Brexit Is Just Shellfish🐚

Hello.

Hi, yes.

It's Alice Fraser here.

Yes.

Yes, of the last post.

Yes, of the bugle.

Oh my god, yes, I would love to do a bugle spin-off show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's that all waiting for Andy to retire, and that man is looking healthy.

What would it sound like?

Ah, I mean,

probably like the bugle, but you know, the good news?

No, no, no, not the happy news, the interesting news.

No offense to the news, but I am sick of making jokes about Brexit and about stupid politicians saying stupid shit to make stupid people angry.

Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, like tech news and arts and fun stories about animals and like science and

life advice and who's in style and Hollywood, yes, I guess I can do celebrity news if I have to.

Sure, I'll mention flamingos, but I won't be nice about them.

Cool, cool.

Cool.

So when does the first episode come out?

Ah, I better get writing.

Okay, and what's it called?

The gargle.

The gargle?

The gargle.

Gargle.

Alright, sure.

The bugle presents the gargle with Alice Fraser.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4183 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world.

It is the 15th of February 2021.

It's cold and wet.

We've a bugle to do.

And here in the shed, I've switched off my cricket machine temporarily just for you, buglers.

My 4am starts.

It's not getting any easier.

I'm also back from using my time machine.

I mean, you wouldn't have noticed, obviously, but put it this way, count yourselves very, very lucky that you've not had had to deal with the aftermath of the successful Harry Hausen-Henson presidential ticket in 1976 that, well, formerly unleashed puppet hell on the USA and indeed the world.

Joining me today,

on my left, well, she's from Australia.

I'm in South London facing west, so she's basically on my left.

Alice Fraser.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Yeah, the Henton puppet ticket would be a problem.

I think they've got a finger in a lot of pies.

And what they can do with those pies.

How's Australia?

I was jealously watching some of the tennis the other day in Melbourne with actual crowds and they sent them, they sent them all home mid-session.

When they introduced the new lockdown, they made people leave in the middle of a match so they weren't

contravening the midnight cut-off.

Look, Andy, it's really nice when these little tiny little lockdowns happen because it it makes it feel less embarrassing to talk about how we're doing as compared with you if we have the occasional glitch in our otherwise seamless luxury lifestyles.

That's very considerate of you.

Those old bonds remain strong.

And on my right, over there, if you're looking that way,

good to audio this.

Here in London, it's Tiffany Stevenson.

Hi.

I'm very jelly of what Alice is getting up to.

It feels like trolling jelly.

Is that now an official shortening of jealous?

How tight shortening?

When they call it jam.

Right, of course.

Sorry, my mistake.

Jammed with jealousy.

Yeah, very jelly, jelly shortening for

jealous, envious.

I don't know.

I feel like Alice's

Instagram is kind of trolling me, basically.

Any Australian people are trolling us right now with their pictures of beaches and going out.

uh, I believe it was Destiny's child lyric, I don't think you're ready for this jelly.

Was that very much an adaptation of uh Shakespeare's Othello uh exploration of uh of human jellies?

Interesting your take on it, yeah.

I think I don't know whether jelly was like more, I always thought jelly in that sense was more about curves, but that is also quite Shakespearean.

Okay, yeah, I guess so.

This is Bugle 4183.

Uh, by By coincidence, 4183 is, according to a computer simulation run this week, the number of puppies that Donald Trump would have to drown in front of the average Republican senator sequentially, one after the next, before that senator would acknowledge that maybe Trump is probably a puppy drowner.

Now, I'm not saying it was a completely reliable computer simulation.

I'm just putting it out there.

We are recording on February the 15th, 2021, making this the 50th anniversary of decimalisation in the UK, which came into full force two score and ten years ago, or four dozen and a couple, if you want to go that way.

And that leads us to our section in the bin, which is a commemorative supplement of other British units decommissioned when we went decimal along with

the old currency.

These units of British measurement decommissioned when decimalisation happened 50 years ago today, included a frodage, which is a unit of liquid volume equivalent to a horse's first urination of the day.

A frodage was used to sell flaggons of horse was

which were at the time used as a substitute varnish for church pews.

A gammak that was a unit of time equating to 1 12th of a drought which was the average time it took King Edward I to get over a hangover caused specifically by drinking two cloggings of mead.

The drouk was roughly four hours 15 minutes in today's time.

A clogging of course being the volume of a large ox's bladder.

A clinticule, that's an 18th of a clint, and a clint is a third of a pangelard, which of course was the average circumference of a monk's cassock.

And it was of course illegal in the early days of the Church of England for a monk's dingle-dangle

to exceed a single clinticule, which duly led to the compulsorisation of celibacy.

A yowlard, that went as well, a standard unit of sound measurement, pre-decibel, equivalent to the noise of a screaming heretic being tortured on a rack.

And a flound was the recommended distance people were advised to fling a rat during times of plague, which is approximately 30 to 40 meters in today's distances, depending on the wind.

Well, Andy, actually, the horse urine is why they were called pews in the first place.

I'm loving all this decimal chat.

You make a great point.

Decimal points.

Come on, guys.

Come on.

Also,

so the monks, I think they made up for tens?

Yay.

Tens, tens.

Tens.

What have I done?

What have I done?

The monks, I think the monks to make up for their lack of, like, you know, how they were celibate.

I think to make up for that, they used to try and dress like slutty.

Do you think there were monks that would wear their belt really low on their hips to say, if I could, I would be up for it.

Oh, that's quite an interesting.

I mean, there must have been research done into that.

You know, the

raciest monk garments in ecclesiastical history.

If you are a monk and you like to you like to flaunt it, do write in and tell us the best way to wear a cassock seductively.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week, chaos in France.

Well, I mean, there has been a tragic setback for France as a nation, a tragic setback indeed for,

well, national stereotyping the world over because France has abandoned everything that makes it special, everything that it stands for, everything the French Revolution was about, and it has legalized the eating of lunch at your desk.

I mean the end of the elongated French lunch is

surely yet another staging post, Tiff and Alice, on the decline of humanity as the world's leading species.

Zuta law, Andy.

Can I just get that out the way first?

Go for it, Alice.

Well, I mean,

it's not just legalised, but it's been recommended in a revised labour protocol that has banned French workers from their common areas for lunchtime.

I mean, this next thing you know, they'll be embracing pre-sliced bread and monogamy, Andy.

This is so un-French.

I think it's actually very good.

I think it's a good move for the French.

It must be exhausting for them to constantly be having three-hour-long wine-filled, convivial lunches on picnic rugs by the Seine.

Now, at last, they can get their emails done while choking down a wet baguette from Pret, like the rest of the world.

It was a Frenchman, Andy, who wrote, Hell is Other People, and he wrote that at his desk at lunch.

Jean-Paul Sartre's list of office complaints.

It was a real sticker for paperclips.

I mean, as you say, I mean, you know, the pillars of French society are falling

one by one.

I mean, soon they'll be playing ruthlessly efficient safe percentage rugby.

I mean, it's heading that way in some ways, and

cycling for on occasion less than three weeks at a time.

So, I mean, will we still recognise

France

for what it is, Tiff, or I mean, is this?

I know.

I mean, I love the French for their attitude towards that.

You know, it's the country of Lamour, and they love to eat out.

Yep.

And I don't need to add anything to that,

but uh, I kind of like I saw in Emily in Paris.

Was how I mean, I've been in France, my grandmother was like half French, so I have like French family, and that kind of like the first episode of Emily in Paris, and they went mad about the stereotypes, but she didn't get invited out to lunch, and it was such a big thing because everyone's out enjoying themselves.

The French have described this move as having to sit at your desk and have a sad desk salad, like c'est triste it's so sad you and your little salad and they've banned moments of convey um conviviality that's how they described it alice said the word earlier which i love that because you know it's so french it's like making a coffee and it sounds like fun socializing and that's not my experience of being in an office

when i worked in the office my those moments were mainly complaining about the biscuits and pervy duggin accounts staring at your tits again they weren't really moments of conviviality conviviality.

I like the French's attitude towards this, towards like enjoying life.

So it is, yeah,

th this has been brought about by the many and varied impacts of uh uh of COVID.

So, yeah, it is now legal for French workers to stay in their office for lunch, or as it is known in France, lanche.

And uh

they're allowed out to eat at their desks, or as they're known in France, les tableaux la borieur des utilitarianisme optimale pour le por sivance de tout les artifice et competence de l'administra, des work pecuniaries and maintenance des office equipment pony les eux et bé donke

ensi biancia also tout les je professionnel.

The previous punishment for eating lunch at your desk,

well, I think it was 10 years in jail, which is what we're now giving for most crimes these days here in Britain.

Berets, and more tellingly, the grave punishment of missing out on sitting for three hours eating croesus-rich food that can sit you down for a week.

I mean

it is such a I mean obviously

my experience of France is at best touristically superficial.

But I think my favourite French lunch moment, I went there many years ago with

my wife for a, I think it was an anniversary trip, and we had lunch in a stupidly ridiculous French restaurant where there was some confusion amongst the waiting staff as they brought out a little

tray with some chocolates on to go with our coffee at the end of the meal.

And this guy brought a tray out and he just stood there with this panicked look in his eye and just standing there with these chocolates on a tray.

And then he was kind of looking around.

And so rather than just putting the tray down or asking us to take the chocolate off, he had to wait for another waiter to come and remove the chocolates with tongs to then put them on a little plate.

That was how formal the waiting was in that rep.

I mean, that was, I I think, the most French moment I've ever experienced.

How does everyone there not have gout?

Like, all the time?

We, I went to

Cannes to, like, it was like for a corporate gig.

This was a few years ago.

And Paul and I, like, every day just ate Saussison,

cheese, drank red wine.

And watched people walk past with Pomeranians in baby pupooses.

Because the weirdest, like the French lifestyle.

And they don't, you can't criticize them on it because they just, they don't care.

And they're like, you're English, so you're embarrassing.

Like, that's the attitude.

This is how confident French people are as well.

That, like, on the streets, there were condom machines.

Like, on the street, you could go to a condom vending machine.

That is how confident French people are that they're going to get laid at any moment.

They need access to like a street condom.

And I, for one, I am, I am impressed by that.

I aspire to that level of confidence and enjoyment of life and I wish we had a law here that banned a sad desk salad from pret.

I wish we had that law.

Yeah but Pret, of course the well ironically the

chain of

French named

kind of words basically they provide adequate sandwiches and other forms of edible ambivalence.

I think

it's a French term, Pret uh manger, which I think means ready to give birth to a messiah child in French.

Agricultural equipment is currently available at the inn.

I mean, Alice, do you think this could prove decisive in the 2022 French presidential election?

That

under Macron's stewardship, they've basically stolen lunch from out of French bouches.

I mean, that's a pretty risky play from his point of view, isn't it?

I mean, almost certainly this will cause chaos in the streets, but because they're not allowed to leave their desks, it will be chaos at their desks.

Desk-bound chaos.

That is something that is unique to our times, I think.

Putting on some real aggressive filters.

Spelling out the words liberty, fraternité, galeté in bread rolls on the roof as

a form of protest.

But it is still unclear how it's going to go down with French workers.

I imagine they'll be getting very cross about it.

A French friend of mine is

particularly angry.

He rang me up the other day, He said, I like duck a l'range for my lunch, but in the modern work world and the time available for lunch breaks, I can hardly get out for lunch and back in time.

And he said that my boss is always there waiting to gloat over any slip-ups I make in the afternoon after a boozy lunch.

As soon as I make a mistake, ta-da!

He says.

My friend also said that he he said I like to have two pairs of two dumpling type things, but I'm not allowed that anymore.

Fork and L.

but what a pile of crepes he continued but I cannot be any any clearer about this

mainly Chris's face at this point

we've got a we've got to keep mowing for forward he said we've got a poisson

but we are best out of this even if it has taught us a valuable lesson we have to get over it and

Anyway,

with a lack of time to, he was very worried about the lack of time to have a proper cheese course as well.

He said, come on, bear it.

They should be reasonable and complain their senses.

It could back far as well.

He said, they've made a rock for their own back.

He also complained that the police turned up when

him and his his girlfriend were having lunch not at their desk.

He said they tried to arrest, they tried to arrest my mistress.

He said, I said, leave her out of this.

It's not a press worth paying.

Andy, this is too early.

I didn't know why you wanted to do this story first, and now it's abundantly obvious.

In fact, I had to have lunch with him the other day.

I could tell he was upset, because I tried to get his attention by gently hitting him on the shoulder with my fingers, but he didn't react, even though I was tapping hard.

And to be honest, I mean, you could see how upset he was.

He's very French.

He

barely even flirted with a very shapely waitress.

So he didn't even look at her rack let alone chatter up.

It'd be interesting to see.

I mean, it could swing the French president's election towards the right wing from Nascon.

I can see Nigel Farage getting involved, trying to add his weights behind the campaign.

I imagine he'll be driving around France in a little truck and will become known as the Coco van.

Right.

I'm done here.

I always thought Coco van was sex in the back of a transit, Andy.

Yeah.

So I'm glad it's just Nigel Farage in a van.

Andy,

you made a real meal out of that, but I made a meal for you.

Very good.

Is it time to move on to other lunch news?

I think it probably is.

Joe Biden has issued a striking warning to America about the challenges that lie ahead with regard to its relationship with China.

Now, amongst the myriad things in Joe Biden's intra, as he takes over control of the raging rhinoceros that is America, after the previous rider of that rhinoceros had kneecapped it, sold its horns on the black market, and told it that it was a walrus.

Dealing with China could be one of the toughest things he's facing.

He had his first telephone chinwag with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week.

They nattered on like a pair of teenagers about all kinds of silly stuff, like the future relationship between the world's two most powerful nations, the environment and shit like that, and the best noodle dish to eat seductively on a date.

And to show the US public exactly how tricky this is going to be, Biden spoke to them in the only language that can possibly penetrate to enough of the US electorate.

He told them that China will eat America's lunch.

Now, that surely is one way.

We talk about the difficulty of communicating with all sides of the political spectrum.

This shows you know Biden is reaching out.

He's talking to America in terms that surely all Americans can understand.

The stealing of lunch.

The problem of course is that China doesn't need to eat the US's lunch.

They have child slave labor and Uyghur work camps to make all the lunch they need and in fact much of the lunch that the US is buying.

Yeah, I mean it's it's uh I mean I don't know what how I'd r respond if the Chinese Communist Party threatened to eat my lunch.

I think I'd I'd probably get straight down to the kiln and start firing an absolute motherload of terracotta warriors to defend my

number and I expect America to do the same.

But

I mean, I guess, yeah, when it comes to the whole issue, thinking about exactly what China has planned for the world is one of those things that makes many people in the traditional Western powers understandably decide not to spend any time thinking about exactly what China has planned for the world.

It cannot possibly end well.

Other food news down, the World Health Organization has suggested that coronavirus, the celebrity virus that you've probably heard of over the last year or so, could have come from frozen food.

As Oscar Wilde said, there is no more terrible beast than a wronged fish finger.

And I mean this.

Alice, I know that you've been

keeping a very close eye on all the conspiracy theories surrounding COVID.

I mean, this is...

Is this the least exciting one we've had yet?

We've had rogue pangolins, biological warfare by a pseudo-communist superpower.

We've had Bill Gates implanting special little robots in people's eyeballs or whatever it is.

But now we could just be looking at the revenge of the nugget.

Well, so Andy, this is the least exciting option except for the Chinese state media.

So this idea that it was sort of carried inside or on the surface of some frozen food was put forward with a number of other scenarios that are much more likely by a joint World Health Organization and Chinese investigation.

And Chinese state media were like, it's definitely this one.

The reason they love the story of it possibly being from frozen food is that it could place the source of the virus outside of China from an animal imported from another country.

Even though it's very unlikely the Chinese state media loves bad things not being China's fault.

That's their favourite thing.

Apart from denying workplace human rights abuses and talking about how buff Xi Jinping is.

I don't give.

Look, I don't really give a f ⁇ where the virus came from at this point.

None of us are ever traveling internationally anywhere ever again and i can be mean about xi jinping i'm never going to visit china suck my dick xi jinping

that's that's um uh your new um spin-off podcast isn't it to go along with the forthcoming the gargle with alice fraser from the uh people's table suck my dick xi jinping

um i hope it's not frozen food i hope it didn't come through frozen food because that'll be why mums won't go to iceland and i just don't think they could afford to take the hit right now uh That is Iceland, the supermarket chain, not the country, obviously.

Mums do go to Iceland because the football players from there are incredibly fit.

And also very well organised, to be fair, Diff.

Well, I mean, obviously, you know, that's really how they've managed to have so much success on the not just their fitness that you've correctly pointed out, but really the

team structure's been highly efficient as well.

Yes, stop me objectifying men, Andy.

I think that's

a good way for this podcast.

I don't want to go down that route too early.

But

I mean, obviously, it's been spoken about it being a zoonotic disease for the longest time, which Alice was saying, which is a disease that originates in animals, then goes on to infect humans.

And we've seen these before, like that time that I had a rampant desire for sugar puffs, which I caught off the honey monster.

And there was also the time I started wearing false eyelashes and acting like a slut after hanging out with a caramel bunny.

These diseases have been around for a long time.

So I think, you know, I think we should focus on the true source, which is zoonotic.

I don't know what pangolins do by like what their vibe is.

I haven't seen an anthropomorphized pangolin.

So I need to know, you know.

It's going to be a hard sell these days, I think, isn't it?

You know,

the cartoon pangolin.

We need to rehabilitate the image of the pangolin at this point.

It was a fairly blameless creature for centuries.

I would say, you you know, longer than centuries, decades even.

I didn't even know what it was until the pandemic.

I'd never even heard of a pangolin.

It looks like a little anteater type.

It was a musical instrument in the 16th century.

I heard it was on the Y album.

I heard they played pangolin on the Y album.

Look, it's a very cute animal.

And I refuse to believe that it is a vector of disease because Disney cartoons have taught me that anything that is bad is also

like mean looking but in a sexy way.

Tangle it's neither mean looking nor sexy looking.

Brexit food disaster news now and well I mean this this could be you know amongst all the divisions caused by Brexit I mean it's possible that this story could be the one that really sunders the United Kingdom into fragments around the world and finally breaks any hope of a harmonious relationship we have with Europe.

Custard cream biscuits have become unavailable in parts of the EU due to Brexit customs regulations.

I'm sorry to any bugle listeners to whom I'm breaking this news.

We'll try and deal with this very difficult topic as sensitively as we as we possibly can.

Alice, I mean you bring an objective view from from the southern hemisphere um uh and uh as a um published author on the history of uh um British biscuitry.

Um

but just just just let us

fundamentally British supermarkets that have stores in Europe have had supply problems with goods such as whiskey and custard creams, which are the big two for British expats in Europe.

Most British expats in Europe live on only whiskey and custard creams.

I mean what what are the uh implications here?

Is there any hope?

My favourite bit about this was in a Daily Mail article in which a shop assistant called Tracy Smith was quoted, and what she said was: Digestive biscuits are missing, popcorn is missing, Walker's shortbreads are missing, oat cakes are missing.

She has just described the list of the most blandy Anglo Carby.

Like, all of those things are just mildly different textures of exactly the same thing.

Like, like everything in Anglo cooking other than pie, and that's just the same thing with a squishy middle.

Like,

It's beige food.

We love beige food, Alice.

What's your beef?

It's just making rusks valid for adults, essentially.

I refuse to believe that anyone can tell the difference between any of these foods.

This is a really crummy story, Andy.

I can't complain about that, I guess.

Oh, snap.

But I mean, that is the test of whether you are true,

you know, true Brit, is if you can tell the difference between you know entirely bland flavorless biscuits it's like it's like it's like princesses sleeping on 50 mattresses can feel uh um

feel a pee on the bottom one can't they it's the same with with british the the

can you eat an oat cake

scones are uh gone as well but we can't can we stop pro pretending we actually give a shit about scones when the real issue is whether you put jam or cream first and everyone knows it's jam first otherwise you're a heathen right like we like arguing about that more I think, than we enjoy eating the scones themselves.

You could shake your head at me, Christopher, and say that you do cream first, but I say...

I do, I do.

I bloody do.

You're a degenerate.

I put them on in vertical stripes and then eat the scones sideways.

Is that

good compromise?

Good compromise.

I mean, there's enough division in this country as it is,

Tiff, without deepening these.

I mean, the custard cream, though, I mean,

it's not just any biscuit.

This is the most British of big bics.

It's the bit that suckled King Arthur himself, the nibble wherewith St.

George distracted the mighty dragon before slaying it with a chocolate hobknob.

It's the sweet crunchy treat that nourished the mighty pics as they fought off the Martian invasion of 93 BC.

Not sure if that's public domain yet.

It's the snacks and delight that gave Churchill hope that the war could be won in the dark days of 1940.

And he ate a custard cream and thought if the two biscuits involved in a custard cream can sandwich the creamy bit so well, then maybe Germany too could be held in from both the west and the east.

So, I mean, it is a historic biscuit, not just for Britain,

for Europe.

And now,

you know, as a result of Brexit,

there's a custard cream-less void in the life of the continent.

Will the torture never end?

I mean, personally, I hate custard creams, but

I want to complain about something.

It's my British right to complain about someone in another country not getting something British, even if I don't like to eat it.

It goes beyond biscuits as well.

There's been huge issues with the export of shellfish from Britain.

One owner of a shellfish shop in Britain that's had to close down said that dealing with new Brexit paperwork and declarations was like, quotes, playing Russian roulette with five bullets in your gun.

I don't know.

It might be five times as exciting.

I don't know.

I've never really tried it with one bullet in a gun.

You could also have had, rather than, if you're not onto the Russian roulette with five bullets in your gun, you could have also had it.

It was like playing water polo in a tank full of sharks while smeared in seal-flavoured ketchup, like playing snooker in a helicopter during a big hurricane, like playing tonsil tennis with a T-Rex, like playing Monopoly with Jeff Bezos, or Final Auction, it's like playing rugby union.

I mean, it's that level of confusion and chaos

that

we are.

Did the shellfish come in, giving it all that?

Um, you won't be able to hear that joke.

That was a very visual joke for a podcast, yes, yeah.

But I mean, if this goes online, that will absolutely smash.

Uh,

they've there's going to be problems with cockles and winkles and bivalve mollusks.

It doesn't sound particularly appetizing when you refer to it as a bivalve mollusk.

It would be like referring to like lamb as like a beating heart with some connective tissue surrounded by flesh.

Like, because

I don't eat shellfish.

That's just a personal thing because now they make me very sick.

But I've had to come up with this new rule for a lot of that kind of mollusky shellfish stuff.

Basically, if it's been clinging to a rock in the Mediterranean, don't put it in your mouth.

You know, shellfish, Cristiano, Ronaldo, whatever.

If it's,

I can't, I can't have them.

But I, but cockles and winkles, I used to enjoy as a child.

These all feel like cockney foods to me, so I don't understand how we're getting them

like cockles and winkles and jellyfish are like the top three

cockney

jelly deal.

Jelly deals, yeah, Yeah.

Yeah, jelly deals.

You meant jellied fish, as in fish that's been put in aspic rather than actual jellyfish.

No, jelly deals.

Did I say jellyfish?

Jelly deals.

Oh, jellyfish.

I've gone mad.

It's been so long since I've been to a cockney party because there's been no parties where we have jellyfish.

That was my, in fact, that was Scottish, Scottish boyfriend explained to Heng's entrance into the world of the cockney was my godfather's 75th birthday.

And he walked in and went, What is that noise?

And I was like, Oh, that is the sound of Cockneys slurping jelly deal off the bone.

What a delicious,

what a delicious, it's a snake chopped up and shoved in lube and served at a party while you listen to Chaz and Dave.

It's a British delicacy.

It is.

If we do food so well, Alice, I can't believe.

I can't believe after

everything, after like the knowledge of jelly deals, that you would dare say that we like beige food

i mean you clearly only like beige food because it's the only thing that isn't like actively disgusting

yeah it's the only thing must be delicious i guess

yeah but when uh paul and i got engaged we had a picture of haggis and jelly deal as our engagement sort of bringing together both our disgusting foodstuffs who says romance is dead

so yes in summary it turns out that uh she sells seashells on the seashore because she hasn't got the correct paperwork to sell seafood to Spanish restaurants anymore.

Yoga conspiracy theory news now and yoga, the

I don't know what it is, what it is, it's not a sport.

So, I mean, it looks like it should be a sport.

Sports, spiritual sport.

Yeah, it's a training sport.

It could evolve into a sport, couldn't it?

It's like, you know, it's like a fish climbing out of the sea.

One day it will be a fully fledged sport.

It's been rocked to its core by conspiracy theories, apparently.

Yes, these people are not just stretching the bounds of the physical capacity of the human body to bend, they are stretching the bounds of the human imagination to encompass really stupid ideas.

Now, I'm not going to suggest that believing in access to spiritual enlightenment via stretching is maybe a precursor to some sort of gullible willingness to swallow any garbage theory that floats floats your way.

I was brought up Buddhist, and I strongly believe the only way to escape from the inevitable suffering cycle of life is to be very aware of your breathing.

But A, there's science to support my belief, and B, these people are very strange.

I will say that there is a sort of a type of person who might be drawn to yoga who is willing to swallow a litre of salt water first thing in the morning so they can then uncontrollably cleanse their bowels like that's a good thing and if you're willing to do that you might also swallow some other theories that will inevitably lead to an explosion of shit

it's worrying to me guys I'm a big fan of the yoga I've been doing yoga with Adrian during lockdown actually in the Paul and I did a session together and in the middle of one of our yoga sessions I let rip with a massive fart and then two seconds later on screen Adrian said just breathe in deep and notice the quality of the air around you

And then we had to stop because I destroyed yoga

and everything about about it.

But it is, it's

QAnon has found its way into the wellness community.

I think.

Is that

the kind of news that we're talking about here?

They're calling it pastel Q.

That's what they're calling it.

So the wellness community getting involved with the QAnon.

Well, it's a similar thing because you start with like quite obvious things.

Like you don't want to see children getting molested by underground tunnel gangs of powerful billionaires.

Like no one's going to say that they want that.

So there you've got a little in.

And equally, who doesn't want to be able to walk up a set of stairs with full motion in their knees?

You know,

you start small and then they build you up to, you know, trying to breathe through your sphincter.

Like, this is.

I haven't reached sphincter breathing nirvana yet, but I'm hoping to one day.

I'm learning a lot about yoga here.

Well, a few of the gurus have apparently posted.

So they've posted like QAnon stuff and coronavirus coronavirus hoax stuff but they're mixing it with wellness so what you're seeing is someone putting a picture of the sky with like coronavirus is a hoax don't wear a mask and i just like the idea of conspiracy mixed with vaguely inspirational pictures you know like a picture picture of someone in the lotus position with hillary's emails just written underneath in like a really beautiful cursive uh font or a picture of a tree with pizzagate is real written on leaves underneath and now i've said that someone is going to do it.

Only true love can melt a hard heart, but jet fuel cannot melt steel beams.

Unstoppable decay of American Democratic Heritage News now.

And, well, we had to come to this eventually, but Donald Trump is a free man.

He has been unconvicted on a 43 to 57 minority not guilty verdict.

And so he's off the hook.

I mean, lifted off the hook by his friends, the hook on which he had dived stomach first while screaming, look at me, I'm impaling myself on the hook.

Innocent of all shots.

It does help when you don't need a majority to convict you, and you can talk to the jurors during the case.

So he is still, so

yeah, that's it.

I mean, he's still clinging on for dear life as we speak to his spot in the top 50 greatest American presidents of all time

list.

And it's been a disappointing sequel, as sequels so often are.

The Impeachment 2.

This time it's belated and ineffective.

It's been a very curious thing to follow

as an outside spectator.

And the structures of

American democracy that seem just absolutely geared.

towards failure on as many possible levels as they can imagine.

I was watching this trial, and I, you know, what's that thing where you know how something's going to turn out?

Like, you know how it's going to turn out, but you're also surprisingly disappointed when it does turn out that way.

Life?

Is that it?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, everyone knew that the Republicans were not going to pull the ripcord on Trump because the ripcord here was also the umbilical cord to the sweet, sweet votes of all the deliciously delusional southern secessionists.

Come, is it ironic Nazi cosplayers slash Reddit militia men with a hard-on for the idea that the only way to achieve democracy is by violent revolution in an America where that already happened 200 years ago.

I don't know, Andy.

I'm disappointed because I think I've watched too many Mighty Ducks movies to not secretly hope the underdog will pull through.

And the fact that in this scenario, the underdog is facts and law is deeply depressing.

That's not so much an underdog as an under puppy that's been drowned in a canal at birth.

I mean, could they at least have pretended that they were doing a trial?

I think that's what was so upsetting to me about it, that half of them were so obviously ignoring all of the evidence from the other side.

And it was just so, you know, Ted Cruz

got in trouble for tweeting about breast milk during the impeachment trial.

Did you follow that story?

Well, it was, yes, he tweeted

Orwellian, the words breast milk are now forbidden because science, referring to a story

from, as is so often the way with stories such as this,

taken wildly out of context context by the anti-woke media from a hospital in Brighton that's attempting to introduce trans-inclusive language

to its maternity services.

And

well, I mean, it would be Orwellian if it were true,

but it's not true, so it isn't.

But Ted Cruz was having none of that.

And I mean, you're the latest

opening of the cultural.

But I guess the point was, should he have been tweeting about breast milk whilst ostensibly attempting to be an impartial juror essentially in the trial of his friend i mean that's

it might even be peak america that the ted cruise breast milk tweet the heart wants what the heart wants

and sometimes

sometimes ted has just got to speak freely i like the fact that he sort of attempted to give a shit about women's bodily autonomy with it like that's his what his tweet was but you're thinking about ted cruise who criticized who's been like anti-abortion all along, criticized the vasectomy bill, sort of exposing his hypocrisy on reproductive rights when he was like, oh, government

big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything away, literally.

And, you know, it was a response.

It was kind of almost like a...

not a trolling, but it was a response to the, you know, the legislations, I think, in Georgia.

So someone had put forward a bill going, you know, mandatory vasectomies for men over 50.

And Ted Cruz got very annoyed.

It was like, yeah, imagine the government interfering with your reproductive rights.

That must be awful, Ted.

I am grateful to Ted Cruz's teet tweets because sometimes, Andy, I am just too horny.

And when I am,

I read a story like this to protect the world from my powerful sexual energy.

I mean, here is a suggestion for both the NHS and the Ted Cruz, for the left and the right, whoever.

What about doctors and midwives just ask people what terms they prefer when they come in with a baby in them?

I think those are the people whose business it is and I have a hankering for my particular nutritionizing of a hypothetical

infant to be called suck blasting.

And I will insist on this with all of my primary healthcare providers.

Stop putting common sense into it, Alice.

This is not welcome.

I want suck blasting.

If they refuse to call it suck blasting, I will mutter quietly to myself and carry on with raising a child because I'm in the privileged position of not having to give much of a shit.

The point is,

this is such a non-story, but

it is good when you need a quick bona killer.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

There will be a short break before the next bugle because we're shifting back to Friday recording.

So, the next bugle will be at the end of next week, recording on Friday the 26th.

So, it'll be available on Saturday the 27th.

We have a live show to plug 27th of March at 8 p.m.

UK time.

It's a ticketed live show.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the live button or look for it on the internet.

However, to fill that gap between now and the next Bugle at the end of next week, there is episode one of The Gargle with Alice Fraser.

Alice, tell us about this landmark moment in the history of human broadcasting.

Well, for every satirical political news show, there is a show that is also about the news, but not about the politics.

And by for everyone, I mean just for this one, I think, just for the bugle, this is the Saturday magazine pull-out section of the bugle.

We're going to talk about arts, we're going to talk about culture, we're going to talk about technology, probably dinosaurs, who knows?

But we're going to have a grand old time.

You may see some familiar voices floating into your ear holes or hear them or however you perceive voices.

And some new ones as well.

And it'll be coming out weekly starting in this little gap.

Find it on the internet or wherever you usually get your podcasts or in the show notes for this apparently says Chris some technical term

that there is coming soon to the inside of your skull.

Tiffany shows to plug?

Yes I have a show on the 19th.

So this Friday for any American listeners because

look I could have done what Mike Berbiglia did and put it on in the afternoon in America so that people in the evening could listen to it in London, but that would that would require pre-planning and I don't have any of that.

So it's it's 6 p.m.

Pacific time,

9 p.m.

Eastern time on the 19th.

Tickets are from $10 and I think free for healthcare workers.

They give a bunch of free tickets away.

So please come, please buy some tickets.

And it's a new hour I'm working and that's on Friday.

Great.

Thanks for that.

We'll be back at the end of next week.

In the meantime, do listen listen to The Gargle.

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.