4167 - Trump Takes a Mulligan

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to another installment of Well, This Is Going Well, the weekly assessment of Planet Earth's slide down the rankings.

That is the Bugle podcast.

I am Andy Zoltzmann.

Fear my power, for I am a pitiless destroyer of worlds.

Sorry, I promised myself I'd never use those words again after it failed as a chat-up line for the 837th consecutive first date.

It is Monday the 28th of September 2020.

This is issue 4167 of the bugle, which by coincidence is the number of times the following things have happened in the past week since we last spoke to each other.

The average British person has watched the news and said, what now?

Boris Johnson has muttered the words, this is the worst Faustian pact ever.

Football pundits have said, that is never a handball, this game is killing itself.

Football supporters have responded, you have a a point, but maybe try addressing the cancerously exploitative, destructive plutocracy of the wealthier clubs when you're trying to work out exactly how football is really killing itself.

So there we are.

There we are, another week on, as we all wait expectantly for season four of The Handmaid's Tale of some light, frothy escapism, whilst quietly thinking to ourselves, I expected the end of civilization to be a bit more exciting and spectacular than this.

So, instead, here we have a bugle to keep me going joining me for the latest week of joy around the world from Australia, Alice Fraser.

Hello Andy, hello buglers, how are you all?

I assume they're all fine.

Let's go with fine.

Yeah, on behalf of all bugle listeners, everyone is absolutely fine.

Well how can you not be fine when you're listening to world-class satire?

I've no idea.

I've never really tried it.

How's Australia?

Australia seems to be doing comparatively well in the stakes of

collapsing.

We're collapsing at marginally slower rates than other major countries,

partly because we are not a major country, though we like to think of ourselves as such.

But yeah, it's not bad.

I spent the weekend looking at some cows.

All right.

And how does that work out for you?

They looked back.

Classic, classic human-cow confrontation.

Also joining us for rather closer to where I am in the shed in South London, it's Mark Steele.

Hello, Andy.

I'm so jealous of you, Alice, in Australia.

Well, it's just we're just awful here.

We're going to have a second wave and a third wave.

And

even if you get locked down, you've got a desert each out there.

So you can just wander up.

Oh, no.

I can't be confined to this 900 square miles.

Oh, no, this is just awful.

It's all just so miserably, predictably wrong.

and when a lot a few weeks ago when they went no go and boris johnson no go out once again to the pubs and off and and i just thought

i clearly i honestly did think i there must be something i don't understand because the reason that the our numbers gone down is because we've all been indoors not meeting them so when we all go out it'll go up again won't it it's like

oh there's a drip from the tap we turned it off let's turn it on again and the tap won't but it's going to start dripping when you turn it on again, isn't it?

No, don't be too miserable, Wigger.

And here we are, all fucked.

Yeah, but the thing is, Mark, you're looking at this from a different perspective to the politicians.

You're looking at it from a cause and effect perspective.

Whereas politics likes to separate cause and effect.

The cause is someone else's fault, and the effect is your manipulation of the statistics to prove it to be what you want it to be.

Evidently.

On the 29th of September in 480 BC, the Battle of Salamis took place.

The Greek fleet under Themistocles defeated the Persian fleet under Xerxes I, who had no answer to the Greek barrage of strongly flavoured cured meat sausages, if I remember the details from my degree accurately.

On this day in 2008, on the 29th of September 2008, the Dow Jones fell 777.68 points, its largest single-day loss following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.

It's funny, isn't it?

That seems almost charmingly nostalgic now, doesn't it?

Just a massive global banking collapse.

Got a happier, simpler times where catastrophe almost seemed just like a little lark in the financial markets.

Could anyone have foreseen those bankruptcies happening in the collapse around it?

Well,

no, unless they'd had one of the following rare qualities: foresight, hindsight, or basic arithmetic.

On the 28th of September 1066, William the Conqueror landed in England, beginning the Norman Conquest.

Of course, it's been downhill ever since, really.

He landed in Sussex.

Of course, if he'd landed in Kent, we'd have kept him out easy, no problem.

On the 28th of September 1066, William the Conqueror landed in England, beginning the Norman Conquest.

It's been downhill ever since.

But to mark this, we have this week's section in the bin, a free new part-by-part audio tapestry chronicling Britain from 2020 in the style of the Bayer Tapestry tapestry that charted the Norman conquest.

And to construct your first audio panel of the history of Britain 2020 onwards, construct your own scene from the following component parts.

A smug leader sitting on a throne, a group of fawning courtiers, a sinister-looking bald man, a crowd of people holding their heads in their hands in despair, a naughty-looking virus, a confused doctor and a very disappointed baby.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week.

Well,

let's just have a closer look at the latest in Britain.

We'll turn to the Trumpian tax issue

later in the show.

Are we off on this now?

On the lockdown?

Well, I mean, it's hard to.

I mean,

lockdown is.

I think the government is probably about to say that lockdown is a spiritual state and we are all free within our souls.

and um and just shut up and it's so yes and it's so unpredictable who could have predicted that when students went back to university that they would stand close to each other because before freshers week has always involved students just getting in a canoe and sight going out into the greenland

and this

oh what about that the thing with the app right so you know the nhs app the nhs app that is not with that is working with it but it's not an nhs app because they've given it to this private company circo so it's an nhs app in the same way that kentucky fried chicken does nhs buckets of chicken wings and the mental dave in a nightclub does nhs skunk and collapse in the corner of the toilet it's nothing to do with the nhs but he just wants the nhs to take the blame for it and then oh and also so the track and trace that in april track and trace he said world beater will will be a world beater game changer track and trace by the end of may

and then it was the end of june and then july and then september and now he said this this week he said it doesn't really matter it won't it doesn't affect the thing you've said

for six months You've been going this is what's going to know it doesn't matter and that

it's like a child losing losing a race at school isn't it?

Yeah, didn't want to to win it to winter.

Yeah, and they got this Serco company You know they've sub contracts read about it.

They've subcontracted the work hundreds of millions of pounds worth of contracts that they've got and they've subcontracted it out to companies such as debt collecting agencies And you've got, but with track and trace, you've got to be really sensitive, right?

We want to find out where you were.

And debt collecting agencies of all companies are known for their sensitivity

were you round at bill and eileen's on saturday for a barbecue were you where we're clamped in your car and taking you a finging tilly you slag give us your jewellery

I think, well, here's my shred of optimism.

When you listen to the conspiracy theorists, all you know what they're doing, they're trying to kill all the old people because they're too expensive for their pensions or something.

I think, oh, no, they are.

then this is the darkest thing

they are utterly uselessly incompetent if they had an inconspiracy they couldn't and john boris comes in when he does his no

whatever it is no more than six people can gather anywhere unless it's at a gathering and of these four out of every three must be outside during daylight and must hover like a hummingbird in a bubble where 1.5 people extra are allowed as a as a bubblet and you are only allowed two extra people in a house if you murder two of your family to make space with a maximum of naught people in a room at any time.

So if you find yourself in a room you must leave immediately.

That's actually a lot clearer than anything I've heard from the real Boris Johnson.

Unless you're hunting grouse.

Oh yes!

I'm

Kill or be killed.

You know, they've got these lockdown protests.

What they should do is just ritually sacrifice a grouse at the end as a post hoc.

That's so true.

Justification.

I was doing one of my in-town recordings, which I last was allowed to record in a field in Stratford-upon-Aven, right?

So the town, it was Stratford-upon-Aven.

We were only allowed to do it in a field with 30 people in this massive field dotted around while I was trodden on the...

This is all true.

Stood on a tree stump, right, as the stage.

That's how Shakespeare began.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's the only time I've ever done a radio recording where a punchline was twice interrupted by geese.

So it didn't

get true.

Ah, ah, ah.

Bless them.

And I thought, if I had a gun, if I had a gun and I'd shot one of the f because it could have been a proper shooting party, we would have been allowed to have 4,000 there, wouldn't we?

Well, this is the other shred of optimism, I think,

buglers, is that

I think people in Britain, more and more people are sort of thinking this has all gone horribly wrong.

The terrible thing, sort of six months ago, was all this madness was going on, and people were thinking, well, the government's doing the best it can in killing more people than in doing worse than any other country in the world.

But even now, the thing, because it's Britain, so Boris Johnson was asked the other day, why have we had a worse record than almost any other country in the world and he said because we are a freedom-loving nation.

That's why we've been worse because we can't help it.

We go up the co-op and we're doing our shopping in our mask and we rip it off because we can't help it because it's in our jeans

because we stood alone in 1940.

So I'm not wearing a mask when I'm buying custard powder.

And it's

just that.

how can they die and I'll go with the other one he said for 300 years every major innovation in the world has come from Britain and that's that's why we of course the virus is going to spread more in Britain than anywhere else because we invented the steam engine

it's all Stevenson's fault

Speaking of the steam engine, I highly recommend, I have a few suggestions for people who are trying to avoid COVID in these troubled times.

One is everyone should start vaping so that we can see other people's breath and dodge away from it.

Right.

I think that's very good.

The second thing is that everyone should have extremely loud air horns because no one wants to come near anyone with an air horn.

Like Beethoven.

And the third is...

He never got it, did he?

Yeah, you can't argue with the science.

And the third is to avoid anything happening after 10 p.m.

because that's when the vampires come out and spread COVID.

They're like,

the thing about vampires that everyone forgets is that they're essentially very large mosquitoes.

Yes, everyone does forget that.

You know, it's all that silent movie stuff where you watch them going to piano music and you don't hear the sound effect of the vampires floating around going, eee.

much more annoying, much less sexy.

Yep, that's why you don't get

mosquitoes in Italian restaurants because of all the garlic

and the crucifixes, I think.

Yeah, France, no, none in France.

Yeah, no, you're quite right.

Running water, they're the most useless things, aren't they?

Vampires.

It should be easy to get rid of a vampire.

I am deadly.

The only thing that can stop me is garlic and running water and the daylight and anything that happens to be cross-shaped, even accidental twig.

Consent.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Fucking useless, aren't they?

Some more annoying.

Well, I'm glad we're taking down the big threats to humanity one by one in this show.

There's been a lot of criticism from within the Conservative Party of

the Johnson regime's latest diktats.

Some of the Tories have been saying they're doing more harm than good, which is not really the issue, to be honest.

Doing more harm than good, because A, that's basically what they were elected to do.

B, because every possible solution to this situation does more harm than good.

The issue is the margin of victory for harm over good

under Johnson's mentorship.

Yes, it's a threshing.

209 days in a row, harm has beaten good.

And where does good go from here?

Yeah, the fans of good are pulled on the phones.

Rest bang out of order.

Look, as a comedian surrounded by the furious agreement of the educated lefty intelligentsia, it's very easy to make fun of Boris Johnson because he's got a very difficult job and

he makes it look easy to be good because you look at him and you think, God, any idiot could do a better job than that underwater with one hemisphere of their brain tied behind their back.

The problem is that the skills required to be good at politics don't seem to be the same skills required to be a good leader of a country.

And that seems like a structural problem, you know?

Yes.

Well,

you're saying that this thing has revealed the obvious deep flaws in the way we conduct our democracy, Alice.

Yeah, it's like testing someone to be an airline pilot by having them run a hopscotch.

It's not quite, it's like a skill set, but it's not the same skill set.

Yes.

Well, I mean, if you look at the things he said to

the country, and clearly there's an issue of trust now, and

there's a lot of disagreement, you know, basically different people saying we need more powerful local governments, less powerful local governments, more clarity from central government, central government to get out of it.

People should take responsibility for their own actions, and they need strong definitive rulings from the government so everyone knows exactly what they can do.

We need to support and close businesses.

We need to panic and not let the virus control our lives.

We need to do things better in the future and in the past, and learn from Sweden, stroke Germany, stroke China, stroke New Zealand, stroke Australia, stroke Alan and Brenda from down the road who are fine, stroke wherever people are allowed to watch sport, we'll just follow them, or Antarctica, Pangaea, or Venus.

Or we just learn from Britain because we are Britain and instinctively, our national common sense means we've automatically done the right thing.

So it's it and Johnson's leadership.

I mean, he said that he made a speech last week.

He said, I know we can succeed because we have succeeded before

the problem with that is is

i mean a that logic is flawed and uh because a lot of things succeed and then fail i mean you know you wouldn't line you know at the whenever the next olympics is you will not see team gb at the 100 meters wheeling out Harold Abrahams in his coffin, the 1924 Olympic 100 meter champion, saying, well, he's a proven winner.

He is a proven winner.

He's done it before.

He can do it it again.

And also, there's another flip side.

You know, if Johnson says we can succeed because we've succeeded before, there's an obvious flip side to that logic, given the amount of times he has f ⁇ ing failed.

So in terms of pure probability, it's not looking too clever.

He said this, when the sickness took hold of this country in March, we pulled together in a spirit of national sacrifice and community.

We followed the guidance to the letter.

We stayed home, protected the NHS and saved thousands of lives.

Now, I know people can use whatever pronouns they like these days, and that is overwhelmingly a good thing, but I don't believe Boris Johnson can use we in those sentences.

That seems entirely inappropriate.

He added the single greatest weapon we bring to this fight is the common sense of the people themselves.

Well, thanks for the compliment.

Mr Johnson, but when you are Prime Minister, that suggests that British common sense has taken a bit of a back seat in recent years and when the other weapons we're bringing to the fight are you Boris Johnson Dominic Cummings Matt Hancock the health secretary an overwhelming aura of confusion and an app that doesn't fucking work that's not the most glowing of accolades anyway I think yes that's all that's very true but I think

you were asking for little shards of optimism I think and I know as a statistics man you will appreciate this

Britain did achieve a world record this week because during Boris Johnson's speech at one point he said it is absolutely important

that we all

keep to the rules.

We must not breach the rules.

And at that point the greatest number of people at a single moment said the same name when 40 million people in Britain went, What about fing Dominic Cummins?

It was registered as an earthquake by those

seismometers around the world.

I think it's yeah, 1.3 on the dicta scale.

Yes.

Family shell.

This is a.

Just one, before we move on to Trump, one more quick British story.

And well this is of particular relevance to Mark and me.

Kent Border.

Now, of course, Kent Border, you instantly think, well, that's Australia's number five and well Australia's numbers five and six batsmen in the 1981 old Trafford Ashes test.

Martin Kent only played three matches for the Baggy Greens, of course, and legendary captain Alan Border early in his career.

But

Michael Gove

announced, essentially, there's going to be a sort of de facto border for lorries

entering Kent before they travel to the EU.

Now,

Mark, you're from, you know, you're a Kent cricket fan.

Yes.

you grew up in the sort of the sort of London London part of Kent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I grew up in the disputed border town of Tunbridge Wells, and

it's

I mean, how do you feel about our county becoming a you know I'm all for it?

I was brought up in in Swanley in Kent, so it's sort of just outside the London-y bit of Kent, but it was but yeah, I think that they should go further with this.

I think that um Swanley should actually become part of France.

I think Margate and Ramsgate should both be called West Romania.

And I think Sittingbourne should be placed within the disputed India-Pakistan border currently in the province of Kashmir.

I think.

I think there's something quite brilliant about the fact that most of Kent voted Brexit because they're sick of foreigners.

And now the population of Kent is going to be 48 million, of which 47 million are Romanian truck drivers stuck on the ring road outside Mainstream.

I think there's something brilliant about that.

If Kent becomes a country, which it should do, we'll have a team at the Olympics

and we'll be marching right behind Kenya at the opening ceremony.

And if there's anyone from my old school, that means Kenya will not win any middle distance medals because all the Kent ones will go up behind him and go, oh, deadleg my son!

Get up, Kenyon!

Yes!

You say 47 million

Romanian lorry drivers, that's only a slight exaggeration.

Michael Gove said there could be 7,000 lorries queuing in Kentucky.

7,000, that works out around about, I think, an 80-mile queue of lorries.

He described this as a reasonable worst-case scenario, which by coincidence is my online dating profile.

7,000 I mean this is this is what taking back control was all about wasn't it lorries

everywhere an 80 mile queue so that goes right through London then that'll go from Dover that'll go right all through Kent right up to London but worth it though because we've got our passports back haven't we so I don't mind I don't mind taking 47 years to get to France because I've got me passport back

proper colour what it never was in the first place same colour what it never was, proper colour, nearly blue.

Like, which what everything in Britain's nearly blue.

Nearly blue, post boxes, buses, everything.

What's our flag?

Nearly blue, white, and blue.

Back.

I mean, even the Norman invasion had the sense to march through Kent quickly without causing trouble.

When I did Hastings as part of the In Town series,

everything there is 1066.

There's a 1066 jazz club, a 1066 vets, everything.

And then I came across a building company called William the Concrete.

American presidential tax news now.

And, well, exciting revelations from the New York Times

yesterday.

They've published an extensive report into Donald Trump's tax affairs, an issue about the...

about which the usually forthright and gobshiteest Mr.

Trump has been, well, demurely, almost coquettishly reticent over the years.

He's the first president since the 70s not to publish his tax returns.

And it turns out that, well, basically, he's been putting the racket into tax bracket, the OI into avoidance, and the shows total disregard for ordinary people and the overall well-being of America into the, he shows total disregard for ordinary people and the overall well-being of America.

The investigation showed chronic losses in his businesses and years of tax avoidance, the extent where he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and in 2017 and no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.

I mean you've got to admire the barefaced balls of it in a way haven't you?

Yeah, I mean I think the Americans will admire it.

Like this is a nation of carpetbaggers and religious zealots who are fleeing from the freedoms recently granted in England.

They would, you know, these are people who are very committed to a cause and at the moment the cause is capitalism.

If you can get away with doing terrible, terrible things financially, I think it'll be good for his poll numbers.

Yeah, also, I mean, maybe the poor bastard has been skint the whole time.

We should feel sorry for him.

You know, struggling to put food on the table.

He's down to his last tower.

The trouble is now that all of these things,

pretty much every day, he does something that 10 years ago you'd go, well, that's the end of him then.

Yes.

But now it doesn't matter.

He could sell his daughter to Putin for a dollar and people go, yeah, sort of thing he does.

He could just have

sex with a badger on live during one of his rallies in Wisconsin.

And most you know, you'd go, is that what he's done now?

I mean, people used to bemoan the hypocrisy of politicians who would pretend to be good people while secretly being bad people.

And

Trump's big selling point is his his authenticity and I I for one long for the days of hypocrisy once more

bring back hypocrisy

which is aspirational you know

I've been following the the betting odds for the American presidential election and this story made absolutely f ⁇ all difference because as you say it's hard to imagine anyone changing their mind on Donald Trump now.

No, exactly.

I trusted him before when he was putting babies in cages, but not.

I mean, to change your mind on Trump now would be like being Roald Amundsen getting 200 yards from the South Pole before turning back and saying,

weather today looks a bit off, lads, as a cannon.

What are we doing?

It's freezing.

Yeah, I know.

And then, well, that two, three weeks ago, because you think I was slightly concerned that, you know, like an actor when they've just gone too mad halfway through a play and they're you think you've left yourself nowhere to go how was he gonna leave any space for a crescendo with the still five weeks but he's managing it because then a couple of weeks ago he's done

see that one where he said we've got people uh

that have spotted that Joe Biden is a dangerous man.

He got on a plane with people wearing black.

The plane was full of people wearing black.

That thing?

Shapes.

The plane in Melbourne?

Well, he wouldn't say he was asking.

That's a very funny joke if you know Melbourne.

Oh, sorry.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Alice, what?

Oh,

is it a fashion thing?

Is it a thing?

I don't get it.

Is it?

Yes, yes.

Very trendy people in Melbourne.

Oh, right.

I'm not like one of your sisters.

You're making jokes about.

Alice, you made a joke about what trendy people wear to me and Mark.

I mean, what?

In the other side of the world.

You made a joke about what trendy people wear in my road, I wouldn't get it.

But people in black, and I did he, that's just so mad.

There's a plane full of people.

As he watched men in black and got it confused, and now he'll say, Joe Biden's a dangerous man.

He'll watch Godzilla.

He treads on buildings.

I know people, fantastic people.

He demolished Tokyo.

He just sat on all the buildings.

And people will go, oh dear.

I mean, there are possible ways of explaining why this

supposed

borderline billionaire has paid absolutely no tax other than the fact that he is a truly abominable human being who hates all humanity.

I mean, it's possible that he found a legal loophole whereby he can be taxed on his spiritual wealth rather than his financial wealth, in which case $750 a year is overpaid significantly.

There's also the issue of

what he's claimed as deductible expenses including aircraft and $70,000 for a hairstyling for his TV show.

Now look I've done a little bit of tele, very little bit of telly, so I'm not going to judge him.

Obviously the reason John got the HBO job instead of me was because he was happy to go with $500 an episode on the hairstyling budget and I wouldn't go under $1,000.

So look, I'm not going to judge Trump for that.

But this is issue 4,167 of the Bugle.

And by coincidence, that is also the number, as the old joke goes, of the total employees of the Trump organisation it takes to change a light bulb.

One to change the light bulb and 4,166 to be listed as light bulb changing consultants at $1,400 per bulb change as a tax dodge.

The New York Times said that it had published these details.

And I quote, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment allows the press to publish newsworthy information that was legally obtained by reporters, even when those in power fight to keep it hidden.

So that's the First Amendment.

Trump, clearly not a massive fan of the First Amendment, and

he plays a lot of golf, clearly firmly of the belief that the Mulligans rule applies to amendments as it does apply to golf.

That if you don't like the first one that comes out, you just move straight on to the second one and forget all about the first.

And he loves that Second Amendment.

Also in golf, you mark your own card.

It relies very much on trust.

So you mark your own card, and it's you know, so that's the way the tax system works, perhaps.

He has borrowed it from golf.

You just mark your own card.

I earned nothing.

All right.

Everyone, yeah, everyone in golf has to mark their own card because no one else can bring themselves to watch anyone else playing golf.

It's such a fucking boring sport.

Oh.

The

first.

Was that just like a pity for golfers?

I like golf.

I run past a golf course occasionally, and it's the only time in my life that I'm ever tempted to catcall just these old men hitting their golf balls around, and I just want to be like, Yeah,

hit it, put it in the hole, old man.

I just think if a wife is encouraging her husband to play more golf, it's because she wants him to be as far away from her as possible.

Yeah, that's probably true.

Well, in Tiger Woods' case, it was probably fair.

The first presidential debate happens tomorrow, as we record.

And well, it could be quite exciting, really.

Trump has recently smashed through the 20,000 lies in office mark, according to the Washington Post's lie totaliser.

He's gone through 20, he's broken the record set by William Henry Harrison, who rattled out 19,004 lies in his 31-day presidency in 1841.

Although 19,000 of them were him insisting that he felt absolutely fine and wasn't about to die.

Three of him were saying I can juggle terrapins with my eyes shut and the last one was him claiming still to be alive.

Other news now and

Alice, this is very exciting news for you as someone who's always desperately wanting to go to the moon.

But NASA has announced plans to have a woman on the moon by the year 2024.

I mean personally I'm a bit as a man I'm a bit appalled by this because they're nowhere left that men can call their own anymore.

Safe sanctuaries for guys to just hang out the moon was basically the last male preserve.

I'm settled a sea of tranquility having a nice afternoon.

Now I've got her giving it all rest.

You know, just a place where men can be men, because women are allowed to have women-only clothes shops hospital wards swimming pools thrones seating areas in places of religious worship and men not even allowed a single moon

all they get is male only governments and sitting rooms and

green rooms and but also let's not forget men invent men invented the moon alice as you can tell because it is basically no use it's massively impractical and looks like a ball

they're planning yeah they are planning on sending a woman to the moon, which I think is a nice move for gender equality and a terrible move for the equality of allocated resources to the problems of our own planet.

I mean, what does it matter if there are hundreds of thousands of illiterate women living in poverty and dying by turns of preventable diseases and preventable husbands, if they can but turn their faces to the moon and think, well, some rich American woman had her period on that.

I'm not denigrating the idea that representation in elite fields is an important and aspirational goal.

I just think that people in general are less inspirable than they were in the 60s, and we're in an age now where people will hate shit just because the people they don't like like it.

And who wants to see the toxic pop culture discourse on the Ghostbuster reboot in space?

Well, I think it's marvellous.

I met a couple of astronauts.

They're really pleasant, calm people.

And then I thought, well, they'd probably,

they would be, wouldn't they?

Because you don't want an astronaut to go, oh, I've got a f ⁇ ing dog.

I don't get the jitters.

That'd be no good, would it?

Oh, geez.

Oh!

Oh, I get a poo, I'm

shaped like nothing on earth.

I've got anxiety, I've got panic attacks.

At the slightest, that'd be no good, would it?

Will you re-enter in the atmosphere?

That's

sounds terrifying.

It's swept.

And as it comes back into the atmosphere, it swings from side to side and it sounds like there's all explosions going around.

And there's...

It sounds terrifying.

And it's,

what was her name?

Helen Sharman.

Is that her name?

Oh, it's terrible, yes, woman astronaut, delightful.

Yeah, first British

female astronaut, yeah.

And she just exuded sort of calm.

She could go to the moon, she'd be brilliant up there.

She'd do it.

Let's give it a go.

They play cricket, let's give them a go.

If some of them play five sets of tennis, let's send them up there.

Can't be harder than that.

I'm just jealous.

I'm just jealous because I'm not an astronaut, really.

Would you fancy it?

Being an astronaut?

Yeah, going to the moon.

Yeah, I like a walk.

I like walking.

Well, it's always very important to get back to the moon, just to check that the 24 people who went there before were not mistaken in their collective summary at the end of the Apollo missions, which was there's fall here, there's been a very disappointing lack of aliens, the food is shit, the golf course is in terrible, terrible condition.

David Attenborough news now and Alice some exciting news about David Attenborough for those who don't know him

well basically the UK's official national granddad

and he's joined Instagrandpa

basically enabling him to be a granddaddy presence in people's lives through the the medium of whatever Instagram does

best known of course David Attenborough for his career making zebra snuff movies and hardcore insect porn including some of the really kinky SM spider stuff.

Why has he joined Instagram now, Alice?

Well, he's put out a few videos now.

I mean, he has broken Jennifer, sorry, David Andrew has broken Jennifer Anniston's Instagram record for the fastest time to reach one million followers,

which is being reported as news.

But like...

Yes, obviously, he's clearly a much better and more interesting person to follow on Instagram.

But he's come out and he said he wants to share information on this new medium.

He's come out and told some dirty stories with Michael Palin.

And he's doing some great stuff on Instagram so far, which mainly involves him being David Attenborough and people thinking, well, if David Attenborough is still alive, it can't all be wrong.

Yeah, well, I mean, the government should be throwing all the money they've got at making sure David Attenborough never dies.

And I think

he has a sacred duty not to pop his clog.

Because I looked at some of his, mostly the first few posts were him just pouting upwards at a camera held above his head, flatteringly lit, but

no doubt he'll move on to more interesting stuff.

Oh, with a mirror.

One of those ones.

I just can't wait for him to start posting thirst traps.

A what?

No, you've lost a second there.

Sexy selfie.

I beg your pardon.

A thirst trap, gentlemen, is a sort of a slightly coy but overtly sexy selfie, which is posted in order to induce thirst aka arousal in your viewership.

Oh right.

Oh god yeah.

No, I did all that and gave it up a couple of years ago.

I've moved on to TikTok.

No, you haven't.

TikTok is an app that just reminds you of the inevitability of death.

That brings the end of this week's Bugle.

Alice, any shows to plug, other than, of course, the wonderful last post, the Bugle's sister show from Another Dimension?

Yes, I'm doing a show at the Opera House soon.

I'd also like to plug looking at cows.

Right, they just

look at you, and you look at them, and you look at them, and you go, Well, there shouldn't be any hard-hooved ruminants on Australian soil.

We don't have any native animals that have hard-hooves, and you're breaking up the delicate topsoil and disrupting the ecosystem.

And then the cow looks back at you and goes, Well, you're a fking settler here yourself.

And

a beautiful moment of being in touch with nature, you know.

That's good.

Oh, bless them, yeah.

Uh, Mark, when's your in-town series next on radio?

Well, who knows?

I've got the one in Stratford that the geese interrupted, and we were we could record one in Brighton, and now it doesn't look like we're gonna be able to record the other ones.

So, but there is a series that I can plug that will be um broadcast in 2076,

and uh, uh, you know, so I really, really hope hope that people listen to that.

Between now and then, I'll probably be driving Amazon vans.

Good.

Well, on that happy note,

all there's left for me to say is to remind you, buglers, to take advantage of the new range of Bugle merch, which as I speak, Chris is modelling

very, very sexily for us.

Very sexily, it's your face, Andy.

Well,

it's very hard to wear a badge with my face on without exuding a raw, almost animal eroticism.

So, the new Bugle merch, t-shirts, caps, socks, badges, stickers, the Christmas jumper is available for pre-order.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the merch button there.

You can also join our voluntary subscription scheme to help the bugle keep going and independent.

Until next week, buglers, goodbye.

Hi, Buglers.

It's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.