the feelings of his dining companions.

What is happening?

Come on, penis, we're gonna get to the bottom of this.

Stantanio

wait.

Stantanio winked a flirtatious kiss at the chef, apologized, explained that he thought the waitress was still at the till, and promised it would never happen again.

He picked up the penis, and he was just to put it back in his glass.

He was just about to put it back in his glasses case, when

said the penis.

There's something you should know.

I'm all ears, says Stantanio, instantly realizing the biological inaccuracy of his claim, even as the words were still warm and wriggly in his mouth.

The penis took a deep breath.

What I'm about to tell you is gonna make Watergate look like a fing Taiwanese kids' nativity play.

Awesome, said Stantonio.

Wait till I tell Brenda about this.

She's gonna come crawling back to me like a slice of cheese.

The penis fixed Stantonio in the eye.

I'm not just any congressman's penis.

I'm the penis of Congressman.

And at that moment, a shot rang out.

Stantonio jumped behind a coffee machine and held his hands together to form an imaginary pistol and prepared to return pretend fire.

Another shot.

A door slammed.

A car revved.

Stantonio emerged.

Kapow!

Katuan!

Kapow!

He shouted as he gave himself covering fire whilst running back to his table.

But the penis, the congressman's penis, was gone.

Man, that is seriously annoying, he said.

Someone knew that penis was here, and I wanted it back.

Why?

Chapter 2 next week.

Oh,

Andy.

What, mate?

Here's the thing.

Here's why you deserve congratulations, particularly for that, because it's been a week of Anthony Wiener penis jokes here

and you've managed to tell the one thing that had not been told.

Oh,

excellent.

I'm desperately wanting to read the rest of this book now.

Oh.

Now, Andy, yeah, Andy, when you say chapter two next week,

I mean, are you going to deliver chapter two next week?

I don't know, John.

I don't know.

I guess that depends on the response.

Let's leave it open to the listeners.

I guess the ball's in Anthony Wiener's course.

Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome to the hot rod

and

drag the show

of

Donka Don!

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.