When The E-Shed's Rockin'

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4176 of The Bugle, the world's foremost source of ruthlessly inaccurate dismiss information.

I am, yet again, Andy Zoltzmann, and it's the 11th of December, 2020.

Could this be the day that it is finally revealed that 2020 has been a hoax?

A prank year, the first since 1848 of course.

Just to see the looks of the world's faces, we will let you know as soon as possible.

I'm here in London in the shed of Algrathia speaking into the microphone of the irkling sclablerards sat in the throne of the 12 Narconian nids.

I thought I'd try to tap into a Game of Thrones-y type audience.

Let's see what that's done to audience numbers.

Nope, not even a quiver on the dial.

Right, I'm going to have to take my top off then.

Yep,

yep, uh,

yep, oof.

Right, and there you go.

Oh, and suddenly people are tuning in.

We are a simple species.

Right, eyes up, everyone.

Uh, joining me for the bugle this week from Australia, the nation that, as we speak, post-Brex Britannia, is lining up to emulate in every possible way our spiritual touchstone, our gradually becoming uninhabitable inspiration.

It's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

It's good to be back.

It's good to be back with my feet on the ground and my brain in this universe.

Now, obviously, we're looking here at, and we'll touch on this later in the show, an Australian-style relationship with the EU.

Tell us, oh great Australian, knower of all truths, what bounties await us with our embrace of antipodiatricism?

Well, Andy, there is a particular kind of bobby pin that I can get at one single shop in the European Union, and I cannot get it here in Australia.

So welcome to a world of frustration, a very specific set of needs for a very specific person, aka.

Why were we not told apart from being told?

Also joining us from the distant continent that is Europe, from Dublin, Ireland, to be specific, it's a big welcome back for the first time since he took a break from the Buell to mastermind a global descent into the ravages of a pandemic.

It's David O'Doherty.

Hello, Bonjour.

Hello, Bonjour.

It's lovely to have you back on the bus.

How have you been?

I'm all right.

While you're a 2020 truther,

the whole thing could be a hoax.

I am a chess truther.

This is big.

There's actually no rules to chess.

It's just people pretending while I'm in the room that it has rules.

And then when I leave, they just play drafts with the buddy-shaped men.

To be honest, that is more of a...

You've been watching the Queen's Gambit, have you?

Yeah.

Obviously not, because it's a hoax TV show that doesn't exist.

So it's not the most implausible conspiracy theory we've had this year.

These are the questions that other shows are afraid to ask.

But not here on the bugle.

We'll get to the very bottom of this long-running fraud.

We we are recording on the 11th of December on Tuesday the 15th it will be 12 years to the day since the beginning and end of my midwifery career happy birthday to the smaller of my two support acts that day on this day in 1936 the abdication of king edward the eighth became effective brought about by his relationship with wallace simpson whose stop motion animation stroke cell animation name harbinged an unbridgeable division which she would soon bring to the monarchy.

It's popularly assumed that Edward VIII or Eddie Vitt as his friends briefly called him had to hang up his crown and hand in his badge and his scepter because Simpson was A divorced, B Catholic, C American and D unable to feel a P under 50 mattresses.

But in fact the reality is that a simple blood test on Simpson found that she had insufficient levels of the hormones aristocrazine, antiplebionide and britannicin, all of which have to be present in the bloodstream of any member of firm Windsor.

And, well, there you go.

It's amazing how history repeats itself, it turns out.

Just slightly too high in the possibly a Nazi.

That's just in the bloodstream, just a little there.

Yes, I mean, I mean,

some say

it was a rogue test, and really there isn't that much.

Anyway, let's move on.

12th December.

Ironically, the wrong trousers was the grounds for his original divorce as well, to marry her.

On the 12th of December, it will be 119 years since Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal at Signal Hill in St.

John's, Newfoundland.

He received the letter S

from a transmitter in Cornwall.

England, the other three letters of the transmission never quite made it through and a warning for humanity about what was going to unfold over the next hundred years was lost.

Research in the 1980s from the Starship Institute of History about Marconi suggested that the message was delayed and that Marconi had to wait for a long time alone in his special signal reception pod, waiting for the historic message to come through, trying to kill time and keep himself awake, and that one of his assistants barged in and found, quotes, Marconi playing with his mamba.

This research published, I believe, in a research paper in August 1985 in the form, as was traditional at the time, of a pop rock song.

See also the 1978 thesis, Rasputin, The Decline of Tsarism and the Creation of a New 20th Century Russian Identity by Boris Niamovsky, or as he was popularly known, Bo Niem.

As always, the section of the bugle is going straight in a week like this.

As always, the sector's going in the bin.

Reality is too painful.

Disney has announced that Harrison Ford is going to return for a final movie of the Indiana Jones franchise, titled still to be finalised for the aging archaeologist.

Rumors are that it's going to be Indiana Jones and the high-risk demographic or Indiana Jones in the nice cup of tea, or maybe even Indiana Jones returns priceless stolen artefacts to be properly displayed in their original context.

Honestly, this is PC wokeism gone mad.

But, well, it's a very exciting time for the movie industry.

They're also squeezing more eggs out of the Star Wars Golden Goose.

Are they eggs that are coming out of that goose, Disney?

Are you sure they're definitely eggs?

And the Marvel franchise, well, more Marvel movies to fill the aching void in humanity's soul caused by an insufficient quantity of Marvel movies.

But for this section of the bin, we look ahead at the big 2021 franchise film releases that will be underwhelming humanity across the planet next year, including 12 even angrier cyborgs, a long-awaited sequel of the 1957 Sydney Lumet courtroom drama 12 Angry Men, in which time-travelling cyborgs try to overturn a historic miscarriage of justice, in which a boy was on trial for a crime he didn't commit by blowing up every courtroom on Earth.

It is explosive, it's graphic, it's sensational.

No shot lasts longer than 0.3 seconds.

It's filmed in 483 different locations and it's totally incomprehensible.

Bang, bang, kaboom.

Just what the modern audience wants.

Also, Ocean's 330 million, a heist cape in which the entire population of America steals all the money from the US Treasury vaults through a cunning ruse involving spiralling national debt and short-term politics.

Waspishly satirical.

Perts Win the Hut, that's a spin-off Star Wars Pip Squeezer following the second cousin once removed of Jabber the Hut, who, yeah, yeah, yeah, spaceships, yeah, yeah, anthropomorphic aliens, yeah, obvious ending.

Uh, also coming out next next year, The Human Millipede, unnecessary.

The Last Temptation of Bieber, derivative and blasphemous.

Field of Nightmares, baseball zombies, been there, done it.

A Clockwork Satsuma, really, and Penultimate of the Mohicans, unilluminating, even by Hollywood prequel standards.

That movie section in the bin.

Top story this week, it's over.

Not COVID, but the debates, if ever there was one, over which is the greatest country in the history of the universe, it's Britain.

It's Britain, because we, we Britain, we, as a nation, all 65 plus million of us, we gathered around the national water cooler and approved a vaccine for use before anyone else in this world or the next, if you ignore Russia.

Take that, rest of the world.

Britain has won the race.

The Russians don't count.

It's not really a vaccine.

They're just shooting vodka into people's eyeballs.

We've won.

We have won 2020.

Take it, you losers from Ireland and Australia.

It turns out that Greatest Nation was being judged only on First Nation to vaccinate an old man called William Shakespeare, which did happen this week.

Not on basic administrative competence, political effectiveness, lack of corruption in contracts to supply medical equipment, or anything else you might think it might be judged on.

Britain has won.

How do you guys take this humiliating defeat for your respective countries?

The rush to vaccinate William Shakespeare does possibly point to future vaccination of anyone who's got a vaguely iconic name in England.

Just from a national morale point of view, rumor has it that

Big Ben Kay, the former Leicester second row, is going to be next.

Sean Bean, weirdly, the actor, because he is called Bean, and that is close to Mr.

Bean, who is England's greatest living icon.

Florence, there's a chance that Florence from Florence in the Machine, her surname could be Nightingale, so she will be vaccinated.

And then Minnie Driver, obviously, because she's English, she's got Minnie in her name, and English people love driving.

So she will definitely be vaccinated.

It's, I mean, there's going to be a lot of debate now over the precise order that people are vaccinated in.

I mean, that will become one of the big arguments as we move into the new year.

So at the start is oldies, healthcareies, people who sound like icons, and then novelty musicians.

That's in the very top group.

Lucky I fall into that.

Me and the ukulele orchestra of Great Britain are in there.

Alice, I'm afraid, because you play a banjo, which is technically a non-nobility instrument, you will be in Pot Nine,

which you will receive the vaccine in 2025.

And Pot Nine includes satirists, ventriloquists, hotel room towel orogamists, origamists, done out to say that, and contestants on naked attraction.

Right, but I'm in all four of those groups.

So does that mean I get bumped up from Category 9 or not?

I can't wait to see your episode.

It is sensational.

Those prosthetics were worth every penny.

Alice, this is...

I mean, how's the vaccine news?

Obviously, in Australia,

the only vaccine you need is

Australianism.

But I mean, how's the

news going down there?

Oh, we're happy for you to have it.

You need it.

Well, exactly.

This was the clever strategy.

At last someone has given the british government credit thank you alice because we cleverly manipulated ourselves to leave ourselves as one of the countries in most desperate need of a vaccine being rushed out by being world leaders in dealing shitly with the virus so it has been a strategic master stroke by the much maligned johnson government Look, we love the virus.

It gives us the opportunity to fulfil our foreign policy to the nth degree, which is anyone who tries to get in, we lock them up for an indefinite period of time

in severe torment.

I mean for most Australian citizens it's only two weeks but it might be forever and we like to keep that uncertainty going.

The thing about the virus that's kind of really striking is that rich nations apparently are hoarding 53% of the total stock of the most promising vaccines for what is 14% of the global population and it looks like about nine out of ten people in poorer countries are going to miss out according to the People's Vaccine Alliance,

which, you know, they are suggesting that whatever these corporations should be sharing the IP freely for the good of the planet, to which the gang of people known as corporations said, ha ha ha, we have adequately diffused responsibility within our corporate hierarchies so that no one needs to feel personally responsible for pulling the trigger on the hapless poor of the globe.

The fictions of corporate ethics are a shield for our conscience.

We are accountable only to the middle managers, and thus each of us is only a quarter going to hell.

When the revolution comes, only my left leg will be against the wall, so suck it.

it's nice to have those that explained in in uh in clear and concise uh terms i mean it must be you know disappointing for the for the poor nations of the world uh David

another loss against against the rich nations you can look at it that way yeah or I can look forward to getting my sweet sweet vaccine shots and I think what I'm going to do is because it's a two-shot affair so I think for my first one I'll get Pfizer with just a twist of AstraZeneca.

Just clean the glass with AstraZeneca.

And then for I'll get a dirty Moderna for the second one, which is just Moderna with a smushed up olive in it.

I mean I'm looking forward to it.

And although we haven't ratified the vaccine yet, we weren't in that particular rush as you guys, Andy.

I think it should be happening.

I mean, someone said we won't get it till June is when

incredibly healthy, hot 44 year olds like me will be in life.

AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have pledged to provide 64% of their vaccines to developing nations, poorer nations.

But interestingly Canada has bought enough to vaccinate its own population five times over

which according to Oxfam, which is just cutting through decades of Canadian PR about being the nice guys of the post-colonial alumni rowing team.

It doesn't help if they're saying sorry while they're doing it.

Alice, I think, again,

I think we're misrepresenting Canada here.

Clearly, they placed this order before the American election and they were legislating for 150 million Americans to flood over the border on the 20, you know, as soon as that result came out, had it come out the other way.

And of course it could still.

I know some of those court cases aren't going tremendously well for Trump, but it just needs one vote to be proved to be bogus and the whole thing will come collapsing down.

But do you think, Alice, I think you've oversimplified it, saying it's rich nations versus poor nations.

Are we sure it's not just the cool nations getting it first and the square nations have to wait?

I mean, that's the way I see it as a Brit.

Well, you know, as the coolest nation in the world.

Or is it nations chosen by God are doing better than accidental, non-divinely appointed nations?

I mean, it's hard to tell.

No, it's not.

it's not hard to tell.

Well, I mean, you tried to be you tried telling that to Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary of the United Kingdom,

who has provided confirmation of Britain's untouchable greatness this week.

He is, of course, the earthly representative of the goddess Britannia and her husband, God,

Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education.

Those words don't make any more sense the more often you say them.

Adra.

It does seem that he got the job as Secretary of State for Education based on the fact that he can relate to the attainment levels of a five-year-old who's managed to do a potato print picture without shitting themselves.

And he

basically told the world that the reason that Britain was the first to roll out immunization was because we are a better country than other countries.

It makes us this is a man who is a cabinet minister responsible for the futures of millions of children, all of whom, literally all of whom would make a more convincing cabinet minister than him.

It is

quite, I mean, it is hard to take politics seriously.

I mean, you do have the best of the best over there.

Certainly, who could look with a dry eye on Matt Hancock appearing this week on Piers Morgan's wonderful morning show,

doing the worst fake crying

I have ever seen?

I'm so skint as a country that we couldn't even afford a onion for him to keep in his place.

The thing about pretending to cry, if you've done any like high school acting, is that part of pretending to cry is looking like you're trying not to cry, not looking like you're trying to cry and failing.

And then immediately being able to talk normally, having got over the crying, maybe two seconds after the fake crying, he was filled with emotion for Britain that this German-financed vaccine created by a Turkish-German couple has potentially saved his government.

And he even added in, certainly for William Shakespeare, just a little bit of gravy into that syringe.

A little bit of beautiful British gravy.

I have pretended to cry more convincingly than that when I was trying to get my brother to come close enough to punch him in the head.

I mean, the big long-term effect of all of this will be me saying the word efficacy.

Right.

I mean, mean who knows going forward.

People will come into my house.

I'll be like, can you please take your coat off?

You won't feel the efficacy of it when you go back out again

just going to your stand-up comedy gigs and shouting at you.

The efficacy of these jokes is unusually low.

Brexit news now, and here we go again.

Britain and Europe sitting on distant branches of the same already dead tree F-I-A-L-I-N-G

after

four and a half years of what I believe political scientists call absolutely f ⁇ ing gutless uselessness by various British governments accelerated by the Johnson regime since it took power a year ago.

It seems that the evitable has become inevitable.

A no-deal Brexit, an Australian-style Brexit looks on the cards.

It does basically seem that Britain and Europe are going to slam each other into the gravel traps of this unnecessary economic motor race and then wander off, gesticulating wildly in the other's direction whilst refusing to accept any responsibility for their role in the crash.

I mean, yes, the British team not only forced the race to take place and selected unqualified mechanics and a driver who'd only ever ridden a pedal tricycle before, and then veered unpredictably all over the place, shunting the EU car off the track.

But why was that EU car not letting us drive exactly where we wanted to drive?

The cheating bastards,

David, David as a as a as a member of the EU as you still are

in Ireland what's your I mean what's your take on on Britain's

I don't know basically floundering our way towards independence well Andy I think we can all see that it's it's certainly crunch time in the Brexit tux in the same way that it's sofa sale time at my local branch of non-stop bonkers sofa clearance 24-hour warehouse crazy deals

and I I mean, personally, I just find it amazing to think that Brexit, which started as a one-hour stage show at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe, has got this big.

A lot of people fail to remember what Brexit is.

I think the word has become so ubiquitous.

So, just to remind you that Brexit is standing on the roof of your own home, calling all of the neighbors pricks and then not moving, just continuing to live there with a horrible vibe forever.

And it's hard to tell whether Boris, I mean, does he want to deal or is he just pretending because his father never hugged him?

But oh, to be a fly on the wall at him and Ursula von der Leyen's last supper in Brussels on Wednesday.

And by a fly, I mean a fly covered in an explosive laxative that is constantly dive bombing into Boris's weird gravy soup.

I think that might be image of the year.

I mean, it's there's a number of things been said about Brexit.

I think we have to reassess.

There's been talk of wanting to have a cake and eat it, Brexit.

I think what we're heading for now is a chuck your cake in the bin and still somehow be poisoned by it, Brexit.

And I myself have compared it previously to being a bit like, you know,

Thelmer and Louise and the government saying, you know, we'll be Thelma, you be Louise, let's f ⁇ ing do this thing.

But it's not quite turned out that way.

I think it's more like Thelma and Louise, if they'd

accelerated the car off course by the cliff, crashed into a tree at high speed, crawled bleeding out of the smouldering wreckage of the car, only to have the car then roll back over them and the tree fall on top of them before the cliff edge collapses underneath them and they tumble onto the rocks below where the decaying remains are then picked up by vultures and scavengers until all that is left are an array of rib bones spelling out the word why.

I think that's how it's how it's turned out.

It's been fascinating to see who's been applying for Irish passports.

I mean, that's been a long-running thing.

What companies are moving to Ireland to avail of EU rules?

Jacob Rees-Moggs Investment Fund, of course, and then more recently, Percy Pig from the Marks and Spencer Gums.

He's married to Peppa Pig, and they have just moved to just outside Cork.

Key British icons, Sir Killalot is apparently moving to Galway City and Snap and Pop from Snap, Crackle and Pop are moving to Ireland, which will just leave Crackle in England.

And the breakfast cereal will just be called Crackle from then on.

You'll open it and it just explodes in your face.

So take that, you stupid Brits.

Like a breakfast metaphor.

I mean, it's, you know, I don't want to go into too many details about the negotiations because, you know, I'm British, it's Brexit, details, schmeetles, and all that.

It's interesting that George Osborne, who long longer term buglers may remember as the former Chancellor of the Exchequer,

wrote this this week.

He said, the Brexit frog has been truly boiled.

Now, I mean, let's ignore for the fact that he was one of the ones dressed up in a witch's outfit, chanting Chuck Little Hop in a hat pot, just to see what he does.

But I think there is more to successful witchcraft than mere frog boiling.

Believe me, I know.

And

it's

I mean, I don't know, it's very hard to look on this with any sense of

hope, optimism.

Even as the proven greatest nation

in the world, the government keeps saying this deal must be compatible with our sovereignty, which would hold a bit more water if that government hadn't been aggressively defecating all over the concepts of sovereignty for the past 12 months.

Yeah, Andy, not only do I feel like I've made all of the jokes about Brexit, I feel like I've made all of the jokes about how I have no more jokes to make about Brexit.

But look, it's not that I don't understand why you might mistrust the EU or why you might dislike the bureaucracy of the EU, but

it's like saying at some point we should stop the car and then everyone else in the car leaping out of the car while you're still driving on the highway.

This is the worst possible way to achieve

what is an arguable goal.

You can have a reasonable argument about it, but this is not a reasonable argument.

This is somebody coming in just smashing your favourite vase and saying, I don't like the way you sleep.

I'm not, at what point are remainers allowed to, I'm not going to say gloat,

but at what point are the remainers allowed to say, I told you so?

After all of this, you know, we're never going to drop out without a deal.

No deal isn't on the table.

Oh, by the way, we're not doing a deal.

Well, I mean, there have been quite a few articles about, I mean, in fact, several articles blaming remainers for the failure of

the negotiations, Which is, I mean, really, that is just another symptom of the echoing bullshittery of the past five years rebounding cacophonously off the cold, hard arse of reality.

I think the point at which the levers may realise this was a terrible idea was this week the head of Tesco

said there may be a shortage of cheese.

Oh, God.

In the weeks following a hard Brexit, it might just be cheddar.

And could that be the moment when those levers try to have their beloved fondus and just end up twatting meat into a solid block of British nuclear winter cheddar?

Prop monsieur,

not with Gruyère, just cheese, just put, lasagna, are you joking?

We will just have cheese on pasta.

Wait, there's no pasta, just cheese, please.

Well, I mean, this to me was symptomatic of the divisiveness of the debate, this headline that, you know, Tesco saying Brexit could see people choose Cheddar over Brie.

Why is this being presented as an either-or choice?

I mean, I mean, also, why are we going for the hard cheese option, which is an expression meaning bad luck, luck being something that sort of happens out of your control?

This is not really bad.

This is bad luck in the same way that it's bad luck to lose the Wimbledon final if on the first point you douse yourself in petrol and set yourself on fire.

But also,

why are we opting for a British Brie or another British soft ripened cheese option rather than going way over the top and abandoning soft cheese altogether just to make a point that doesn't need making?

I like my cheese like I like my Brexit, hard and slathered in an aggressively vinegary pickle and crumbling and absolutely crackers.

In Australia, it's interesting you say hard cheese, we say tough titties, which is any woman who's breastfed for more than six months.

Well, I mean, in some ways, that's the cow's equivalent of hard cheese, I guess.

Alice, you also say witch's hats for road cones, so let's not take your nature or your country too seriously.

That is preposterous.

Brings a Halloween vibe to Roadworks.

I didn't know they were called anything but until I went to the UK.

We are heading for this so-called Australian option in which we trade as if we're 10,000 miles away rather than a Canadian option in which we trade as if we'd rather be outside wrestling a moose or playing ice hockey.

And let's not forget, I mean, what has been said in the past, Liam Fox, former Tory cabinet minister, said this will be the easiest trade deal in history.

Boris Johnson said there is no plan for no deal because we're going to get a great deal.

Michael Gove, the day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.

The oven, the oven-ready deal.

I mean, presumably, you think everyone involved is on the verge of resigning after this catastrophic failure to deliver what they said was an absolute Sunday afternoon piece of cakewalk in the park whilst pushing over a child's play picnic.

But unfortunately, this whole thing has turned out to be the wrong kind of no-brainer.

Well, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, when he was told that Britain was going to go for the Australian option in regards to its relationship with the EU, said, be careful what you wish for.

Australia's relationship with the EU is not one from a trade point of view that Britain would want.

I mean, it's definitely easier to be right-wing.

I mean, this is something that I realized at a young age.

When I was 14, I remember in my junior certificate state French oral exam,

I understood we were going to be talking about l'environment.

And then I go in, and the invigilator starts asking me questions about unemployment, and I've got nothing.

So I just fall back on the simplest vocab, which is all very right-wing.

She's like, What would you do with the unemployed?

And I say, put them in prison.

It's very, very

throw them Dons Le Bastille, pour favour.

The environment, or as the French call it, les surroundings.

So anyway,

we will continue to follow this story as it unfolds over the next 50 to 100 years.

And With the referendum running total tantalizingly poised at one all with 50 years of the match still to play, this could be a real thriller over the next half a century.

Aliens news now and we are not alone.

It turns out proof has been provided by a former Israeli space security chief.

Alice, you are our

Bugle correspondent for communicating with alien life and other dimensions, of course.

Bring us up to date with

what's been going on.

Well, proof has been provided if you consider the ramblings of an 87-year-old retired professor, Prouf, but...

Yes, we do.

It's 2020.

That is proof.

But actually, he's a current professor.

He's a retired Israeli general, Chaim Eshed.

He said that the state of Israel has made contact with aliens.

He called up the Jerusalem Post, a right-wing newspaper, and told them that he wanted to have a chat about aliens, that the aliens are being contact with Israel and America, but they had kept it a secret because humanity isn't ready,

putting into question why he's telling us now.

But apparently, these aliens are the quote galactic federation, and

they've been making contact for years, but keeping themselves a secret to prevent hysteria.

You know, Andy, with a story like this, sometimes life hands you lemonade and you're kind of stuck for what to do with it.

I can't tell if I want this to be an elaborate hoax or a depressing truth.

I do know that with it being called the Galactic Federation and this whole idea of not being ready yet, Chaim Ashed may have been watching a little bit too much Star Trek.

I know that I don't want it to be the thing that it most likely is, which is either severe mental illness or the elaborately self-indulgent delusion of an otherwise intelligent man with a small gap in his brain through which the liquid of reality has trickled over time.

But

look,

which would you prefer, if it were real or if it were not real?

Oh, real, definitely.

I mean,

I mean,

this could be our way out of things, couldn't it?

We're keeping guilt-tripped as a species, you know, everything we're doing to ruin the planet.

And if suddenly the aliens come along and destroy us, then ethically we're off the hook, aren't we?

I mean, if I can just chip in here as a holder of a US 01 visa, which is a stamp in my passport that clearly says I am an alien with extraordinary ability, I feel I can speak from genuine experience here.

I mean you look around firstly aliens not now.

It's the worst possible year for this huge news to break and but then you do start to look around who are definitely aliens and it seems pretty obvious to me Michael Gove

Mike Pence

Michael Jordan.

Right, lots of Michaels.

Yes, Michaels.

You've cracked the code.

Okay.

And then we look across time.

Mick Jagger, obviously an alien.

Michael Phelps, all those Olympic swimming medals.

Michael Buble.

And then if you listen again to that Christmas album that you're probably hearing in its entirety six times a day at the moment, you listen to he's put hidden messages.

In the winter we shall build a snowman.

And when the snowman melts, underneath will be a ship to get us to the stars.

In every single song, there is an alien-based message.

Right.

I mean, my take on this, the guy's name is Chaim

Eshed, or E-Shed.

And my Jewish name is Chaim.

And I basically have an E-Shed where I record the bugle.

Have I accidentally

just...

My bullshit has manifested itself in an 87-year-old retired Israeli general?

I'm starting to doubt myself now.

He said that cooperation agreements have been signed.

There are signed agreements between the species, between humans and the aliens, including...

He also said there's an underground base in the depths of Mars where there are American astronauts and alien representatives negotiating.

Tenquid says they have been getting it on.

You can't get much further from the prying eyes of the neighbours than an underground base in the depths of Mars.

Yeah, you look at Mars in the night sky and you think, yeah, Mars fks.

Have I ever got it on?

I have two kids, Dave.

You know that.

In your e-shed.

I was going to ask in your e-shed.

And then I was imagining the sexy e-shed on Mars, where if the e-s you know what they say, if the e-shed is rocking, don't come knocking.

But anyway, I think this is good.

I think this is what the world has needed this story, Alice, because we've had a lot of batshit crazy conspiracy theories this year about the virus,

the American election, about all kinds of things.

Chess.

Yes, chess, exactly.

It's good to see conspiracy theories getting back to basics.

You know, aliens are here and we're not being told about.

That's the kind of stuff that made conspiracy theories believable, popular, charming even in the first.

This is a conspiracy theory.

We can all come together as a species and not believe in harmoniously, surely.

Well, I mean, I feel like as a conspiracy theory, it is phase one of a conspiracy theory that ends up with everyone who believes in QAnon firing themselves into space.

Sport news now, and the Olympics is taking an interesting new direction.

Break dancing is to become an Olympic sport.

Now, I think at some point in the past on the bugle, we might even have suggested this as a ridiculous joke.

There are a few things that have come true that began.

Exhibit one is currently sitting with his trousers around his ankles on the toilet in the White House, raging against the dying of the light.

David, you are, of course, a huge, huge sport fan, and congratulations for taking that correct lifestyle choice.

What do you make of this?

Is this a good thing for the Olympic movement?

I mean, is break dancing a sport or not?

Well, it's breaking news, is what it is.

It's quite literally breakdancing.

It will be in the Paris 2024 Olympics, regardless of what we say about it right now on the bugle.

But it marks the end of a campaign that apparently dates back to the 1908 London Olympics, when the sport was known as mechanical body syncopation.

It's an attempt by the IOC to appeal to a youth demographic and it's interesting that they have spurned other potential youth events that may have appealed such as vaping, being melancholy and horny all of the time

and telling your parents to f ⁇ off.

Sorry, Chris.

I think the fear for me is that when it becomes a metal sport, when breaking does, she makes love just like a a woman, but she breaks like an Olympic breakdance competitor.

It will be prone to cheating and skulldoggery that goes on in other sports.

And cheats could include,

I know it's something you love to do, wearing a suit of armor under your track suit to improve your robot,

living for a week in a chrysalis to visualize yourself into the role of caterpillar.

And I think the message is coming loud and clear from the IOC, and that is don't go breaking my heart, but do

go breaking.

I mean, it's interesting that it's been chosen ahead of other more traditional sports, like squash, you know, a traditional long-standing sport of breathtaking skill, craft, athleticism, and drama.

That's not got a look in.

And other sports that are part of the Olympics that are, you know, if you were choosing now, something to get the kids involved, you wouldn't, you wouldn't, I mean, like, rowing, for example.

I think rowing as a sport,

and I say this with the greatest of respect, is unbelievably dull.

And I think humanity has pretty much explored all the possibilities of two, four, or eight tall, stringily muscular people sitting in a straight line, rowing in a straight line on a flat bit of water at the breathtaking speed of an old man on a bicycle.

I think rowing, but

rowing's established in the Olympic, it's this bizarre combination now of these sort of funky new things like speed climbing

and competitive break dancing.

and it's it's I don't know it seems to be struggling for its identity Andy let's not forget some of the events that have come and gone from previous Olympics such as horse long jump is my particular favorite then town planning right which was part of the arts genuinely yeah yeah yeah the Irish

Ireland's most long-standing Olympic medal is our painter Jack B.

Yates won the painting in I think it was in 32.

And so we are.

I think it might have been in the 20s, David.

I'm going to say 20 because we did a question on this in the

quiz earlier in the year, I think.

Cricket was briefly an Olympic sport

and

Team GB, reigning Olympic cricket champions,

I think it was 1900, the only time when we beat France in the only match of the tournament, both teams involving English people.

That's the Olympics, early Olympics.

You could pretty much just turn up, you know, say you're here for the flower pointing, point at a flower, and you'd wander off with a medal.

And I think maybe

this is sport getting back to those

to its early roots.

Well, look, breakdancing makes way more sense to me than football, for example, because you don't have 90% of the people on the field pretending that they don't have arms.

Breakdancing involves use of an acknowledgement of all your limbs and for that I think it deserves our respect.

Alice, it should be noted here, does represent the Lino industry and linoleum could do very well out of this with people buying four by four squares of it to do backspins.

Important.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle, just time to tell you about a very exciting development in the history of broadcasting.

A live Bugle review of the year show on the 30th of December.

This is a ticketed event.

You can buy tickets via the Bugle website, the BuglePodcast.com.

And there is a ticket link there.

I'm reliably informed by Chris.

That is correct, is it not?

Click on the live link at the top of the page.

Yes.

Where you will also see information about a last post-live show.

There we go.

And for that show, on the 30th of December, featuring Alice, Nish, Kumar, and NATO Green.

and a full review of this glorious, wonderful year 2020

as it twitches its last.

David, any shows that you'd like to alert our listeners to?

I am

going to record a live show in my basement this week and put it up on Gumroad, the website.

So check my Twitter for information.

There we go.

That sounds so fake.

You can't say that after I've just plugged something.

I promise it's real.

I'm just delighting in the excrescence

of the modern world.

Hopefully, we will have a

special bugle next week as well.

Until then, we will play you out with some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

To join them, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button, where of course you can also buy your tickets for the end-of-year review shows for the Most Post and The Bugle.

See you all there.

When having fish and chips, Ian Foster likes to use the chemical terms for salt and vinegar.

It makes him feel like he is an evil genius about to poison someone as he says, I will sprinkle these foodstuffs with sodium chloride and ethanoic acid.

He sometimes even uses the term monochloridium of sodor to make it sound even more Machiavellian.

I should emphasise however that Ian is not in fact an evil genius.

Numez at Witherset has done some research and formulated a theory that tadpoles, the notorious proto-frogs, stay small because they simply don't have enough space in ponds.

If we chucked a few tadpoles in the sea, theorizes Numez, I reckon they'd grow massive.

And what are massive tadpoles mean?

Massive frogs, which have strategically crucial military applications, potentially.

Austin Elmore believes that tardigrades are another species that we should be keeping a very close eye on.

Look at the microscopic bastards, says Austin.

They're tiny, but they look like they could evolute into something bloody terrifying within just a few thousand years if they put their understandably tiny minds to it.

They could be like a cross between a rhinoceros, a tank, and some kind of cyborg mechanical slaying machine.

You have been warned.

Lisa Ward has written written to the government where she lives suggesting an initiative to reduce the amount of time people waste thinking about what coffee to order when in coffee shops.

Sure, says Lisa, some people go straight in there but others um and ah for up to maybe 15 seconds.

It doesn't sound a lot but I've added it up and over the course of the next 300 years it's going to cost the global economy 28 quadrillion dollars and I haven't even adjusted that for inflation, says Lisa.

Thomas Domingo thinks it is a shame that we only have terracotta warriors left from the ancient Chinese hobby of building terracotta replicas of all staff members for presumably some kind of tax declaration purposes.

One day, reckons Thomas, we'll discover a great big stash of terracotta back office staff as well.

Maybe some terracotta snooker referees and terracotta traffic wardens.

And finally, Tom Longfield thinks the term great hair day should be clamped down on forthwith.

It's like in sport, complains Tom.

Greatness is bandied around too easily these days.

For me, a great sport star is someone who's in the top echelon of all time.

So it should be with hair.

Unless your hair is having one of the top two, maybe 300 days in the history of human coiffuring, just rein it in and call it a good hair day.

Surely that's enough.

Here endeth this week's lies.

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.