Spready Mercury

Before we begin this week's Bugle, and it is a show I think you will enjoy a great deal, here is a reminder to book your tickets for the Bugle Live Review of the Year on the 30th of December, starting at 8pm UK time.

That is official curtain uptime.

Doors will be a little bit before that, if you can indeed have doors for an online show.

It will feature me, Alice, Nish, and NATO as we bid an enthusiastic sod off and don't come back to the last 12 rubbish months.

Tickets are available via thebuglepodcast.com and will entitle you to watch the show live andor stream it for a fortnight afterwards.

So, after that, we might throw some of it open to the rest of the world.

But if you want to see all of it while it's still relevant, buy your ticket now or after you've listened to this week's show, ideally, here it is.

Strap in.

I think you'll like it.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to this, the last full bugle of 2020, a year that has been an absolute object lesson in how to be a thoroughly shit 12 months.

Now, I know I'm prejudging the last two weeks still to come, but look, who remembers Oscar's goal for Brazil in the 2014 World Cup semi-final against Germany?

Not even Oscar, I imagine, remembers that goal.

I imagine he wakes up every night at 4am screaming, 7 finging one!

But, buglers, if there was one thing that could sweeten the barrel of shite that has been 2020 it would surely be our guests this week so please welcome back for the first time since before covid the first time since before the uk officially left the eu at the start of this year since even before england won the cricket world cup last year since before america voted for donald trump since before britain voted for brexit since before america even probably thought of voting for trump and britain genuinely gave a shit about leaving the eu it is for the 295th time on the bugle.

The one the only oh hang on I've lost my bit of paper.

Where is it?

Hang on.

The one and only John Oliver.

Hello Andy.

Hello

buglers.

Guess who's back?

Back again.

John is back with his friend.

Guess who's back?

Guess who's back?

I am back.

I am back.

Stop guessing.

Because I'm back.

I am back.

Ba-ba-ba-tam-ba-tam-ba-tam.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, everyone.

It's great to be back to add insult to significant injury for 2020.

And greetings to you from New York, the city that normally never sleeps, Andy, but to be honest, which has currently been put into something of a medically advised coma due to be absolutely riddled with the Rona at the start of the year and trying desperately not to re-riddle itself right now.

And interestingly, Andy, it is not just the pandemic that is currently crushing New York.

As I speak, it is currently snowing its frozen balls off.

Look it out of the window right now.

It is like a picture postcard, Andy, as long as that postcard was from New York during the pandemic of 1918.

Because, sure, on the surface it looks romantic, but then you realise there's still something horrendous happening underneath that really needs to be stopped.

It's sort of like a royal wedding in that way.

Superficially spectacular.

But once the spectacle wears off, things are going to start getting sad fast.

There are actually snow plows.

You might be able to hear them in the distance.

Currently trundling.

outside and all over the northeast.

And I actually read this morning, Andy, that in Syracuse, New York, they recently held a contest to name 10 new snowplows that they had bought.

And they announced last week some winners, such as Blizzard Beta and Salt City Express.

And as names go, Andy, those are fine.

That's a pair of serviceable names.

Absolutely.

No real complaints, or at least they seemed fine until I started looking at what Scotland has been doing with its snowplow names, because it puts those efforts to shame, Andy.

Here are just a few of the official names on snowplows in Scotland.

Grit Expectations, Gritalica, Gritney Spears, Penelope Gritstop, Sir Gritzalot, Gritty Gritty Bang Bang.

Those are just the grit-based names.

That's just one subsection of excellence.

There's also, these are real.

Hans Snowlow, I want to break freeze, Reddy Spready Go, and Snow Big on Kenobi.

Those are world-class names, Andy.

And look, I'll say this.

At least Scotland actually tends to get some snow.

England usually gets slightly less.

And yet, apparently, England has not been phoning into snow plow names either.

Wiltshire, I swear this is true, has a plow called Usain Salt.

Usain Salt, Andy!

When you have a name that good, it's a crime to leave that plow in storage for most of the year.

They should be proudly gritting the streets in the middle of August just to keep people's spirits up.

Surely no one's going to object to that.

Who just shot that salt all over my flip-flops?

Hold on, a vehicle called Usain Salt.

Please allow me to retract my protest.

Currently, no complaints on my end.

And it doesn't stop there, Andy.

It still doesn't stop there.

Doncaster has plows called Gritsy Bitsy, teeny weeny, yellow anti-slip machinery

and

David Plowy.

Those names were so good.

So good that they apparently rejected, because they didn't have space, they rejected the name Spready Mercury, meaning frustratingly, that name was technically available.

So excuse me if I'm now f ⁇ ing furious at what Syracuse New York just did here.

Because what they've done is they've settled for Blizzard Beta when they could have had Spready Mercury.

It's a f ⁇ ing disgrace, Andy.

And a fundamental betrayal of everything that makes us human.

I don't think that's overstating it in the slightest.

In fact, I'll go one step further here.

It's fundamentally un-American.

America, Andy, as a nation, is supposed to do things in the extreme.

That's been its MO.

throughout its history.

Not always for the common good.

It landed on the moon.

It's launched numerous wars and invasions that were completely unwarranted.

It made the McCrib.

It is the gold standard in the extreme, ill-advised action.

I don't know if anyone has seen the documentary Action Park, but if you haven't, you should.

It's excellent.

It's about an insanely dangerous water park in New Jersey in the 1980s, run by a maniac with no regard for human life.

The best kind of amusing.

The best kind.

Among the attractions that would be justifiably and thankfully illegal today, it featured an actual water slide loop-de-loop.

And just picture that in your mind right now.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

That's what it was.

And it turned out.

It turned out.

You don't need to be, you know, an expert in physics to think that is a bad idea.

Turned out it was exactly as dangerous as it sounds.

When merely trialing it, Andy, before the park was officially opened, people were knocked unconscious and came out with scratches all over them.

When they couldn't work out exactly where the scratches came from, they looked inside and realized that the teeth of some of the people that went down it first were embedded in the tunnel and cutting through people's skin.

And yet, they opened it to the public anyway.

Why, Andy?

Because that's what this country does.

It was just like the moon landings, wasn't it?

You've got to go through these difficult, you know, tricky phases.

Exactly.

One person in the documentary, when attempting to justify the existence of the park and the fact that while open, it hadn't just hurt park attendees, it had killed multiple people, said, and I quote, who wants to sit on a Ferris wheel?

And look,

at its core, I just think that's what this is.

It's a message for life.

That's what America's about, isn't it?

For good, bad, and often both simultaneously.

And what this means is, I really think there should be an arms race for naming snowplows now, and it should be one that America enters and then somehow finds a way to dominate in a way that manages to destabilise the world.

The bar has been raised by Scotland and various English towns.

Right.

I mean,

I take all that on board, John.

And from the way you've dealt with that story,

all I can surmise is that, well, it's been pretty much five years since you did the bugle.

You missed puns.

No.

You missed the puns.

No.

You missed the puns.

That has laid it out there.

It's all blaming it out now, John.

There's a distinction there with a significant difference, Andy, because I was expecting you to jump on that and say that I've technically just enjoyed a pun.

Previously, you're quite right.

I've gone on the record of being against them when deployed by you.

But I do think there's a key difference here.

I'm fine with puns.

Let the record be clear.

I'm fine with puns when the messaging device is a piece of heavy machinery.

And no offense, Andy.

You're just not that.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, I can't argue with that, really.

But

it's great to have you back, John.

Very much the Christopher Columbus of comedy in that you went to America and things started going very badly indeed for the people who already lived there when you arrived.

And obviously

you've had a busy few years

since

you were last on the bugle.

It's a great honour for you today becoming only the second bugle co-host after Andy Zaltzman to appear on the bugle in three separate decades.

It's got to be right up there with your greatest achievements in Shobiz, you'd think.

Well, yeah, you would think, Andy, if it were not for the fact that over the last five years as well, I don't know if you were, but I'd dip my toe back into the unforgiving volcano of movies because

in the last five years, Andy, I was Zazo in the Lion King remake.

I'm Zazoo Andy, and you need to respect me as such.

I've got two children now, yes, but I'm also Zazoo, and I think that's more important.

And me saying I'm Zazoo Andy, that's not my words.

That's the words of the people at Disney tasked with writing on the credits who Zazzo is, because it's f ⁇ ing me.

And if anyone's thinking, hold on, isn't Rowan Atkinson Zazoo?

The answer is, in the hearts, minds, and memories of every rational rational person on earth, yes, but most recently, no.

Chronologically, I'm fing Zazu.

And if you don't respect the passage of time, what do you respect?

Well,

I mean, I've always been a movie star.

Well, of course, yeah, I mean, that was true since I've been.

The big screen is where my heart lies.

Yeah, your heart and your dignity and the credibility

together, don't they?

Your blue, smurfy heart.

As a film star, I'm basically a suicide bomber.

I can take down the film and the careers of the people in that film around me.

Well, so who's next?

I mean, Bond.

Bond is surely right for an Oliver takedown.

It's a natural step.

I think the best time to be Bond is not next.

It's to let Idris Elba be Bond for one film, have people like it, then step in.

That's when you can irritate people the most.

We all agreed we liked him.

Sure.

Sure.

But you're not going to get him anymore.

You're getting me.

I'm more of a paperwork Bond.

I'm a 21st century Bond.

That's a pandemic online now.

I do basically everything over Zoom.

Gents, I've already done the most bugle-y possible thing that you could do to the Bond, which was I, as a career high, got the opportunity to make the official Bond podcast.

Did you?

Which then got pulled after it had been out for one day because they cancelled the movie.

Bugle.

Fantastic.

Did they cancel it or has it been delayed?

I mean, I'm assuming we'll go to the cinemas again one day.

Because that would be a really bold move to go, you know what, if we can't have it now, we'll never have it.

I'm going to put it in a time capsule.

When did

your Zazu role?

That was, what, that came out, what, 20, 2019?

Yeah, I mean, when you do a role that's timeless, Andy, it feels somehow crass to put a year on it.

So, because there's been a lot of talk, John, about

how COVID is a huge, great conspiracy.

And it does seem a little suspicious that it started so soon after your last,

the latest of your

flock of

movies.

I mean, what was it?

Is that collected now?

A flock?

A flock?

For turkeys.

I'm not sure.

I forget.

But suddenly

this virus that has essentially killed cinema

came out.

I mean, was it a conspiracy to...

to to stop you making films?

Is that what we've stumbled upon?

I mean, correlation isn't causation, Andy, and you'd want to peer review that thesis, but I can't think of a good pushback to it right now.

Anyway, let's...

That's been a nice long intro this week.

It just doesn't show nothing's changed, Andy.

Nothing's changed.

It's nothing changed.

Start talking.

Fundamentally can't focus to a briefly entertaining and eventually frustrating degree, and the rest of the show suffers for it.

We're picking up exactly where we left off.

It's like getting on a very rusty bicycle that has been rightly consigned to a police evidence cellar.

Yeah, I hope anyone listening to this has got a good tetanus shot.

17th of December, on this date in the year 497 BC, John, the first Saturnalia was celebrated in ancient Rome, the festival that would eventually mutate and be rebranded as Christmas, coincidentally 497 BC, the last year when anyone could legitimately say best Christmas stroke Saturnalia ever and be indisputably correct since when.

Those arguments have run on and on.

As always, a section of the bugle is going, where, John?

In the

garbage.

Oh, God, you've changed.

Burn that passport.

It's going in the bin this week.

Cryptocurrencies, as Bitcoin hits an all-time high of $20,000

per bit of made-up coin, we look at the cryptocurrencies that could shake up the cryptocurrency market in 2021.

People are getting a bit bored of cryptocurrencies and it does seem the markets are going to double down on the cryptoitude of the boring old traditional cryptocurrencies with crypto cryptocurrency.

So Bitcoin could be shoved to one side.

We're looking at new things on the scene like MetaWedge, sudo and boulder cash.

And crypto cryptocurrencies, I'm in set to take the economic world by storm next year.

Magic beans could be one.

Happiness, love.

I think that could be the great cryptocurrency of next year because it's turned out money can buy made up other forms of money.

So the Beatles could have been wrong about money not being able to buy you love after all.

And, of course, the Australian dollar.

So do follow that over the next 12 months.

Also in the bin, Christmas has been cancelled.

It's an obituary for this year's Christmas.

Christmas has been the latest victim of cancel culture, John.

Oh, yeah.

It's not just governments cancelling Christmas in a selfish effort not to have to explain massive death rates for the whole of next year, but cancel culture has cancelled Santa Claus due to animal cruelty allegations, the exploitation of workers, and a lack of equal opportunity provision in his workforce.

And, you know, the Christmas story from the Bible, ripe for cancellation, I would say, John.

Oh, yeah.

You know, expresses extremely prejudicial views about Jewish-run ins offering unlicensed midwifery services and unhygienic birthing suites.

Three wise men, not exactly diverse, and with their non-sustainable frankincense as well, and non-fair trade gold and myrrh could easily trigger people who've ever been really cold and can't hear the syllable myrrh without suffering serious flashbacks.

Those sections in the bin.

The fact, Danny, that you've not released a cryptocurrency and called it a bugle buck shows that you've just never really been in this for the money in the extent that you really should have been.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that is.

I mean, it did take us pretty much four and a half years to get a new lot of merch

after the old lot of merch turned out to have, you know, a quitter built into the logo.

Top story this week.

What the f has happened since you were last on the bugle?

John, I mean, it's been a while.

It's been a while.

A lot of stuff has happened.

On one of the very last bugle shows you did,

we talked about the Republican candidates for the 2016 election, which was still some time ago.

Ridiculous candidates that have really disappointed all fans of American democracy would have degraded the political legacy of the USA, the likes of Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson.

We talked about George Patake, a joke candidate, obviously, who at the time was way out in the betting at 50 to 1 alongside Donald Trump.

And yet,

he was polling at Patake levels.

Well, in the betting, certainly.

So here we are.

I mean, you left the bugle, John.

Yes.

Trump got elected.

Brexit happened, and there's been a worldwide pandemic.

I mean, it's,

I mean, you say, you know, correlation is not causality, but that's a f of a lot of

pretty negative evidence for you then.

Yeah, well, it's been, you know, you can't deny it's been a spicy half of a decade, Andy.

This five years was a lot of things, but it wasn't dull.

You know, it was reckless.

True.

Yes.

It was inhumane.

Yes.

It was an amplification of some of the humanity's darkest instincts.

It was a sadistic natural end point to late-stage capitalism, but it was not boring, Andy.

There was some real edge-of-the-seat stuff.

It's all Brexit, the election of Bolsonaro and Trump, a pandemic, and the boom and bust of the fidget spinner.

Now,

the fact is

politics and culture has changed forever.

And

I'm sorry I couldn't have been with you, Andy, over the last four years to fiddle while Rome burned.

But at least I can get my violin out of a case now and screech out a song.

You've been throwing petrol on the violin, John.

I'm not sure that even makes sense, but I'm sticking with it.

So here we are.

We're coming up now, end of December 2020.

Trump is coming up to the final month of his first term.

And because let's not rule out that second term, John, whether it starts on January the 20th this year or in

the day after that,

through the medium of divine intervention uh because i mean he was he's been unfairly robbed do you not think of a second election win merely by the fact that he didn't win do you not think that's that's the kind of injustice that we democracy should be trying to move beyond well you know if you don't think of justice as binary andy if you think of you know there are lots of shades of grey there then you know there's lots of shades of grey to work with also just to pick you up i really wouldn't rule out a third a third donald trump term already

words don't mean what they used to i don't really see why numbers should either

there's a lot more wiggle room semantically, than

you might think now.

But

since you were on the bugle last, John, America has basically become a much derided, even kind of sympathised with rogue state, and New Zealand has essentially become a global superpower.

So, I mean,

how could you explain that?

New Zealand is a global superpower.

And the idea...

Right, I know their current leader

has some leadership skills.

The idea that John Key ever led a superpower,

the canary in the coal mine there is coughing and already building itself a little coffin.

I will say, though, that this week saw some small but significant news, Andy, because the official electoral college vote was held here in the United States to determine the next president.

Thrilling stuff.

Yeah, well,

usually it is a routine procedural step that takes place in which no one notices due to the fact it's a routine procedural step and who really gives a shit about those.

But, you know, that's very much not been the case this year due to the fact that the current president of the United States is still refusing to accept the results of this election.

Not just that, he's also continuing to act like a one-man wrecking ball to the very foundations of American democracy, swinging back and forth and smashing into institutions that you desperately hope are going to hold up, but do seem to be exhibiting some worrying cracks.

Now, I'm not sure if everyone understands America's electoral college system in the UK.

And to be honest, I'm not even sure anyone really understands it here in America either.

And the reason for that is really twofold.

It's both complicated and it's also completely nonsensical.

So I could take the time now to fully explain it to you.

But to be honest, you would just really be left with the same question you have right now, which is probably, well, why the f do they do it like that?

To which there isn't really a good answer other than, well, this is just the way it's been done for a long time, which historically is a response that has been used to justify some pretty appalling behaviour.

Well, also, I mean, I'm sitting here in London.

I'm sitting sitting a few short miles from westminster the houses of parliament and boris johnson sitting in downing street riffing out his somewhat overwritten parody prime ministership it's not really for me as a britch to criticise a ridiculous electoral system a hundred years past its best before date or more not so much its best before date it's still vaguely just about sensible until date as you say it's one of those things that if you invented it now the electoral college system people would quietly take you to one side and say how about you shut the f ⁇ up until you've got something something sensible and grown up to say you total fing idiot?

That is the beauty with having a system gradually metastasise over time.

You don't realize how stupid it is until you're inside it and you think it should have been this way all along.

But the fact is.

It's very much what happened with the bugle to be.

The fact is, this vote happened, and the election is now close to being more over than it was last month when it was, to be honest, already over.

And the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who is, I think it's fair to say, Andy, not a perfect man,

finally publicly acknowledged that Trump was not going to get a second term this week, saying on the Senate floor that today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.

While McConnell seems to have received credit in some quarters for his speech, it really should be taken with an absolute avalanche of salt, because how grateful should you be for something that is 40 days late for no good reason?

If you went out to dinner, Andy, the waiter took your order, then over a month later, turned up at your house with a plate of cold carbonara, should you be required to say thank you?

Or are you allowed to scream, where the fk was this 960 hours ago?

What have you been doing all this time?

Because make no mistake, Andy, Mitch McConnell's speech is the cold carbonara of congratulations messages.

I mean, how's he cooking that carbonara?

Because, I mean, if it said anything like my carbonara, I'd still take it after a month.

I mean, I'd make a very fine twist and nutmeg.

That's the absolute key.

Absolute.

And also, it makes it kosher, I believe.

Wow.

That understanding of kosher, Andy, really does embody

the way that you have stuck to rigorous Jewish teachings over the years.

For his part, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer urged Mr.

Trump to end his term with a modicum of grace and dignity.

And look, I get why he feels he has to say that, Andy, but everyone knows that's just not going to happen, is it?

Because for all his faults, Donald Trump has been completely consistent across his lifetime in showing absolutely no inclination to even trace amounts of grace and dignity.

To him, Andy, grace and dignity has as much a place in a human life as you think pineapple has on a pizza.

The idea of that very combination turns his stomach and offends him to his fundamental core.

And yet, despite...

Despite the fact that Schumer must have known that his message would be just as effective if he'd wrote it on a piece of paper, then swallowed that piece of paper and then thrown himself down a well, he went on with his entreaties saying, for the sake of our democracy, for the sake of peaceful transition of power he should stop the shenanigans stop the misrepresentations and acknowledge that joe biden will be our next president and again

that just isn't going to happen is it you're asking him to do something he's physically incapable of doing it's like trying to start a band with an antelope you can ask it to play bass all you like but it's got hooves andy it's got hooves Appealing to it to do a serviceable walking bass line actually says more about your misplaced expectation of it than it does about that antelope's future failure.

I reckon it could probably do a job on a tambourine, couldn't it?

You'd put some bells on its antlers.

Sure.

That's not that outlandish, mate.

Andy, you're not that outlandish.

Andy, you're building a straw man here.

I did not say an antelope would not be an excellent tambourine player.

I said you're not going to put, you can strap a base around its neck, but from that point on, you're asking for too much.

How much practical research did you do into that, John?

That's what I want to know.

Well,

I pride myself, Andy, on research now.

So I'm not going going to tell a joke unless I have a room just back here with 14 different antelope with bass strapped around their neck in a controlled setting, right?

And then another room with another 14 where someone else is running.

If the joke has to work, it has to be fundamentally solid, Andy.

Honestly,

one of them unhelpfully got pretty good at the base, but I think that was an outlier.

I think you let that go.

Are we talking...

Are we talking about only base?

Because are you talking upright, double bass?

I mean, because you think that might actually...

High strong bass, Andy,

like Peter Hook in the water but this is when this is my this is this is your this this is the problem with this you've surely with an antelope you use the antlers you rest your double base in the antlers and it uses its other hoof to i just i think you've got you've your experimentation has been your methodology's flawed shit andy excuse me for a minute i need to go to apologize to some very angry antelope

but the fact is so

The fact is, nothing in Trump's behaviour this week has suggested that he is an open receptacle for McConnell's request.

He's gone on a Twitter tear again, amplifying conspiracy theories and replying to Mitch McConnell by tweeting at 12.40 a.m., which is really the best time for human beings to tweet.

He said, Mitch, 75 million votes, a record for a sitting president, brackets, by a lot, close brackets, too soon to give up.

And the thing is, it is true, Andy.

He did get 75 million votes.

And that is, he's right.

It is a lot.

But he is leaving out a pretty crucial piece of context there, and that is that Biden got 7 million more votes than he did.

And that fact really does throw a spanner into the washing machine of the rest of his sentence there.

Because unless I'm very much mistaken, the rules of the election were not which candidate can get closest to exactly 75 million votes, but be careful, because if you go over, you're then disqualified.

If I am mistaken about that, Andy, Trump has a real case here, but I am surprised that I'm only hearing about it now through my own face.

So, I mean, yeah, Joe Biden has been confirmed as the Hercules for our times to clean up the four years of political and social effluence in Trump's Orgean stables.

I mean there's all this talk about cleaning the swamp, John, when Donald Trump heroically took over.

Draining it, draining it, Andy.

He never said he'd clean it.

He wanted the swamp out of there.

He wasn't just trying to purify the water and bring the natural bacteria back.

Because it seems to me that he's drained the swamp very much in the same way that a doctor would give you an enema by shoving a large rocket up your fundament and blasting you into a quarry full of shit.

That seems to be the way that he's.

I mean, is that an accurate representation?

Well, you mean that you can technically call what you're doing an enema, but the result just

doesn't fundamentally back that claim up.

Yeah, I mean, if anything, it's made, it's made things worse, hasn't it?

Yes.

You keep saying you've given me an enema.

Why am I in a quarry?

Why am I in a quarry?

You have to be able to answer a question like that.

Now, the next big procedural step here comes on January the 6th.

That is when Congress is supposed to officially tally the results and certify Biden's victory.

And there have been calls from Trump and his allies for that certification to be held up, calls that McConnell is now trying to manage by reportedly holding a conference call with his fellow Senate Republicans, urging them to not participate in any efforts to object to Biden being certified as the winner of the election.

He was backed up by Senator John Thune, who apparently said it would be great if there were no members that took up that issue.

And I agree with Senator Thune there, Andy.

It would be great.

I mean, what would be even greater would be if the Republican leadership had not allowed their party to get to the point where any of this even needs to be said out loud.

But it does seem that we've all been a little disappointed on that count.

And I have to say, it really is not easy to hear them complain about the behavior of their membership when they are so emphatically complicit in creating this mess.

It's like the old saying goes, Andy: if you're running a circus, don't complain if the elephants are shitting everywhere.

It's what they do, and it's your fault that they're in the tent in the first place.

Let's move on to the correct side of the Atlantic and another thing that plopped out into the world and the chaotic vacuum left across the globe by your departure from the bugle.

Brexit, negotiations as we speak are going to the wire, and that wire is barbed.

It's electrified as well.

And in classic British faction, the ruling classes are more than happy to just hurl people into that barbed wire to see what happens and then wait hopefully for America to bail us out.

I mean, John,

you've been,

you left this country a long 2006 and you know, we Boris Johnson is

Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson, John, is

Prime Minister Johnson.

I ought to have two people named Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson is there was a politician that emerged, a viable politician called Boris Johnson that emerged at the same time

as that ridiculous

man who edited the spectator for a while.

and well it you know it didn't quite it wasn't no it's unfortunately not it's not two separate people it's it's that that same

yeah it's a man who in his previous career could not be trusted with a typewriter has now been trusted with a country and its entire future I mean it's

yeah it's it's it's suboptimal I think from a from a British British point of view

again Andy I mean

someone as someone who now holds both British and American passports,

it does feel like I have a foot in

two countries, neither of which

have been making some very smart, long-term political decisions of late.

Yeah, you've got a foot in each country, and there is shit over both of those shoes.

I mean, at the moment, clearly, with Brexit, it's a difficult job.

He's trying to steer HMS Brexit over the troublesome seas between the Scylla of sense and the Charybdis of consensus, making sure he doesn't tragically founder on either of those two terrifying fates and can instead sail onwards into the ocean of national obsolescence.

These are these are strange.

I mean, has it

I don't know how

it's viewed in America.

And there's a lot of talk about Britain kind of

going global again and the talk of the trade deal that might not be quite so good under

Biden.

I mean,

how do you see the next few years panning out for us?

I mean, I've got absolutely no idea, Andy, because, you know,

I don't know if you've googled America over the last 12 months, but it's been dealing with its own shit right now.

So while there might have been even some morbid curiosity in the early days of Brexit, I think they would check in every now and then saying, oh, have they not done that yet?

And so I don't think there is really a popular understanding that the cliff edge that Britain is about to Thelma and Louise itself off is coming up, if I'm right, on December 31st.

That is when

the hard Brexit is, you're basically going to be jumping off a cliff and then into a solid brick wall.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, yeah, it's not just, and it's a solid brick wall, but it's at the bottom of the cliff.

So we've actually got quite a fun

float down.

I think we'll float.

I d we've just, yeah, to the brick wall.

But yeah, brick, brick walls are not, we're built on brick walls.

I mean, what is the mood in

Britain, Andy, regarding Brexit?

Is it confidence?

Is it well...

Because traditionally, if Britain goes into

any adventure with anything less than massive overconfidence, things tend not to go very well.

They tend not to go that well.

I don't know if we can say it's confidence.

I think we're...

The mood is very much the mood of a room full of people,

well, a room full of men, really, all naked with a load of electrical sockets.

And half the people in there want to put their penis in the sockets.

Right.

And the other half of the people don't, but are being forced to put their

penises in those sockets because they lost a vote about whether or not they had to f ⁇ the sockets.

four and a half years ago.

So it's that kind of I don't know if you can imagine that awkward

you didn't go to the same type of school that I went to, so you probably don't have quite such a lively kind of

crazy word.

I know this, this is just rolling right off the tip of your tongue, this

business, but I'm not sure that it's a metaphor that necessarily feels innate to many.

No.

But I mean, it's an interesting choice we're going to have to make, really, because I mean, if you look at it objectively, the position Britain is going to be on the 1st of January, you know,

alone as a country,

you know, we'd look around and look at countries that we could do business with.

And, you know, obviously we want to be the new Singapore and that, but that's not that practical, really.

You know, there's countries that we could trade with more, like Australia and New Zealand, but they're miles away.

And then you think, well, there's a massive great trading block 25 miles away.

Why don't we?

Why don't we give that a go?

That would seem to be the logical...

That's a great question.

And that surely

would be the compromise that would please both sides, wouldn't it?

I mean, I do think at this

at this point,

the smartest bet, which is obviously one that isn't going going to get taken, is to try and george Costanza Eway back into the EU and just keep turning up to meetings and pretend nothing happened.

Go full Costanza on this.

Yeah.

What are you talking about, Brexit?

Why would we do that?

You're being weird.

Anyway, what were you saying about tariffs?

Let's move on to the story that's defined this year,

the COVID virus.

Now, obviously, with the scientific and economic resources at uh America's and Britain's disposal, you would have expected both of our countries uh to uh deal with this virus um well, I mean much less well than most of the world's poorest nations.

Uh so it's it's gone pretty much as as you would have thought, don't you think?

Yeah, I mean it's we live in countries, Andy, you and I, uh, whose response to this pandemic has basically been throwing a dart, uh missing the massive bullseye, missing the board and hitting someone in the carotid artery.

I guess it could have been worse, but it's honestly hard to imagine exactly how.

Responses here in the US and Andy have ranged.

Well, particularly as that person that it's hit is ourself.

We just curl the dart.

That's right.

It's very hard to do.

It's very hard to do under the conditions that you're

in the luxurious position to have.

It's hard to do it that badly.

Responses in the US, Andy, have ranged from the sinister to the truly stupid.

Here in America, the obsession with protecting the stock market has helped America's,

basically,

state of market worship, has moved it into a fully functioning death cult.

There have clearly been many well-documented cases of individualism being taken to a genuinely dangerous degree here over the last nine months.

And while I know that the UK is not without cases of homicidal stupidity, I do think this is another case where American exceptionalism is at play.

Let's play a hand of pandemic poker here, Andy.

I see your government ministers not following their own coronavirus guidelines, and I'll raise you this.

41 people tested positive for coronavirus after attending a swingers convention in New Orleans.

Wait.

There is, in a very real sense, Andy, more.

The convention was apparently called Naughty in New Orleans, which, to be fair, did turn out to be true.

It was naughty.

It was a very naughty behaviour.

You could argue criminally so.

And around 250 people attended this convention in mid-November.

One of the infected swingers was reportedly hospitalized in a serious condition, and the event's organizer wrote in his blog, if I could go back in time, I would not produce this event again.

I wouldn't do it again if I knew then what I know now.

And while I do appreciate that sentiment, Andy, it's important for all of us to learn from our mistakes.

It is worth noting that this event took place in November.

You know, the exact November that was last month, a time in which I would argue the dangers of holding such an event were fully understood.

Was he, did this organizer honestly not hear about the coronavirus until just this month?

Was he simply too horny all year to turn on the news?

Was the pandemic not even mentioned in any of the bang fiestas I assume he spent the whole year attending?

It must have been.

How does pre-orgy small talk, Andy, not include the biggest thing happening to the planet at that time?

Because it is worth noting, just to be clear, I guess it's just safest to be clear always now.

An eyes wide shut style orgy mask is not, I believe, on the list of WHO approved masks to combat COVID.

And I also think that would have been a less atmospheric film, Andy.

That would have been a much less atmospheric film if everyone had been wearing M95 masks

and socially distancing.

What's the password?

Yeah, it was good to see.

Today, and also wash your hands for at least two happy birthdays.

But I mean, is it?

I'm not fully up to speed with current trends in the swinging scene.

I'll lay my cards on the table there.

But I mean, is it, it must be quite hard to socially distance and effectively

swing at the same time.

That seems logistically problematic.

It's yeah, I mean, I don't know if

the difficulty of the logistics are part of the thrill.

There's a lot I don't understand there, but

maybe at the end of the day, we are trivialising what is essentially a group of very earnest problem solvers.

Yes, I guess so.

And here we've, you know, there's a lot of debate over exactly the circumstances in which you are allowed to meet people from outside your social bubble, whether that's to see your, you know, your elderly parents at Christmas or to f a load of strangers.

And, you know, they're very much two sides of

the same coin.

The government's sort of still trying to find a way of cancelling Christmas that involves giving a lucrative contract to a close friend of the prime minister.

And they haven't quite nailed that yet.

So the current situation, John, is that we are allowed to go and visit our families at Christmas, but the government is saying that we shouldn't.

So they're saying we can,

but we shouldn't.

And this is, I don't know, not so much sitting on the fence as slam-dunking someone else onto that fence.

The chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said these words about meeting up at Christmas just yesterday.

And I think these words sum up in in many ways, the whole of this year.

He said, just because you can do something doesn't mean it's sensible in any way.

Now, I think those might be the most appropriate words, not just for 2020, actually, but for everything that has happened since 2016, indeed, for the third millennium, for the history of all humanity encompassing empire and exploitation.

If one phrase can sum up the human project so far from the day that God got bored and thought, I'll chuck some people in it before I knock off the weekend.

The entire, I think it would be that these were just because you can do something doesn't mean it is sensible in any way.

Can we not have this tagged onto the Ten Commandments, John?

Because it's obviously not a commandment, it's more a piece of friendly advice.

But then, so with things like don't cover your neighbour's ox.

That's an advice, that's a bit of advice, really.

That's just practical kind of neighborhood watch type advice, isn't it?

Not just that, Andy.

I think that should be a mandatory tattoo that people have.

Because as a tattoo, it really works on every possible level

we can have it in all religious texts in the the magna carta you can yeah you're in america you can use your contacts there it's a newly unearthed second and a half amendment just because you could do something doesn't mean it's sensible in any way that that that goes very well with the second amendment john surely that that's they must have that must have been meant to be in there oh god all right okay that's well those are arbitrary guidelines those are pretty good i'm pushing all my chips over the table here andy okay um texas monthly ran an

eye-catching article this week titled this.

Texas wedding photographers have seen some shit.

And it is...

This thing is a story that fully lives up to that headline, Andy, because there are some maddening anecdotes in there.

This is how the writer, Emily McCullough, begins the story.

The wedding photographer had already spent an hour or two inside with the unmasked wedding party when one of the bridesmaids approached her.

The woman thanked her for still showing up, considering everything that's going on with the groom.

When the photographer asked what she meant by that, the bridesmaid said the groom had tested positive for COVID-19 the day before.

She was looking for me to be like, oh, that's crazy.

Like I was going to agree with her that it was fine, the photographer recalls.

So I was like, what are you talking about?

And she was like, oh, no, no, no, no.

Don't freak out.

He doesn't have symptoms.

He's fine.

And the photographer tested positive a few days later.

It is hard to know, Andy, what this period in human history is going to be called in the future.

People alive during the Renaissance didn't know that they were living during the Renaissance.

My best guess at the moment is we're currently living in the mid-period of mankind's f ⁇ ing wittery age.

And I dread to know what late stage f ⁇ wittery brings us to.

I think that is wildly optimistic, John.

I'm not sure we've reached the mid-stage yet.

I think we've got a long way to go to get that far.

I think

we're exploring the full extent of human idiocy.

There's some, I mean,

this is like those early kind of 14th century frescoes.

You're still a way off from the Sistine Chapel.

You know, this is simple.

We can get way, way more witted than this.

You know, tangentially related to this, there was a story I read yesterday

for a study released in Australia that claimed that kangaroos can communicate with humans.

And

if the sole message that those kangaroos are currently communicating is anything other than what the f is wrong with you, idiots, I am calling bullshit on that study.

I was reading a New York Times article about

the British government's efforts to deal with this

the COVID crisis and

noted that Boris Johnson was putting the country, this was back in March, on a quotes, war footing.

Now, the difference, I guess, with World War II is I don't recall reading about how an entire squadron of fighter planes was provided by a cheesemonger friend of Winston Churchill at eight times over the market rate

before the melted cheddar jets proved no match for the Luftwaffe.

I guess that's the difference.

You know, it's kind of similar.

Fog of war, Andy, details get forgotten.

It could have happened.

There's another

related story this week.

UNICEF is providing food for children in the UK for the first time in the 70-year history of the organisation.

That's UNICEF rather than the UK, which of course has been here since the very dawn of time.

It was the first thing he got into.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Don't listen to Julius Caesar.

I mean, you can't.

I don't know what language he's speaking.

Some filthy foreign nonsense.

So UNICEF are feeding hungry children in Britain.

Now, Britain is one of the world's richest countries.

Now, Jacob Rhys Mogg...

And you've done very well to leave the country before he became a real prominent politician, John.

He's dismissed this as an act of political provocation.

And he's right.

UNICEF have no business.

If multi-millionaires like Jacob Reese Mogg, in a country with the collective wealth that Britain has want to watch our own British children Britishly starving, that is our own British business.

This is why we voted for Brexit, John, so we can keep our own children as hungry as we deem appropriate for the overall good of the nation without the woke brigade at the UN sticking their bed-wetting stop children starving ore in.

And don't stick your f ⁇ ing ore in anyway.

We're Team GB.

We always win at rowing.

Mostly with teams made up of people who were properly fed as children.

But that's not the point.

It's only by starving some children that we can get other children

enough nutrition to grow into six foot six inch superathletes designed and bred to triumphantly rob a two kilometre rowing course as fast as an old man on a bicycle.

But anyway, look,

I'm on the point here.

I don't agree with that particular Brexit argument, but I will say it is the first one that I've heard that is intellectually consistent.

It's obviously bankrupt, but it's consistent.

I mean, Jacob Reesmog is not only the MP for West Caricature, he's also the Secretary of State for the re-establishment of the 19th century.

And what happened in the 19th century, John?

Britain ruled the world, and we had loads of starving children.

So butt out, Brussels.

Was this Brussels?

I don't know.

They're all the same, these multinational institutions.

Butt out.

Sexy frog news now.

And John, things have been hot for frogs in France.

And I don't mean in the frying pan with some garlic like normal.

I mean hot, sexy hot.

So hot that a French judge has told frogs to stop frog shagging because they're keeping an entire village awake with their vigorous inter-froggling.

This is probably the biggest story of of the year.

I mean, it's an absolutely tremendous story, Andy.

Is it important?

No.

Is it the kind of story the world should be focusing on right now?

Honestly, not really.

Does it seem worth spending time on it anyway?

Of course it does, because this is a story about a bunch of noisy French frogs, Andy.

And when a man is tired of a story about that, he's truly tired of life.

Apparently, after nine years, nine years of legal battles, Michelle and Annie Pechahas have been instructed that they have exactly 90 days to drain their 300 square metre pond and get rid of their f frogs.

And I tell you what I admire here, Landy.

Drain the swamp.

Actually drain the swamp.

What I admire about this is that this lawsuit continued through this year.

Because there must have been a temptation once the world was gripped by a global pandemic to think, you know what?

You know what?

Let's forget it.

Let's just forget it because, you know, at the end of the day,

they're just f frogs.

Let's Let's just live and let live.

There are more important issues to be getting worked up about right now.

And I'm sure that, you know, for a moment, probably early in the spring,

that must have been tempting.

But then I'm guessing that a few months later, maybe on a midsummer day, when the neighbours woke up early in the morning, enjoyed a high-quality pastry, eat their high-quality coffee, and then opened their windows to let the sweet Dordoyne air in.

Only to be greeted by the sound of grunting fk frogs attempting to clumsily impregnate each other in the middle of a filthy pond.

They must have thought, you know what?

F it.

F these f ⁇ frogs.

Don't tell me that they couldn't do this quieter.

This feels like a choice.

We're going back to court.

Well in Britain, we have such backlogs in our legal system that actual major crimes are not being prosecuted for the two, three, three years.

But France, France will, if it involves A, frogs and B, things having sex with each other, they will find a way, John, up the priority list.

A petition to to save these frogs has now reached more than 97,000 signatures in the last three days.

That is 96,500 more people than live in that village.

And there's a reason for that, Andy, because France is fundamentally forgetting what it is at its core here.

It's a nation unafraid to celebrate the pleasures of the flesh, frog flesh included.

If these frogs, Andy, cannot rot each other at precisely 63 decibels, because that apparently 63, that apparently is around the size, around the volume of a washing machine apparently.

That's what it was timed as.

But John, I mean, you're much more of an expert on

extremely loud amphibiological sex than me.

Thank you.

It's the 63 decibels.

Was that from all the frogs?

Or was it from one particularly horny pair of frogs going, absolutely frog sexy?

I really love the idea.

that all the frogs are quiet apart from one.

And they're always got you we're gonna you're we're gonna lose our swamp and i i love i love you're a great frog you're a great frog but this

you're gonna get us kicked out of the swamp but the thing is andy if they can't do that

if they if the frogs cannot pound each other at 63 decibels in france where in the world can they do it don't worry the answer is belgium they can do it there it's about an eight hour drive from dordogne i don't know what that is in hops but i'm sure frogs have a pretty good internal conversion chart go to belgium frogs or new orleans Yes, that's true.

That's true.

I mean, these copulating Kermits internally

was

originally an X-rated burlesque tributat to the CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt's role in the overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister Mohamed Motsadegh.

That's a really interesting detail, Andy.

I'm glad you wanted to truffle that out.

Well, it's nearly time for this

special edition of the Bugle to

come to an end.

And, well, I hope you'll be able to come back on at some point next year, John, with a new president.

Will you miss Trump, do you think?

Not on any level, no.

Not on any sensory level whatsoever.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I'll miss him and all the members of his administration, if that's the right word, the cabinet members, the personal lackeys, and the

Lickspittles.

In fact, I was invited to a special Christmas leaving do at the White House by the President, in which all of his

were there.

His major staff were there and all the other, and you can actually see it now.

We didn't used to do this on video calls.

Now you can see what's worse.

Seeing a pun is worse.

Done it, done it.

All his

president and all his staff were there, and some other folks who anyway, he set up a barbecue.

He barbecued the cheaper meat first,

then saved the posh stuff for later.

He said to me, Andy, it's time for the sirloin.

I've done all Trump.

Done all Trump.

Anyway, but he wanted to look good for the occasion, of course, the president, and he had some Botox treatment and plastic surgery on the lower part of his face beneath the mouth.

He said the muscles were a bit taut still.

It was hard to move.

He said, it's a bit stiff, my new chin.

Thank you.

Things got a bit fractious, actually.

An argument broke out about the Trump campaign's failed court cases.

It led to a very foul-mouthed employee of Santa Claus and the former governor of California and famous action movie star agreeing to a a Hamilton Burr style settlement of with pistols at dawn.

It was Rudolph dueling Arnie.

I mean I think I don't think that's the correct response to that John.

Anyway, before it started Trump wrote a to-do list of some agreement, some disagreement about how to amplify the sound of the sound system and the degree to which the ceremony should be impressively grand.

And then he wanted to deal with any other issues not covered by those.

So he wrote on his list, Mike Pomp, A-O-B.

And we had a bit of an argument about

that one, Andy.

I don't know why that was worse.

I couldn't explain to you why, but I felt it.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, we had a bit of a debate because they were still waiting a bit time to kill.

So we talked about sport because Trump obviously likes his sport.

The struggles of the Philadelphia Eagles replacing Vence, their

franchise quarterback.

And he said, Andy, do you think they were right to bench Carson?

There we go.

He had a collection of female deers in the White House

grounds.

He was so proud of them.

He gave them a score out of every 10, depending on how perky they looked.

And he invited me to join him.

He said, Andy,

would you like to mark my does?

Mark my does?

Mark my does.

And finally, he's very interested in science, of course, Trump.

He told me one of the many research projects he's personally overseen was showing that fish and trees actually share some of the same genetic makeup.

He explained, the different types of skin of different breeds of fish is evolutionarily descended from the different barks of different trees.

Those fish with genes from oak trees or redwoods have smoother skin, but the ewe genes scalier.

That was surely worth the journey, wasn't it, John?

Yeah, I think I've made this clear.

If you're not a snowplow, you can f the f off

anyway.

Angela Merkel was there as well.

And I spoke to her because Trump suddenly remembered

all the drinks.

Yeah, still going.

Anyway,

he suddenly remembered he hadn't settled up for the drinks and he panicked and got his words mixed up.

Bill, Barr, he said.

But Merkel was there, and all the female world leaders who've dealt with Trump were there too.

And for a kind of parlor game, they had to write down adjectives that describe the way that Trump treated them.

I asked Merkel what she thought would be most likely to have made that list and she said, Andy, I would be surprised if chivalrous was one of them.

Andy, you are beating a cremated horse.

Andy, I would be surprised if chivalrous was one of those words.

I put money on considerate not being one of them, but I I bet CD was.

Right,

I'm now done.

Anyway, Trump was a bit sad when everyone left.

He said goodbye as always in Italian, but unenthusiastically.

It was definitely a lame chow.

Just googling whether puns were a war crime, Andy.

It's not clear yet.

Yeah, you sound annoyed.

I think I'm about to get barracked, so bummer.

But you showed the patience of Job biding your time for all the.

You have the power.

Stop this.

For the common good.

Stop it.

I stopped recording ages ago.

Let's just conclude, and these words seem more appropriate now, even than earlier in the show.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's sensible in any way.

Here, here.

So I couldn't let you coming back on the bugle go without one of them, John.

Well, just to remind you why you left, just to remind you why you left in the first place.

You're very conveniently taking agency out of the decision that you just made there.

Well,

it's the 21st century, that's what we do.

John, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you, faculty, so lovely to see you.

It's great to be back in the past.

And you, and the world.

And you, Chris.

And you, Chris, but generally, just as the planet, you know,

let's aim a little higher.

Bye!

Goodbye, Buglers.

We will play you out with some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers.

Before the lies, one fact.

You're about to buy that ticket for the Bugle Live Review of the Year show on the 30th of December.

It also makes the ideal Christmas present if you can't make it out to the shops or just can't be asked to go and buy anything.

If you want something to wrap up, just make a paper-mâché life-size sculpture of me, Alice Nish and NATO, and a scale model of the world, and that should get the message across.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com, where you can also join our voluntary subscription scheme and make recurring or one-off donations to support the show.

Here are your lies.

Kristen Wolfe is worried about the number of satellites in orbit and reckons we need to start building them like pieces of a giant jigsaw that can slot together in space.

Kristen explains, I reckon within one, maybe 2,000 years, 50% of the sky will be satellite, so we have to start being smart about things or it's going to get very messy indeed.

It's also obviously very important, adds Kristen, not to lose a piece of that jigsaw, because that is extremely annoying.

L.D.

Nicholas May thinks it might help society in general if everybody, and Nicholas means everybody, had to do a sort of national service that involves being a private detective.

I think we'd all benefit, says Nicholas, from honing our skills for examining evidence and information.

and imagine the number of awesome detective novels that would probably eventually emerge.

Steve Deckel, however, says that the last thing the world needs is more detective novels.

If we're going to force people to do something compulsory like that, says Steve, I think it should be one or more of being a brain surgeon, a football referee, and an air traffic controller.

Explaining his reasoning, Steve says, I haven't really thought this through, but they're all jobs that I've had recurring nightmares about having to do with no training, so from a purely personal perspective, I think it would help if I had some experience.

Someone known only as Scrubblesworth Fitzwitt has always focused really, really hard when making a glass of orange squash or other fruit cordial.

It's something I've done since childhood, says Scrubblesworth.

Often it used to say concentrate on the bottle, so I did, and I still do.

I assumed that instruction was there because the cordial was so fruity it could corrode human skin, so you had to be really, really on it to avoid spillages.

Scrubblesworth adds morosely, I wish all products had helpful advice like that on their labels.

Erin Todd hopes that the unstoppable march of technology does not result in the photocopier becoming obsolete.

Sure, says Erin, there might come a time when we no longer actually need the photocopier, but to my mind there is no sweeter form of entertainment and relaxation than standing next to a photocopier as it rhythmically churns out a thousand copies of a poster announcing that you have no missing pets to worry about, or 500 cancellation notices for a party you never really intended to hold.

The noise, the sound, irreplaceable.

And finally, John Lorenz managed to secure a job at an interview once by claiming that his personal hero was the Roman Emperor Fastidius Maximus, famously the emperor with the most obsessional attention to detail.

John was caught off guard by a, who's your personal hero question, and he didn't want to give a hackneyed answer like, Nelson Mandela, or my dad, or my mum, or your mum, or Enrique Iglesias, so he improvised impressively with the made-up Emperor Fastidius.

Nonetheless, John was surprised to be appointed Professor of Ancient History at Harvard University.

Here endeth this week's Lies.

Goodbye.

30th of December.

Buy your tickets now.

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.