4168 - Trump too nasty even for Covid

A bugle show to alert you to will be part of the unmute podcast festival.

We're doing a show at 7pm on the 24th of October.

Details are at uh well on the internet.

Chris, can you be more specific than that?

What than the internet?

Well, yeah, than the internet.

Is there a particular bit of the internet?

Yeah, you can go to unmutepodcastfestival.com or one of our social media channels, and you know, or you could just use the internet to find out what 7pm is in your time, because that's 7pm GMT.

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to another issue of the audio newspaper that was sent by Almighty God Himself back in 2007 to chart the final decline of the human race and the planet, both of which were of course always seen very much as a first draft by the renowned deity and winner of the 33 AD Worst Parent of the Year award.

I am Andy Zaltzman, although to be honest I'm not even sure I believe myself when I say that anymore and this is issue 4168 of the bugle.

Coincidentally, would you believe the average number of excuses a hypothetical CGI White House press secretary would wheel out to exonerate a hypothetical CGI tycoon president who had just drowned 12 puppies in a vat of whiskey while slapping a praying nun in the face with a Jesus-shaped prosthetic willy before acknowledging that, yes, he might have slightly misacted.

I am in the shed in London.

It's the 5th of October.

2020.

And joining me for the latest celebration of the glorious state of our planet from,

well, just a little bit south of here, the quibbling sibling herself, Helen Zoltzmann.

Hello Andy.

How are you, Helen?

Still alive apparently.

Oh there you go.

Unless this is the afterlife.

Something to cling to.

Superb glasses by the way.

Are they new?

Uh

no.

Oh.

But

you know, they've not got anything cricket related on them, so maybe you just can see them before.

Helen has worn them on at least one previous bugle one.

Oh right, okay.

I'm not very good at noticing these things.

Helen I should say is in Brighton currently

which is basically directly south of where I am from even further south and quite a lot east

joining us from India Anuvab pal

hello Andy hello Helen hello Anuvab

pleasure to see you likewise how's uh how's India Anuvab well Andy, Helen, the biggest news from the subcontinent is that the government has finally found a cure for the coronavirus.

Oh, congrats.

Yeah, thank you very much.

And because I personally did it as well.

And it lies not in a vaccine, which these advanced countries are so foolishly searching for, but as Andy knows well, in the Indian Premier League, a two-month-long cricket tournament.

that has the nation so enthralled that trivial news like India quickly climbing to the most infected nation is relegated to the third page of the newspaper for the much more important headline that a certain Mumbai team opener has accidentally edged a ball to first slip.

It's quite big news in 2020 cricket because obviously you don't have slips for much of the inning.

So actually, a slip catch is probably definitely front page news, I'd say, and evad way ahead of any

ephemeral viral-related news.

You're absolutely right, Andy.

And I think it's a testament to the state of

health services data in this country.

When you, Andy, tweet about IPL statistics, it is more shared on Twitter than when the number of infection statistics are tweeted by the health ministry.

Well, priorities.

Exactly.

Exactly, Helen.

Priorities.

In fact, some state leaders, with the arrival of the IPL, have declared complete victory over the virus.

And it was demonstrated by the fact that this massive cricket tournament is taking place, as you both know well, in the Indian heartland of the United Arab Emirates, a place that is so Indian that it isn't even in India.

Yes, I mean, I guess, you know, I guess they had to choose the UAE because

it is a place that is so soulless that even a virus wouldn't bother going there, I guess.

So it's probably the safest place to hold a cricket tournament.

We are recording.

on the 5th of October 2020.

Today is World Teachers Day.

And I mean, it does rather raise the question should we actually be celebrating teachers?

Should we be celebrating these textbook waggling, whiteboard bothering, I know more than your child about something I've been trained in, self-proclaimed educators, who insist on filling the world's children with the knowledge, skills, hope and curiosity that on first contact with the reality of the world will inevitably lead them to a lifetime of confusion and crushed expectations.

You are these are these really the kind of people we should be holding up as inspirations for the world?

If this year has taught us one thing, and let's be honest, it's tried to teach us lots of things, but we're going to do our best to ignore them all.

But if this year has taught us one thing, it is that knowing about the world is far less comforting than, for example, being a brick.

Because I have bricks in the wall of my house, and they've dealt with this year far more stably than I have.

So don't celebrate teachers.

Just chat to a brick.

Are the bricks better at other things than you as well?

Like cleaning?

Well, I I mean almost certainly Helen I have uh time management I think I have two skills in life and um you probably back the brick on everything apart from cricket statistics and possibly comedy

people always Andy say that teachers say inspirational things you know in the movies they always show you teachers that give inspirational speeches my memory of my favorite teacher was my 11th grade history teacher Mr.

Robert Myers who was an Anglo-Indian gentleman who said to our whole whole class leave the country as soon as you can and promptly migrated to Australia.

Well that I mean in many ways that's a practical lesson isn't that it's teaching you about the harsh realities of economics

teaching you and from that you can learn all about history and everything that goes with it.

There's too many teachers just stuck to books rather than you know action.

teach by actions.

Well, I had a teacher that used to throw things at pupils so is that action?

Well it depends what they're throwing.

Like board rubbers, books.

He also had a plate on his desk that had the spores from where a mushroom had disintegrated on it, and he just kept it there for years.

I had a teacher who had a foam brick that he would occasionally throw at people.

But the problem is once you've done it once, it ceases to really have any particular threat.

What he really needed was a selection of bricks, most of which were foam, but at least one of which was brick.

And then he would have had our full undivided attention.

You know, the thing is, sometimes

it isn't even physical torture, sometimes it's

academic and psychological torture that I was quite interested in.

My class teacher once...

I mean, out of context, Anubhab, that sentence sounds really bad.

Really bad.

Correct, correct, correct.

Sitting alone in a house in Calcutta.

It's a worrying thing to say to people.

But she used to have a big, big sort of thing of chart paper put up, and

she'd have a drawing of the guy that had the best exam results.

And he'd be the tallest.

And then she'd draw like where we all stood in comparison to him.

And she'd have a little arrow.

I was usually a speck because he was really tall.

And then she'd draw an arrow and say, This is you, and you are nothing.

And this is the main guy.

And he is 94%.

Right, it's time for the top story this week.

Donald Trump has COVID.

Now, to be honest,

this is October, and I'm quite surprised that it took this long for that headline to come into existence.

Last Friday, we're recording on Monday this week.

Last Friday, the news broke that Trump had tested positive for COVID-19 and vice versa.

Our sympathies to both for what they must be going through.

I wouldn't wish either of them on my worst enemies.

Trump has promised or threatened that he would keep on working through his disease.

He's been photographed signing blank bits of paper.

Well, that's real work, Andy.

This is how you learn.

This basically tells you everything about how American politics works.

Obviously, we wish the president a full recovery, as well as a new, calmer, wiser perspective on life, a massive electoral humiliation, and a long, slow retirement haunted by guilt.

Sadly, he's only the first, is likely.

Now,

it has been, you know, it's been an odd year.

It's been

a depressing campaign watching America as fans.

And, you know, we are, you know, as none of us are allowed to vote,

you know, we're voiceless in this.

And yet, as I keep saying, you know, we should be the people allowed to vote in an American election.

And

how has this story struck you as citizens of the world and indeed the universe of which Trump is de facto king?

Well, it's impressive that even during this, he has kept working by, on Saturday having a photo shoot,

working busily in two different fake offices in the hospital.

And the metadata on the photo show that they were taken only 10 minutes apart.

So

just loves to switch locations a lot to be the most productive.

Got to keep fresh in your mind, haven't you?

Right.

And then on Sunday, went for a car ride.

which apparently, so in the presidential SUV, it's hermetically sealed against chemical attack.

So, whoever is inside it with him is at even more risk of catching COVID.

It's a privilege to catch him from the best.

Hermetically sealed from chemical, or I guess indeed biological, attack, but within it, he was essentially biologically attacking his own security detail.

The call was coming from inside the house.

Melania has refused to visit him because that would expose the agents who would drive her to the hospital and the medical staff who would take her to him.

So

someone in the family is being responsible.

Yes, it's quite obvious this joyride that he took on Sunday, a little break from being in hospital to go for a spin in a motorcade and wave at his fans, seeking to project strength, or at least the kind of weakness that idiots think is strength, which is quite a big difference difference.

Which is quite a big difference.

He tweeted that he would pay a, quote, surprise visit to the patriots outside his hospital.

I mean mean, it's a curious form of patriotism, isn't it, that Trump inspires, to support a man who stands against pretty much everything America likes to pretend that it stands for.

But I guess patriotism is like money.

You've either got it or you haven't, or you've got some of it from time to time.

You probably inherited it from your parents.

You found some in the back of the sofa.

Yeah, there might be a bit down the back of the sofa.

Or you can pretend you've got more of it than you actually do just to try and fit in and look cool.

Can you launder it?

I think you can launder patriotism, yes.

You might not fully understand how it works or why people are so obsessed with it and think that whilst in principle there's nothing wrong with it, the way it's come to be used these days causes widespread damage and misery around the world.

And you'd be entirely right to be suspicious of people who flash theirs about too much.

So the similarities are

uncanny.

And anyway, I've been in India, obviously.

Overt patriotism has become a massive political strategy, really, for Narendra Modi and his government.

And I don't know, what's Modi's response to Trump's personal viral issue been?

So the car ride Helen talked about, it's got a lot of press here, right?

Because as you know, Indian politics has become very simple now.

You are either for Prime Minister Modi or against India.

That's really the way to look at any sort of patriarchy.

So basically,

he got out of the hospital, full of COVID, got into a car and waved to his fans, right?

And Prime Minister Modi came out in defense of that and said, there's nothing wrong in meeting die-hard nationalists, right?

Which makes sense, because it got me thinking about anyone with a fan base, right?

The thing is, Andy, can we really keep a very famous person down with COVID for too long?

And then I started thinking about you, Andy, and I said, you know, Andy, God forbid, if you were struck with this virus and your cricket statistics fans were clamoring outside your house, as they often do,

would you not leave all the time Would you not leave your house shielded by heavy security and wave a little, maybe even mime a square cut?

I mean, yes.

I mean, obviously, but I have a greater responsibility to fans of cricket statistics, even than Donald Trump has to the public of America.

You know,

they need me, I think.

You know, and I have a duty to get out there and shout averages out of a window.

You know,

if I can't do that, then

what's the point of why did I fight all those world wars?

You know, if I have to succumb to whatever the virus tells me to do.

That's great when the kind of grandiose

idea of self is coupled with very low ambition.

I think I had that as a review for one of my Edinburgh shows.

The latest medical briefing on Trump's condition, well, just take a guess, buglers, or make it up, because no one has a f ⁇ ing clue because everything is shrouded in deceit and secrecy.

Now obviously we do not wish illness or death on anyone unlike Donald Trump himself of course who through his policies this year has done exactly that to his own people and to show the magic of high office those wishes have actually come true for him to a statistically remarkable degree.

He is not currently on oxygen according to his doctor.

I don't know if he does he need it?

Does he need oxygen?

What to respire as he evolved beyond that?

I think he might have gone beyond that.

He's an anaerobe.

Is that what you're...

Yes, I think he might be some kind of anaerobic being.

Or he conducts photosynthesis.

That kind of thing.

Yeah, that's too green for him, I think.

They're having to try and find the 206 guests who attended his rally at his own golf club in New Jersey the other day.

As everyone attending a Trump rally at a Trump golf club could ever bite you on the ass.

Does 206 count as a rally?

That doesn't seem enough for me

i mean you feel a rally needs at least a thousand helen i'm not

what i said about ambition earlier yes you're the uh we see the the uh absolute arbiter of the meaning of all words in the world does it count as a rally with only 206 people i suppose it really depends on the intent there was also the event at the white house which has been uh pinpointed as a potential super spreading event when uh amy coney barrett the uh nominee for the uh supreme court vacated by the untimely death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was paraded in front of hundreds of people, closely packed, not wearing masks, because why would you wear a mask when you're celebrating skewing the balance of American politics and society for a generation?

You want to be able to fully appreciate the Machiavellian grins on people's faces.

So I could understand people not wanting to wear masks at that, but the virus, never want to miss an open goal, seems to have attended that.

event as well and now loads of people there have tested positive.

And it's particularly curious because in Trump's world illness is a weakness essentially he lambasted Hillary Clinton in 2016 for being ill I think he had a go at Abraham Lincoln for being a wimp for dying

and JFK for being a simpering milksot for getting in the way of that of that bullet it's uh how was um Helen how did you I mean you spent a lot of time in America over recent years and

and we grew up in a household where illness was uh weakness and frowned upon

um

but yeah I'm not sure um

our father had quite the same go-getting energy as Donald Trump has shown through his career.

And I think, you know, if only Trump could have learned from him, the world would be a happier place.

But

is there any way Trump can spin this as a positive?

Yes.

And how is he going to do that?

I don't know how, Andy, because luckily my mind doesn't think the same as his, but he does have a wonderful capacity for turning shit into even more gargantuan amounts of shit and then throwing them around.

That's a skill.

It is unfortunately a skill which he has demonstrated so many times.

So

I think he'll manage to say that Black Lives Matter gave it to him, the Dems gave it to him,

he's defeated the virus and is the strongest man in the world.

Even if he dies, then he'll find a way to spin that from beyond the grave.

You know he will.

So you're basically saying he's an alchemic shit volcano.

I'm not saying that.

Good.

Do you guys remember there was that famous Hollywood film where Kevin Klein was a pig farmer and part-time ventriloquist, and his main thing was that he looked like the president of the United States.

And when the president becomes incapacitated, they hire this pig farmer and ventriloquist, and he becomes an excellent president because he starts asking basic questions like, why do we have to drop this bomb?

Questions that haven't been asked in ages.

So perhaps it's like some version of that that we're looking at, MDA.

I've not seen what's that film called you know is it Dave

Dave thank you thank you

well I'll give it it's a I mean it would that would be reassuring if that's uh if that's the case.

I mean well they did elect an unqualified person to be president and it didn't work out like in the film yes I guess so.

But I guess you know films don't o they are not always ruthlessly accurate.

That's a great problem with uh fiction.

Um the um this followed on the on uh hot on the heels of the debate last week, which happened after we recorded last week's

last week's bugle.

In the interest of balance we should say that the debate was both a car crash and a train wreck and the Titanic hammering snout first into Mount Everest.

Joe Biden described Trump's performance in the debate as a wake-up call to all Americans, which does raise the question of how the f have you slept through the last four f ⁇ ing years.

That is like coming back from a seaside trip to Normandy in June 1944 saying, Well, the ice cream shop was shut for some reason and they wouldn't let us go paddleboarding.

And this group of rather noisy Americans had taken our normal spot.

But otherwise, we had an absolutely lovely day.

He's old Andy, he needs naps.

It was the moderator, Chris Wallace, who was whose performance was

somewhat criticised, said, I never dreamt that it would go off the tracks the way that it did.

Now, again, that shows a charming degree of naivety from someone who has been alive for a long time and American.

I read somewhere that the longest Trump waited before interrupting Joe Biden was about six seconds.

And I'd like to posit a theory, and I just want to know what you think.

The first debate I ever took part in was in Calcutta when I was in fourth grade.

And I was nudged by my neighbor, Prashant Agarwal, who turned to me and said, the way to win this debate is just make some sort of noise while the other guy is speaking.

I think the topic had to do with animals or colonialism.

I don't know what it was.

And the moment the other guy started speaking, every 10 seconds I just went, boah!

And,

you know, I somehow feel like this presidential election, this kind of got hold of maybe, you know, some memory of this or tape of this, and because it followed the same sort of pattern.

Again, I'm bringing this up because it's World Teachers' Day, and, you know,

the sharing.

Well, I think Boris Johnson was clearly given the same instruction, judging by how he's tried to bluster his way out of Prime Minister's questions recently.

Andy, you were a debate champion at school, weren't you?

I'm not sure I was a champion.

Can you win

a gold quill pen?

Oh,

I can't wait.

You know, what every teenage boy wants.

Yeah, I mean, they were all the race back

in the early 90s, golden quill pens.

Has anything good ever come from a debate?

From a debate?

Or a golden quill?

Apart from the quill that you loved so much you forgot all about it.

And it's certainly not recent.

We have a bit of recency bias here, Helen.

Not all debates have been as bad as last week's debate.

Given you are a debate winner, Andy, and I don't know if British debating customs are different from here.

Was listening a part of the thing?

No.

Frowned upon.

No, absolutely not.

But that's a sign of weakness listening.

It's almost a kind of sign of being European, I think.

So, no, we're certainly at the type of school I was at, we're not really encouraged to listen, just talk more loudly, which is

the equivalent of listening.

I mean, why cultivate a skill you'll never need to use in adult life?

I mean, to be honest, the skills I've ended up using in adult life,

I don't know.

I'm not.

Bullshitting?

Oh, bullshitting and obsessing about people hitting balls with a bat and the numerical implications thereof.

I don't know.

I'm not an expert on what are relevant life skills to

inculcate in youngsters, Helen.

No shit.

Did you also see how Britain has aced COVID this week by misplacing nearly 16,000 COVID test results in the last few days

because of the limitations of Excel spreadsheets not being able to have quite enough columns and they didn't realize.

Well, I mean this is it's heroic really isn't it?

Yeah we Brits we will not be cowed by technology.

We will not be cowed by numbers.

I mean the this was described as a technical glitch wasn't it?

That was the official

technical glitch surrounding the massive misreporting of the number of COVID cases.

I'm not sure it's just that many people having COVID.

Yes.

Well, that's a technical glitch, I guess.

I mean, I don't know if the technical glitch is with the spreadsheet or if it's a technical glitch in the...

tracking and tracing system or a technical glitch whereby under a quarter of the population of the UK can vote in a government with no discernible qualifications to have de facto dictatorial powers led by a man with absolutely no appropriate experience for the job.

That to me, that's the key technical glitch

we need to be addressing.

And you know, Bill Gates not putting enough columns in his spreadsheet, that's a side issue.

Exciting language news this week, Helen, coming from parrots in a wildlife park in Lincolnshire, sort of showing what is really great about the English language about which you know so much.

That's right, Andy.

These birds made me very proud.

They acquired five new African grey parrots in August, apparently because a lot of people during quarantine realise they do not actually have the capacity for a pet parrot.

And they put them all together.

I've learned a lot this year, haven't we?

How else are you going to learn?

They put them all in quarantine together and

they all were swearing their little beaks off.

So they've had to remove them from public display.

I would pay extra to go and see five parrots swearing in unison.

Or apparently one of them would swear and then the next one would laugh and then swear.

They'd all go around kind of appreciating the swears and then replicating them.

So, I mean, how, was it, do we know yet, was it one sweary parrot who then taught the other parrots to swear?

Or have all the parrot owners in Lincolnshire, where this World Laugh Park is located, have they all separately been teaching their parrots to swear and then presumably laughing when their parrots do swear, which they're then, which their parrots then learn to follow up their swears with.

Well, Andy, what percentage of owners of parrots with the capacity for speech acquisition do you think just launch straight in with the swears?

Well, above 90?

Well above 90 I would think.

So they may have come with some vocabulary already.

But what they've done now is separated them and put them in different groups.

to discourage this behaviour, which suggests they're just going to spread the swearing to even more parrots.

Right.

Surely.

This is, I mean, we should put this in context.

This was by no means the least dignified conversation of last week.

And it does show where we've reached as a planet that a cage full of foul-beaked parrots was more insightful, polite, and civilised than a presidential debate in America.

It would rather highlight the problems we've got as a species at the moment.

Apparently, the swearing did slightly stop

when they switched off the 24-hour news channel that was on the TV in the parrot's cage.

And presumably the parrots stopped and listened to the entire swearing before they responded to the other parrot with their swearing.

I hope so.

Yeah.

You don't want an interrupting sweary parrot, do you?

India news now, Anuvab, Amnesty International has said that it's been forced to halt its operations in India due to government threats and reprisals.

The Indian government froze Amnesty's bank accounts, not exactly sort of exuding a there's definitely nothing to see here

vibe.

And you know, when Amnesty International halts its operations, generally that is a sign that there is a very good reason for Amnesty International to be operating somewhere.

Can you fill us in on this story and

what's been going on?

Well, that's right, Andy.

Well, BBC has been reporting Amnesty International says it's been forced to halt its India operations due to reprisals from the government.

Now, according to me, there's a bit of whining going on here from Amnesty because the watchdog has accused the government of pursuing a witch hunt against the organization.

And I don't see how this is a witch hunt.

All the government has done is that it's frozen their bank accounts, forced to lay off all their staff in the country, told them to suspend all their campaign and research work and arrested the head of Amnesty.

I don't see this at all as a witch hunt.

All that's happened, you know, is that these tiny things have happened and the Indian government said in a statement that the accusations were unfortunate, exaggerated, and far from the truth.

The head of Amnesty, who was arrested for a bit, said from prison that this sort of clampdown is seen as the death of a transparent human rights organization being allowed to function in a country claiming to be an open Westernized democracy.

And to them,

I would say, you know, Amnesty, don't be so limited in your view.

Be open, be global.

You know, what you see in India is draconian.

Vladimir Putin or Premier Xi would see it as just another Tuesday.

So

I think again it's about perspective.

You know?

That is, in fact, the title of Putin and Xi's new podcast, Just Another Tuesday, in which they tell funny stories about the latest clampdowns on political opponents and

internments of people in concentration camps.

So it's a good listen.

Uncomfortable, but interesting.

Now, just for the record, this is apparently not the first time amnesty has has been shut down in India.

And that has been the government's defense.

They said that in the history of India, this is the fourth time we've shut amnesty down.

And this is the only time we've been in power.

So three other times, other people shut you down.

So please do not only hold us responsible.

Which, if nothing else, Andy, shows a very good understanding of Indian history by the government, which is why it is such a good government.

And also, if anyone is listening to this podcast, big fan of Prime Minister Modi.

Big fan.

Yes, I mean shutting down Amnesty International is not, it doesn't, like I said, it doesn't sort of exude,

you know,

it doesn't sort of project the idea that there's nothing there to be concerned about.

It's like when you hear someone use the words, there's no need to panic, but.

You just assume that there is absolutely 100% cast iron reason to panic.

It's not like a guilty-looking child unprompted telling mummy and daddy, I definitely did not coat the hamster in peanut butter and glue a little mitre on its head to make it look like a rodent pop in a peanut butter chasible.

It just raises suspicions when that kind of thing happens, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

I mean, if you remember, on this podcast, we've talked a while ago about the Citizenship Amendment Act that happened in India a few months ago.

Basically, they were trying to exclude any fleeing Muslim refugees from seeking refuge in India, claiming that India would only give refuge to Hindus.

And there were protests all around the country and riots and all sorts of things.

And the police are just bringing out chart sheets and accusations.

and it turns out you know shockingly it's basically the protesters who are to blame and they've been imprisoned and none of the people that were that were sort of you know beating up the protesters none of them have any charges against them so again justice is being served so i don't know what amnesty is whining about that they apparently claimed that a fair trial is not taking place but you know again how would we know because now amnesty's accounts are frozen so

so we'd never know and which is good so I think the government is doing its job.

It's just statistics and chance that nobody from the government was responsible for the protests.

It's just the people opposed to the government that were responsible and are in prison for it.

Which again is the result of a fair and transparent process.

Anivab, whenever you're on the show, you'd like to bring us up to date with latest

large and small examples of corruption at work in India.

What have you got for us this time?

Well, Adi Helen, this is quite a sad sort of pandemic economic story.

A Mumbai man has allegedly been cheated of £15,000

for trying to work as a male escort.

So a 40-year-old man from Mumbai was duped to £15,000 after being lured by fraudsters to become a male escort.

Now, he was charged a lot of money by an agency who promised him work every evening.

However, he claimed he was not provided any job.

And in return, he alleged that they took £15,000 from him under the pretext of registration fees.

The man worked as a tailor and told the police that he got drawn to the offer as his tailoring unit had shut down

and so he thought about becoming a gigolo.

We've all been there.

I was quite taken by that because I belong to an association, Andy Helen, of Mumbai Screenwriters, which is a shambolic, perhaps criminal organization that promises minimum wages and health insurance.

But we haven't managed a registration book or a registration fees.

So I was quite taken by the fact that male escorts have a registered body.

Turns out they don't.

This was fraud and corruption.

However, this has led to a big debate in India about where such a body is necessary.

And a number of people have signed this petition, notably three male escorts and one tailor.

Never pay fees up front.

It's a great point.

Museums news now, and well, this has been a story that's rumbled on through the year.

The latest is that the British government has warned museums

not to take down statues or exhibits under pressure from what they describe as the PC Brigade.

They want to stop museums rewriting the version of history that we've previously rewritten.

There was a letter sent from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Oliver Dowden,

laying out the government's position in which he said, and it's something of an understatement: history is ridden with moral complexity.

Statues and other historical objects were created by generations with different perspectives and understandings of right and wrong.

So what's

it's not a great argument, like

lack of medical treatment with no anesthetic was created by previous generations, and we don't seem to have continued that in surgery.

Yeah, and look at the state of the country now.

You're massively overcrowded by people who would rightly have died in botched surgery, were it not for the PC Brigade insisting that we make medical advances.

Right.

Anesthesia makes a load of soft boys.

I think Donald Trump has basically said that in the past.

Helen Andy, I have a question about this whole statue museum debate.

And, you know, I hold a special place in my heart for a number of statues that for some reason of British people have shown up in India.

I don't know how this happened, but it seems to be strewn across the country.

Now,

my English is not very strong, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson was asked, the reason perhaps some of these statues needs to be moved to a

colonial museum is that you could write down that some of the things these people did were mistakes.

And he responded by saying,

it depends on how you define mistake.

So I just wanted your view on that, or whether are there several definitions of mistake?

Well, I mean, it's very difficult when we look back on the history of the British Empire to, you know, work out what was a mistake, what was

a blooper, technically,

what was a procedural snafu.

What was a whoopsa-daisy?

Yeah, exactly.

A whoops-ad-daisy.

A whoopsadaisy, I think, is anything with below 1,000 casualties.

That's an official whoopsa-daisy.

Above 1,000, you're getting into

a kerfuffle, I believe.

So, yeah.

Or did they mean the mistake was India's for being in the way when the British decided they wanted it?

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, Donald Trump would see it as a weakness, really,

just

putting up any sort of fight.

Yeah.

So,

yeah, Oliver Dowden says that these exhibits and statues play an important role in teaching us about our past.

I'm trying to think if I've ever been taught anything by a statue.

Because usually looking at a statue of a 19th-century military general just makes me feel kind of bored and angry, but not necessarily informed.

Yes.

If they put up a statue of Wikipedia, then that might work better.

But then the letter.

I mean, it would probably look like a wicked.

It wouldn't look good, Andy.

But, you know, a lot of these generals don't look good.

But they sent this to 26 museums, including the Imperial War Museum,

National Portrait Gallery, VNA,

and Arts Council, and National Lottery Heritage Fund, with the threat.

I would say, the veiled threat saying the significant support you receive from the taxpayer is acknowledgement of the important cultural role you play for the entire country.

I suppose you could say propagandist role, if you disagree with cultural.

It is imperative that you continue to act impartially in line with your publicly funded status and not in a way that brings this into question.

So it's basically

keep the Parthenon on marbles or else you take your fundraising away.

Also, I mean, you tried to define mistake.

What about impartiality?

Is it impartial to have all the shit that we plundered from other places?

Is it impartial to have statues of like

this bunch of cs instead of other people?

Well, maybe.

Just wondering about a word.

I mean, it's possible that that could be a way to balance these things out.

You know, if we keep we keep these statues of

that, we talked about it before, the likes of Robert Clive at Hannah Vabenheim.

We talked on our Radio 4 series a couple of years ago, the statue of Clive that was

erected almost 150 years after he died in complete disgrace as we attempted to rewrite our history to make him look like less of a massive.

So I don't know where the impartiality on.

Can you be impartial on Robert Clive, Anuvab?

Well, you know, I'm slightly led by the fact that under the statue, still sitting in front of the Foreign Office, sits the words Clive of India.

So that, I think.

But I have a slightly different

Clive on India, like a sort of rampage on India.

That's more accurate, right?

Because he showed up and sat on it.

But the interesting thing is that I have a contrarian view to this, because the historian William Talribble has been sort of going on and on lately in to anyone who'd hear him about tearing down that statue

and saying Clive was a war criminal, etc.

But

in sort of defence of him, what better statue to have to show the beginning of British foreign policy than Clive at the mouth of the Foreign Office?

I mean, as a true student

of British history, I think it begins with 1757 and Clive.

So he is indeed in the right place.

Because

what was behind him was previously the India Office, and after independence, all those papers got burnt, and everyone was like, oh, this didn't happen.

And it became now what is the Foreign Commonwealth Office.

So I think he's in a good place because he shows you where it began, how it began with a tiny bit of loot and what's become now.

I guess so and yeah in terms of you know learning people learning from it

yeah you can learn I'm not sure I don't know how much you can learn from the statue of Clive.

I think you can learn quite a lot from what the pigeons have done to the the statue of Clive.

In many ways that's the more the more pertinent part of that Scott.

I mean without without putting Clive there, we wouldn't have given the Pidgins to shit on his head.

So in many ways, all outdoor statues have an inbuilt natural impartiality.

But we glorify these people, and the natural world will shit on their heads.

Right, well, that brings us to the end of

this week's bugle.

I hope, I don't know, it gets increasingly hard to know what to say at the end of a first topical, satirical news show.

You know, I hope things don't get much shitter over the next week.

Will that do?

What was it they used to say at the end of Crime Watch?

Don't have nightmares.

Yes.

I mean, what they should have said is, remember, this is a statistically insignificant sample.

Yes, okay.

Well, don't have nightmares.

Let's go with don't have nightmares.

Don't have nightmares, buglers.

Other than the ones you have when watching the telly or reading the news.

Thank you very much for listening.

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

Well, it's more of an anecdote from a thing I'm doing.

I'm doing a comedy writing workshop for the last six weeks, Andy, and we're hoping to have a noted IPL commentator, Andy Zoltzmann, join us.

We do it every Sunday.

But the most interesting thing is, at the end of the workshop, I do a Q ⁇ A.

And last week, one of the students said, this thing that you're teaching, will this profession ever come back?

Oh, yes.

Well, the bleak future of comedy.

Under attack not only from COVID and the economic devastation related to it, but also from the fact that the universe is no longer amusing.

Helen, tell our listeners all about your various shows, what they can hear.

Well, I have three podcasts.

Answer me this.

Veronica Mars Investigations and The Illusionist, which is about language.

And I just put out an episode with the horrific origins of the word bulldozer.

So if you want to feel even worse about voter suppression, I suggest you listen to that.

and then start calling them earth movers.

What if we want to feel better about voter suppression, Helen?

What have you got a show for that?

I'm afraid I do not make a show for that, Andy.

Right, that's why you don't do so much on the BBC because you're not balanced enough.

Thank you for listening, buglers.

We'll be back next week with the latest exciting installment of the history of the planet Earth.

Goodbye.

To conclude this week's show, here are some more lies about our premium-level Bugle voluntary subscribers.

To join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme and make a one-off or recurring donation to the show, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Patrick Stewart, not that one, thought that the term delicatessen was spelled as the word delicate, followed by the letters S and N, which he assumed stood for the words snacks and nibbles.

In fact, Patrick briefly had a sideline as a rapper, specialising in fine foods-themed hip-hop under the name Dilik Atessen, spelt D apostrophe L-I-C-K-8-S-N.

When his debut single You're in Salami Now, sampling status quo's hit song You're in the Army Now, resulted in a court case, he retired from Shobiz.

Similarly, Ian Findlater, another etymological confuse, thought the term horoscope was made up of the words horrors and cope.

Ian explains, I assumed it was weekly advice to guide you on how to manage to deal with the horrors of life, but then I read some and I have to say I was unimpressed on both counts.

Disappointingly vague squared.

Joining the list of VBVs vocabulary bewilderment victims, Dan Randall used to misread the word specimen as specky men and assumed it was a word that highlighted the male dominance and prevalent goggle usage in the world of scientific research in the early 20th century.

Archie Wade is never that impressed by those tortoises that people say have been alive for about 180 years.

What have they actually done in that time, asks Archie.

Tortoises have a tendency to live very much in their own comfort zone and species need to do more than that to impress me.

I've got a busy life and I've only got time to impress by 15, maybe 20 different species.

Chris Holland still has not given up hope that the crew and passengers who disappeared from the Mary Celeste ship in 1872 might still still turn up alive and well.

It's a bit of a long shot admittedly, says Chris, but it is possible that they found a secret island of eternal life and have been hanging out there getting hammered and playing poker in the nude ever since.

I reckon the novelty of that would probably wear off after 148 to 150 years, so if they are going to come back, concludes Chris, I reckon it will be soon.

And finally, Pritish N would prefer football if the goal was not an 8-yard by 8-foot rectangle enclosed by posts and a crossbar, but was instead a similarly shaped and sized stack of champagne glasses.

British justifies this hope by saying, I think it would make the moment a goal is scored just that bit more spectacular, and it would also make goalkeepers try a lot harder as well.

Here endeth this week's lies.

From me at least, I'm sure there will be other lies from other sources to keep you going until next time.

Bye-bye.

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.