A Message To You Rudy

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4174 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world for the week beginning 23rd of November 2020.

I am Andy Zoltzmann.

You're just going to have to trust me on that if that's okay.

If you're still not convinced, ask the person currently nearest you if they are Andy Zoltzman.

They won't be.

You can therefore rule them out, making it statistically more likely that I am Andy Zaltzman.

The numbers don't lie.

We are recording on Friday the 23rd of November 2020.

Not long to go now, people.

Just 41 sleeps until we're not in the shittiest year of our lives so far.

With all due respect to our older listeners who may have lived through two world wars, the Age of Empire, Black Death, the Flood, and the Asteroid.

Anyway, it's going to make a nice change.

I've forgotten what it's like.

Hopefully 2021 doesn't get complacent and start showboating after the first month or so.

Now, joining me to carve the events of the past week into the indelible audio marble slabs of history, we have Nish Kumar and for the first time on the bugle since giving birth, watch and learn Nish, it's Felicity Ward.

Hi, Andy.

Nish, you should watch and learn.

This is how you give birth.

I hope you're doing it.

I hope you do it in the next couple of weeks.

All right, roll the tape.

Felicity, Felicity, it's great, great, great to have you back.

How's uh, how's motherhood treating you?

He's won.

He was one about two days ago.

So, uh, look, motherhood is very complex.

On the one hand, I love my son more than anyone I've ever met.

No offense, he's my favorite person that I've ever met.

He's my best friend.

At the same time, postnatal depression can suck an absolute dick.

It really can just take it in the back of the throat or the eye, I don't mind which one, and get to f

can we swear on this show?

Now it feels like a late time to ask the question.

We'll run with it.

Interestingly enough, ordinarily I would be bleeping out the f, but not the go-sucker dick.

I think our rules are inconsistent.

No, I think intuitively that's correct.

Chris has spent too much time working with the BBC.

Censorship policies are confusing and contradictory.

Sounds like he's been working with CBBs, if you know what I mean.

Why don't you grow a pair, Chris?

God issue.

My mother claims that she's been suffering from postnatal depression for 35 years.

Yeah.

But she fairly, squarely blames that on my door.

I don't want to take sides with your mum, but I will.

No, now motherhood is very good, but there was a long time that it was very hard.

But there were some other things going on as well.

I'm sure we've all had a cracking 2020.

And so this was very much the icing on the cake.

He was basically born almost on the day that the coronavirus came into existence, I think.

He is the coronavirus.

He is the patient's hero.

Right.

He is a bat.

We're finally getting the truth of this.

Breaking news.

World exclusive.

My son is a bat.

How's Flick?

Oh, yeah.

I heard she gave birth to a Chinese bat.

Really weird, actually.

Yeah, really weird.

But you know,

she's a charismatic lady.

It doesn't, she's unpredictable.

I get it.

Sounds on brand.

I mean, I've met the father, and from what I can tell, he's not a Chinese bat, so I'm not really sure how it's happened.

Oh, that's the frustrating thing.

He looks, my son, his name's Frankie.

He looks so much like my husband, Chris, I'm not entirely sure that he's my son, except for the fact that I distinctly remember him coming out of me.

Well early on in the bugle I told the story of delivering

my own child in the bathroom.

Oh my god.

I guess you didn't go for that option.

No but I did have a moment where

if you've done an antenatal class or a prenatal class, which is somehow the same thing, that makes no sense.

Antenatal sounds like, no, I'm not having a baby.

So in all those classes, they tell you about your water breaking.

They're like, look, in Hollywood films, the water goes everywhere.

It's this huge deal.

Sometimes people don't even know that their water is broken.

Sometimes the doctors have to break the water in hospital to give birth so that the baby can come out.

And so that's what they're like, it's just isn't.

Anyway, I woke up at like three o'clock in the morning.

I'm like, oh, I've got to go to the toilet.

The water broke.

And then it just kept breaking until the baby was born.

in waves, in undulating waves.

It doesn't just go, oh, the water's breaking.

Oh, you're going to have a baby soon.

You can just be like, Oh, the water's breaking.

Oh, no contractions, oh, okay.

And then, like, six hours later, just

and you're like, Is this supposed to keep?

Am I drowning from the inside?

Like, am I dying?

I don't know.

Nobody told me.

Nobody told me.

Just a heads up for anyone that's pregnant and listening.

I've said it before, and I've and I'll say it again: it's a truly disgusting miracle.

So many miracles are.

You should have seen the state of Lazarus.

Disgusting.

I know

when I was

running point on the birth of our second child.

Was this one or two?

I'm assuming two.

This was number two.

Number one, I was very much in a

advisory

capacity.

It was sort of a fact-finding mission more than anything else.

Taxi driver.

Yeah.

Very much just standing in the corner of a delivery suite weeping.

And

what I mostly remember is how much a birth can disrupt one's enjoyment of a Tess match on the radio, which is really disruptive.

Yeah.

Just spare a thought for all the partners out there

that can no longer enjoy Tess cricket because of birth.

Yeah.

It must be really hard to do.

Again, not something that was covered in the antenatal classes.

Today, the 20th of November, is Absurdity Day.

It's World Absurdity Day, created to mark all the ridiculous things in the world, the off-the-wall, the baffling, and the bonkers.

And we will be celebrating Absurdity Day here at the Bugle by just looking at what's been happening in the world for the past week.

I'm not sure that's what's supposed to be the point of World Absurdity Day, but it seems entirely appropriate.

As always, the section of the Bugle is going straight in the bin this week.

Christmas tech gifts section, the new Apple eye eyelids, the new smart tech accessory for the insides of your eyelids that mean you can still consume social media while snoozing, sleeping, blinking, squinting into a particularly aggressive sunset in a coma or dead.

And in a particularly typically witty Apple design feature, the smooth edges obsessed tech design giants have picked up on the eye eye part of the product's title and designed the eye eyelid in the shape of a pirate.

So it is functionally unbelievable but an uncomfortable wear for the eye.

Also Pro Proboskits have got a new piece of kit.

Obviously, one of the world's leading makers of Nostech over the last few years with products such as the Proboskit Olfax, which sends a printable description of what you're currently smelling to friends, family, and work colleagues.

And they just launched the new controversial PK Celebrity Snouts, which enables you to smell exactly what their featured partner celebrities are smelling at that very moment.

And

that's not necessarily an enjoyable thing, depending on who your chosen celebrities are.

That section in the bin.

Andy, you nearly made the ultimate Freudian slip of this entire podcast by starting the podcast by saying, and this section of the bin is going straight in the bugle.

Top story this week, Rudolf Giuliani's face.

Now

this

clearly is the most important story, not just of this week, but maybe of all time.

And we choose to lead with this story, Buglers, not because it was the most important thing in the world this week, far from it.

I mean, that would be like focusing on a fly repeatedly hurling itself into a closed window over and over again until it concussed itself to death in a documentary over the growing biodiversity crisis in the natural world.

I mean, it's not fundamentally that relevant.

We chose to lead with this story not because it was the funniest, because at its heart, it's a story about the willful, deliberate, shameless desecration of the already repeatedly violated husk of American democracy, which in itself is not laugh out loud funny, although obviously the Giuliani face incident was in itself f ⁇ ing hilarious.

No, we chose to leave with this story, if I may quote John F.

Kennedy, not because it is easy, but because it is hard not to.

It's

hair dye rolling down a sweating, f ⁇ ing stupid f ⁇ ing face, for f ⁇ 's sake.

What did you expect us to do?

We choose to leave with this story because I would argue that this moment, Nish and Felistid, I would would argue that this moment summed up Trumpian America more than any other, and that's also summed up planet Earth third millennium phase one better than anything.

A desperate, flailing old man's hair dye, being so disgusted with being in proximity to the words spewing out of his mouth that it made a break for freedom.

It said, I cannot be on this

head any longer.

Now, Karl Marx, no doubt, very smart chow, but he did fail to foresee a few things.

The main two being that people would not overthrow the shackles of capitalism because even as it ravaged their lives, McDonald's simply tasted too delicious.

And number two, beard trimmers.

But Marx also failed to foresee something very important.

He built on Hegel's idea in a quote that's often misquoted when attributed to him, because it's misquoted as history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as fast.

But he wasn't actually talking about history itself, he was talking about historical figures.

There's often a person who is a sort of tragic figure, and then another person who comes after them who fulfills a similar function initially, but then turns out to be a bit of a joke, right?

What he did not foresee is that Rudy Giuliani would repeat himself

first as tragedy and then as fast.

First, he was the tragic figure who squandered his post-9-11 goodwill on a disastrous presidential campaign, then becoming an apologist for a racist game show's presidency.

And then, the last six months, he has descended into a farce, but not a classy farce like Mollier or a particularly bookie episode of Frasier.

I'm talking about a gross farce.

I'm talking about Van Wilder party liaison, dumb and dumber pet detective farce where he gets tricked by Borat, books a warehouse next to a sex shop for a speech about the presidential election, and then makes another speech where the hair dye runs down his head and makes it look like a bird diarrhea on his face.

And that bird, I'm not, that but it was not regulation diarrhea.

That bird ate an industrial quantity of hot sauce covered bran flakes and then washed the whole thing down with a glass of prune juice and human shit.

I have heard of donated organs rejecting their host.

I have never heard of a hair dye rejecting its host hair.

I didn't think it was hair dye.

I just thought it was black blood streaming from his ears as his skin came into contact with daylight.

I just,

surely we're done as human beings, aren't we?

Like, we're just done.

I know that Biden won over Trump.

Obviously, that's not a great thing for everyone, but because Biden is definitely the less of two awful, awful people.

But shouldn't at every press conference Rudy Giuliani does, there should be three people still asking,

I know you're talking about some Hugo Chavez madness and your scalp seems to be melting.

But can we just clear up once more why you went into the hotel bedroom of a miner for cocktails and then tucked your shirt in in a masturbatory way and only stopped when Borat entered the room?

Number one, imagine Borat being the reason you stopped behaving crudely.

If he is your moral compass, we are absolutely f ⁇ ed.

We're f ⁇ ed.

And listening to Giuliani reenacted, I don't know if you saw the whole thing.

Rudy Giuliani reenacted a scene from my cousin Vinnie

as part of his scene.

Why does that sentence exist?

It's just like, that wasn't just a weak argument.

It was as painful and boring as any old person trying to describe a movie they once saw.

Like it's never, that's never a cogent argument.

That's never a one-two blow.

It was like, you know that one, my cousin Fizzy?

No,

Vinny.

He held up two fingers from Brooklyn.

That's why I'm like him.

The lady couldn't see the fingers.

Anyway, the people were further away than that.

What the f are you talking about, Rudy?

Go and have a glass of water and mop your hairline while you're there, please.

Also, not sure if you saw the whole press conference, but the lawyer lawyer who was on before Giuliani, I'm assuming she's a part of their elite strike force team, is talking about, she's talking about how communism is tearing down the American voter system, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, she looks like Carol Baskin from Tiger King, and that's all I want to say on the matter.

Well, that was Sidney Powell, I think the Trump attorney, who made some extraordinary suggestions that essentially Hugo Chavez, the late lunatic lefty, who featured quite a bit.

He's back.

He featured quite prominently in the early years of the bugle before doing the decent thing and dying in 2013.

But not before he had won the 2020 U.S.

election for Joe Biden, it turns out.

Because according to Giuliani and Sidney Powell, there were voting systems, and I'm quoting directly here, the Dominion voting systems, the SmartMatic technology software and the software that goes into other computerized voting systems here.

These are the words of Sidney Powell, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out of the way.

He did not want it to come out.

Now, let us emphasise that what Sidney Powell said is partly true.

It's true up to the words were created.

And then it very much jumps off the fact train train into a disused canal.

I mean Dominion has no links to Venezuela.

SmartMatic was founded by Venezuelan entrepreneurs based in the USA who have been critical of the Venezuelan regime and the companies are competitors with no corporate links.

I mean in terms of all the

lunatic conspiracies that we've we've enjoyed, if indeed that is the right word, which it which it isn't recently, I mean this is this is spectacular.

I mean they're getting it's almost artistically created.

I don't think most conspiracy theorists would have even seen that.

They're like kind of Spanish midfielders picking out passes that English players don't even see are on.

Grab your berets, everyone.

To quote LL Cool J, don't call it a comeback.

Chavez is back.

Who else is he in league with?

Bin Laden, Princess Diana?

Only time, and indeed Rudy Giuliani, will tell.

And welcome Trump's new vice president.

It's Elvis.

Yes, the Presley Shakur ticket is going to be pretty big for the Republicans in 2024.

He's not the president.

He's the president.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

Thank you, Andy.

If you can rely on a bad pun coming from this guy, I'm never going to leave you hanging.

One of the many extraordinary things about the My Cousin Vinny reference is that Giuliani sort of, he says that he likes it.

This is a direct quote.

Did you all watch My My Cousin Vinny?

And I mean, I imagine everyone gathered there was thinking, yes, in 1992.

Are you about to ask us our favourite episode of The Fresh Prince?

Was it a chat-up?

Are we misinterpreting it?

This is just sort of like an awkward chat-up line at a bar.

He says it's one of his favourite lore movies, which first of all is an interesting sub-category, but also it's one of his favourite lore movies because the character is from Brooklyn.

That's his entire reasoning for his enjoyment of My Cousin Vinny.

But my favourite detail about it is the scene that he's referencing is when Joe Pesci's character holds up two fingers and moves further away to try and illustrate that a witness who claims that they saw the crime being committed couldn't have seen it because they were too far away, right?

But in illustrating that scene, Rudy Giuliani said, these people, referring to the poll observers, were further away than my cousin Vinny was from the witnesses.

Now, this means one of two things.

Either Rudy Giuliani believes that he is related by blood to the character, or Rudy Giuliani doesn't understand how films work and thinks the main character of Inception is a man called John Inception.

Imagine that being your favourite lore movie.

Let's get back to that.

Like he's not going to pick legally blonde a few good men.

Come on, mate.

There's so many lore movies.

To kill a mockingbird?

Anyone?

Not going to choose that one, is he?

It's got a black person in it.

Yucky, you wouldn't think.

Yucky.

Twelve Angry Men incidentally the the core target demographic for the Trump campaign.

12 Angry Men.

Rudy Giuliani's favourite law movie is the first 20 minutes of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Sidney Powell said some other extraordinary extraordinary things.

She claimed that the software's most one of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes.

It can set and run an algorithm that probably, she said, ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from Trump and flip them to Biden, which it did apart from the fact that it did not.

Not in reality, anyway.

I don't know how many dimensions they're operating on at the moment.

And also, it wasn't, I don't think you really can blame the, you know, an algorithm for flipping votes from Trump to Biden.

I think the reason votes flipped from Trump to Biden is Trump being an enormous vote-flipping k.

That could be a factor.

Earlier in the week, Powell told Fox Business she was going to, quotes, release the Kraken.

The Kraken is a legendary giant squid-like sea monster from ancient Norse sagas.

And to be honest, that was the most believable thing anyone in Trump's legal shit squad has said since the election.

I mean, they're more likely to unveil a gargantuan killer Scandinavian mythical octopus than find enough evidence to overturn the election result.

It might even be a sign of a willingness to row back on some of their more outlandish claims.

And she also claimed that Trump had beaten Biden by a landslide, by a landslide, reminiscent of when Pompeii beat Mount Vesuvius by an absolute pyroclastic surge.

Even Tucker Carlson on Fox has blasted Giuliani and Powell for a lack of evidence.

And when you are getting criticised by Tucker Carlson for some, you know it is time to put your fishing rod back in the bag, pack up your sandwiches, fold up your stool, put all your kit back in your bag, climb one way or other back out of the whale's intestine and admit that your fishing trip has not gone well.

It's like being accused of unethical business practices by Lex Luther.

The guy is the king of baseless nonsense.

I think, and I might be on slightly legally shaky ground here, but I think Tucker Carlson was able to legally defend himself in court by claiming that no one takes anything he says seriously

i think chris may need to check that to stop us from getting sued i have indeed fact checked this and i mean f ⁇ it there's nothing else to do and uh indeed it is correct and you'll find uh at least one link in the show notes i can't believe trump's legal attempts to overturn the election result are being stybied when his principal lawyer is a man who was tricked by Borat and whose entire legal education seems to be from the film My Cousin Vinny.

How has this possibly happened?

I mean, 2020.

I mean, to return to the more important issue,

the hair dye running down his face.

I mean, I thought,

I mean, is this a tectonic fault line opening in Rudy Giuliani's cheek?

And if so,

isn't that the thing that would symbolise this millennium?

So, was he sweating pure, dark guilt?

Or was there a heroic army of ants marching down his face to crawl across to his mouth and somehow knit it shut with their ant corpses?

It was truly extraordinary, but an old man verbally thrashing against reality, a half-wit Houdini trying and failing to escape from a perfectly normal overcoat that he's deliberately put on back to front with one single button done up.

Giuliani has now completed his gradual, determined metamorphosis into a visibly melting man-mirage, cocooned in an inescapable prism of his own explosive delusions, manuring the fertile soil of demagoguery with the mammoth shit of confected conspiracy, a part ghost, part-toed manifestation of the flaws and dangers of our politics, media, and economics, with hair dye running down his face.

Fake Hughes, everyone!

Fake Hughes!

Spluttering down his furious cheeks like a weeping physical metaphor for modern America.

So that's why this was the top story this week.

I would also say that as much as obviously it's intrinsically hilarious and everything about it is ridiculous and offensive and disgusting, it could still work.

What about the last four years?

I am slightly amazed when I see people saying, oh, this is, it's, you know, Biden's won the election.

What's the big deal?

I'm old enough to remember Al Gore winning an election and the Supreme Court turning around and going, yeah, it turns out you actually lost even though you got the most votes.

So

there's no reason to assume that when it comes to actually selecting the electors, because the process by which they could steal this election effectively is by having the electors who get sent to the Electoral College replaced by Republican-favouring state legislatures.

And if you don't think that could happen, you have not been paying enough attention to the last four years.

This is a critical moment for American democracy.

And, like a storm cloud that's shaped like an ass or a mild burning sensation when you pee, just because it involves things brackets, butts, and penises that are inherently funny and seem ridiculous, doesn't mean it isn't something about which you should be deeply, deeply concerned.

American democracy needs to go to the STD clinic and get its dick checked because it might be about to be in a lot of finging trouble.

It could be beachroot, or it could be the death of democracy.

A quick bit of breaking news before we move on, slightly related to that story.

The International Association of Facts Checkers has announced a global strike and called on the United Nations to impose a maximum allowance of 15 lies per leader per day, plus an optional extra 20 lies to be perpetrated by official spokespeople and or lawyers.

They've complained about inhuman working conditions and brutally long hours.

So

our thoughts are with all of them.

Britain news now, and we're back.

Britain is back.

Britannia is going to rule the waves again, thanks to our glorious king, Boris Johnson, announcing a new plan to make Britain once again Europe's foremost naval power.

Nish.

You are, of course, the Bugles naval warfare correspondent, a role which I know you take extremely seriously.

No, yeah, I do.

I do take it.

I do take it incredibly seriously.

Yeah, Andy, it's absolutely unbelievable news because Boris Johnson has taken one look at the things that are threatening Britain today.

He's taken one look in the year of our Lord, brackets S for the polytheists amongst us, 2020, and he has said, you know what we need is a once-in-a-generation modernisation of the armed forces.

At last, we are going to be arming ourselves.

And why?

Guess what?

We're about to shoot the coronavirus right in its mouth.

For too long, this virus, this, I'll say it, piece of shit has been running roughshod over us, and it's time for us to tool up and strike back.

It's time for us to get an Uzi, turn it sideways, gangster style, and absolutely unload a clipful right in this airborne virus's goddamn face.

Oh mate.

It's an absolutely inexplicable piece of

jingoistic dick swinging that helps absolutely no one.

And unfortunately couldn't have been worse timed given that this morning there is a breaking news story that the Chancellor Rishisunak is potentially about to announce a series of cost-cutting measures by pay-freezing public sector workers, including the care workers that are quite literally keeping people alive.

But at the end of the day, you don't need that if you're armed to the f ⁇ .

If you've got a headache, how better to cure it than by having your head blown off by a sawloft shotgun?

Problem solved.

Problem solved.

You can't have a headache if you don't have a head.

Think it through, liberals.

It's not to say that they can't spend money on defence, although that's not where I would spend the money.

Some people believe that you should.

But if you're going to to spend money on defense, then you have to be able to spend money on other things as well.

You can't then cut other things and go, oh, I'm sorry, because it's not, we don't need it right now.

So what I'm saying is, I have proposed a list of things that they should fund instead or at the same time.

Number one, keeping the Christmas lights up until March.

Yeah?

Not because I love Christmas, but because winter and the darkness is very hard in the first three months of the year and 2020 has somehow been worse than the year that Alan Rickman, Prince, George Michael and David Bowie died.

So a little bit of extra light isn't going to hurt anyone and also make them sad lights as in seasonal affective disorder lights because depression is real and long.

Now, number two.

More animal shows on TV.

Yeah?

Remember in the 80s and the 90s and there was just always just random kids shows featuring a very nervous vet as a guest and then some rare endangered animals and everyone's like, yeah, we're happy to put it in front of a live studio audience with 200 screaming children and unregulated lighting.

And then they'd urinate on everything and the host would be like getting tetanus.

We'd all last.

It's just a bit more of that, you know?

That's what I think this year needs.

And finally,

I'd like the government to invest in a campaign to make the phrase, sorry, the place is such a mess when your place is not actually a mess illegal.

I have been to people's places a long time ago who had three kids under five and the house was spotless and they were embarrassed or pretending to be embarrassed and they were like oh yeah sorry the place is a mess well you know what my flat's a shithole and i have a cleaner

i think it's wise money spent a metaphor for britain in the other government spending uh news uh due to budgetary constraints government-backed projects tackling the bullying of lgbtq plus students in england schools have had their funding pulled um

That funding was £4 million

over six years, or to put that in context, 18 hours worth of the Trident nuclear deterrent.

And that's just the annual operating cost of Trident, not the whole outlay or even usage of it.

That's just it existing.

But

we can't afford £4 million to prevent

bullying.

But I guess it's consistent, isn't it?

If government's bullying strategy, yeah, they've kept Pretty Patel on as Home Secretary, who's found to have bullied civil servants.

It would be be hypocritical to pretend they give a shit about bullying in schools.

Look, think if one group of people have had it too good for too long, it is LGP TQI children.

You know?

When are we going to stop supporting them?

We've thrown everything.

I mean,

they're kids.

They're in high school.

They know how to write.

What else do you want?

It's about time someone took those f ⁇ ers down to pay your taxes.

Right?

Yeah, and I don't think I trust anyone more with that community than the Prime Minister who once used the phrase tank-top bumboys.

So, to be fair, if there's one thing Boris Johnson knows about, it's bullying LGBTQIA people.

It takes a thief to catch a thief.

Okay?

Yes, the Pretty Patel bullying story has also

come

has also reared its ugly head.

And let me tell you, it was as someone who has spent 35 years being bullied by a woman of South Asian descent, let me tell you, it's no fun.

But in my case, at least my mother also used to make me dinner.

So,

you know, for me, there was at least some carrot, sometimes quite literally, to go with the stick.

When I read the headlines about her bullying, I'm like, are you telling me the woman who looks like she post-coidally rips the head off her sexual partner has been bullying people?

Well, that just sounds very unlikely.

And I watched an interview this morning where Health Secretary Matt Hancock stared down the barrel of the Sky News camera and said, Miss Patel was incredibly courteous.

He must have been relieved that he's had to lie about the government's COVID response for so long.

So it made it really easy calling Pretty Patel courteous and respectful.

He almost made it look sincere.

Jacob Reese Moggs on Twitter, not quite understanding the call to rally for Pretty support, called her formidable.

I think that's the problem, Jakey boy.

She is formidable.

And she's been repeatedly described as being demanding.

Now, the idea of somebody being demanding is not, you know, a bad in of itself.

It just depends on what you're demanding.

Because if what you're demanding is the highest standards possible from your co-workers, then it's all good.

But if what you're demanding is your co-workers' lunch money on threat of getting a full wedgie, that is not fine.

But Boris Johnson has said he will stand by Priti Patel and in a leaked text message that's doing the rounds in the British papers on their websites at the moment, said that the government needs to protect the Pritzer.

Now, I'll be honest, what I heard, Boris Johnson had described a high-ranking South Asian member of his cabinet.

That was not the P-word I'd anticipated him using.

The reason that she's not being fired is because they're saying her bullying was unintentional.

Well, unintentional murder is still called manslaughter.

There's still a penalty involved.

It's called nuance.

Look it up, Boris, and while you're there, get a fing haircut.

Sorry.

Oh, and just

the shit cherry on the fecal cake of all of this is that it's also anti-bullying week.

It's part.

of an education initiative by the Department for Education for less bullying.

So that's, there you go, Britain.

What a week for the country.

In other Boris Johnson news, Boris Johnson has told Scotland to go f itself.

Not quite in those words, but he has

told a virtual meeting of Conservative MPs that devolution has been, quote, a disaster in Scotland.

I mean, there might be a subtext of these complicated words.

I mean, I guess the point he was trying to make maybe tangentially is that he is a career buffoon who shouldn't be left alone and unattended in charge of a kid's glockenspiel, let alone a whole f ⁇ ing country.

I'm reading between the lines there, of course.

But it is a bit of a weird thing to say, given that he bangs on about how much he loves the United Kingdom and he knows the Conservative and Unionist Party.

I guess when you really, really care about the United Kingdom and want to keep it together, the best strategy is firstly to leave a mutually beneficial economic powerhouse cooperative trade block against the wishes of the people in two of your four constituent nations, causing potentially decades of economic turmoil, and then tell the people of those nations that they can't be trusted with their own countries and need some twat from Eton to tell them what's good for them.

That is rock-solid tactics.

The SNP Member of Parliament, Drew Henry, described Boris Johnson's comments as underlining the contempt that he has for the people of Scotland.

Well, don't think you're so special, Scotland.

Boris Johnson has contempt for everyone.

I mean, it's hard not to hear that remark and assume Boris Johnson would have heard it and have been like, thank you.

Andy, what's behind me in my virtual background?

Oh, well, since you asked, Chris, it looks very much like a 2020 edition Bugle Christmas jumper, of which there are still some available.

I believe.

Chris, there's also some new lines in the

hugely extensive Bugle merch range coming out.

Talk us through it.

Yeah,

I was wondering if you might pass that over, Andy, as it appears that you've already forgotten what you signed off.

God, guys, the tone,

the ease with which you guys segue from the sort of chat into the heavily scripted advertising material is mind-blowing stuff.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com and from Black Friday, you can get a bugle scarf and a bugle bobble hat and a half a glass of alter t-shirts.

Well, I can't say fairer than that.

That is all your Christmas shopping sorted.

I'm gonna get a jumper.

I love it.

Orange is not my colour, but I want it.

It kind of looks like it's Christmas and Halloween at the same time.

Oh, yeah, it's got it's a real holiday jumper.

It's got a thousand household uses.

Australia news now.

And well, there's been well a lot of lockdown issues in Australia a lot of confusion and a lot of people stuck in hotels getting increasingly agitated and it's affected the Australian cricket team now Felicity we did

we've done a cricket podcast over the years on sort of Anglo-Australian cricket and I know you're in

very close contacts with the Australian cricket captain Tim Payne.

Yeah it's, look, self-ISO madness ahead of the one-day international and test summer series coming up.

Your friend and mine,

Captain Tim Payne, has been asked to go into self-isolation ahead of the games as Adelaide has had a surge of new COVID cases.

The restrictions are the toughest enforced in Australia so far.

For a six-day lockdown, there's no leaving the house for the entire time, no exercise.

Masks are imperative if you leave the house for food, shopping or medical essentials, and only one person can go to do that.

The South Australian Premier, Stephen Marshall, has said the most aggressive and Australian message to his people about why we're doing this.

So this is an elected official said this.

He said that the state was going hard and going early.

And then he said, we cannot wait.

to see how bad this becomes, which could be easily misread as, we cannot wait to see how bad this becomes.

Very important to look at inflection there.

Isn't that the Australian government's policy to the environment as well, isn't it?

We can't wait to see how bad this becomes.

Yeah.

It's a joy.

It's very exciting stuff.

It's got them on the edge of their seat.

So they've had a surge and you can't imagine how many that is.

Like 10,000 a day, surely.

Is it 1,000 a day?

As the population is much smaller there, it can't be that big.

Let me just Google it.

Well, that must be a mistake.

It says here that the number of new COVID cases has ballooned to 22.

Do they mean 22,000?

No, they mean

22.

Well, that's a slightly different approach to the UK, but you know, each new one.

So, due to my very close relationship with Tim Tam, I have an excerpt from his upcoming autobiography/slash diary/slash call it how I see it, no holds barred, exposé, called no pain, no game.

Dear me,

I am writing this from my hotel room in Adelaide, or as the rest of Australia call it, Radelaid.

Or as I'd like to dedicate it to my parents, Mum and Dadelaide.

The news has told me that there's been a contagion breakout of the corolla virus.

And it's true, there are many Toyota Corollas in Adelaide.

I hope people can afford newer cars soon.

But it's always hard with the economic downturn of a pandemic.

The news was so boring so I watched Contagion to get a more accurate picture of what's going on.

Really surprised how many monkeys are involved seeing as though the only ones I've seen since I've been here are the ones at Adelaide Zoo.

But come to think of it, they did look suspicious.

I've been wondering how the Corollas will affect the upcoming One Day International and Test Summer Series.

It shouldn't be a problem seeing as though we're sponsored by Toyota, but everyone seems to be getting sick from it.

Maybe they just need a tune-up.

I've been sitting in my apartment for three days days now.

I haven't seen anyone.

I have watched Grease 1 and Grease 2 and the backlog of Gardener's World with Monty Don.

I really got into it in the UK Last Ashes series.

You remember when I opted to bowl at the oval even though that was a f ⁇ ing stupid thing to do?

Yeah, well, I finally came to that realisation on day three and I decided to dissociate from reality by watching gardening programs.

Well, I'm happy to report that my rhododendrons are an explosion of colour around my humble garden and I still haven't revisited the emotional repercussions of that career decision.

I'm sure it will never come up over too many beers and being called Timbo the Bimbo one too many times by middle management bullies in Cricket Australia.

So that's the hot take Andy.

Right.

Well,

good to see he's

soldering through.

Straight out of Mum and Dadelaide.

Yeah.

I mean it was a ridiculous decision.

Oh, I mean,

what a fing dumb.

sorry.

It's the that's absolute mad behavior.

That's the maddest behavior.

Like, like, if you asked a six-year-old,

like,

ever, you're like, okay, you're going to play cricket.

What do you want to do?

You want to battle bowl?

They're like, bat.

Well, but bat.

Always bat.

You always bat.

And this one, where we could bat and it was a good day to bat, we should have batted, Andy.

Yep.

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

We'll be back next week.

Felicia, you've got any shows or other podcasts that you'd like to tell our listeners about?

I don't know, mate.

I've got brain damage.

I had a baby.

There's nothing left.

If it's not written down, it doesn't get said, okay?

I don't know.

Check with my agent.

Show up, Andy.

Go get your agent on with you next week.

Why are you always banning me with questions?

On December the 3rd,

a stand-up show of mine called Ruminations on the Nature of Subjectivity is going to uh appear I believe that's the word on Amazon Prime it's going to evaporate onto Amazon Prime uh as part of the Soho Theatre uh which is a wonderful venue for comedy in London uh recorded a bunch of specials in there so there's some there's some great shows going on there Lazy Susan's show one of my favorite ever sketch shows um uh other the mittel Bubler will they be available globally wonderful question no idea but in my experience of the audience of this podcast,

that is not an impediment to you people interacting with things.

You seem to, and this is said with love, be a pack of f ⁇ ing criminals.

So that's all I'll say.

Well, there we go, buglers.

I might be doing a show at the end of the year as well, but I haven't fully decided.

So there we go.

We've all plugged something.

Yay!

Until next week, goodbye.

And we will now play you out with some more lies about our premium voluntary subscribers.

to join them go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button to make a one-off or recurring donation to help keep this show free flourishing and independent goodbye

Daniel Gersh was delighted to triumph in a competition to win a year's supply of fish.

However, he was subsequently disappointed when that year's supply of fish was delivered in one go on the 1st of January, dumped off the back of a lorry outside his front door.

The novelty of rotting sardines had definitely worn off by mid-March, confirms Daniel.

Sam Moore thinks that nations should appoint an official archenemy.

Sam explains, we have archbishops, so we know who the bishopiest bishop is, so why not archenemies?

It would help us prioritise our general geopolitical and social concerns, as well as our defence budgets.

Tony Cook often wonders what today's celebrities would have done if they'd been alive in the past.

He thinks that 1980s tennis star Pam Shriver would have been a sculptor, actor James Woods would have been an exorcist but not a particularly good one, and rock star Keith Richards would have been a very badly behaved pope.

Eli Luoma is disappointed about how few accidental discoveries have been made in history.

Whilst penicillin, the microwave oven and Velcro are all great, says Eli, it seems a shame that no one has accidentally discovered a type of bread that makes you levitate or a self-warming shoe.

Rob Hamilton has been thinking a great deal about alternative non-custodial and retributive sentences for less serious crimes to ease pressure on the world's prisons.

Rob theorises, I reckon if a would-be criminal knew for example that they could have their TV remote controlled by the victim of their crimes for the next 10 years, they would think very carefully before nicking that temptingly stealable garden gnome.

David Cooper is much taken with the idea of irritating rather than custodial sentences and adds that he thinks a ban on using any form of cup or glass would be really crime preventingly irritating as would being forced to use light bulbs programmed to blow after 25 minutes use, and a legal obligation to use a kettle that beeps loudly for half an hour every time you boil it.

A correspondent known as Dr.

Crazy Cat Lady regrets that life has become less spontaneous and believes that the government should launch an official new program to re-establish spontaneity in society through various well-organised schemes to train people how to live more off the cuffly over a perhaps 10 to 20 year period.

You're right, it is a bit counterintuitive, says Dr.

Crazy Cat Lady, but I reckon it could work.

Just give it a bit of time.

John Spratt managed to convince a credulous work colleague that, amongst his many legacies in the English language, Shakespeare invented the phrases few water scorcher, good golly Miss Molly, and pull my finger, as well as writing a character called Corporal Craphead in the first draft of Othello.

Gaitan Bayoy, whose surname is frankly an absolute mess of vowels and the letter L, thinks that the phrase, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, is not actually valid.

Gaitan explains, I once tried to pay for an original 1960s vinyl of Last Trained to Clarksville by the monkeys with a tub of dry roasted peanuts to what I thought was the equivalent financial value of the record.

And, well let me tell you, I did not get monkeys.

I got a strongly worded invitation to leave the shop as quickly as possible.

And finally, Steve Tarry had an almost equal and opposite experience.

I found a set of keys in a hedge when walking near a monastery, relates Steve.

Don't ask, he adds.

Anyway, I took them to the monastery's lost property office and they were absolutely delighted.

Yes, they said, we can finally get into our soft play area again.

In gratitude, they gave me, in exchange for the keys, a book of Charlie Brown cartoons.

So, effectively, I paid monk keys, I got peanuts.

Here endeth this week's lies.com and click the donate button.

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.