4161 - Corruption, Covid and Cricket

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4161 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world.

It is Monday the 3rd of August.

We're recording on a Monday.

Who knew Mondays even existed?

I mean, it's like we're doing last week's news like tonight.

I'm Andy Zaltzman and I'm in London, the city very badly named if you want to avoid where you live fitting nicely into two-word policies involving the word lockdown.

I'm recording live, as always, now in the shed in a little inter-cricket gap in my reality avoiding schedule.

And joining me from the west coast of the USA, it's the soon-to-be father who will very imminently have a whole new person to explain this f ⁇ ing planet to.

Good luck with that.

To Hari Kondo Bolu.

I chose the best time to have a kid.

There is no better time than now during a pandemic.

But it's quite possible that neither you or the child will be allowed out for 25 years.

At the age of 25, the child would say, What did it used to be like?

Was it true about the trees, Daddy?

They were made of wood.

what does a cloud look like daddy

well also joining us from a smaller distance as you've already heard uh a smaller distance depending on which way you go of course it's uh it's mark steele hello hello mark hello

um how's uh how's your lockdown been well i hate it

And the worst thing is these people go, oh, it's marvellous.

I've had such an absolutely wonderful time.

I was

all morning in a pottery class on TikTok, and then I was learning flamenco on WhatsApp.

And then I had a 17-course meal with my friends from Guatemala on FaceTime, and it was just glorious and wonderful.

And I just then we made up, we recreated every series of Doctor Who using hand sanitizer as a TARDIS, and it was just wonderful.

Like,

off, it's just, I get through it, but it's shit, isn't it?

You're not meant to be locked in.

True, true.

I mean,

I'm not,

you can't argue with that.

You can't argue with that.

You know, don't enjoy it.

Well, I've enjoyed it, but it's like, oh,

there's a new virus, means everybody gets set fire to it.

Oh, I'm just embracing it.

Flames up my ass.

I never knew that I could enjoy them so much.

It's just wonderful.

Wonderful.

All my limbs are charred.

Just wonderful.

Just get on with it.

Just

put up with it, but don't enjoy it.

Bloody hermit.

You could have stayed in before if you'd wanted.

It's not a good thing you have to, is it?

A rare voice of sanity in this confusion.

As always, yeah, so Hori, it's under a month till

your personal D-date.

Oh, that's cute.

Yeah, yeah,

we're talking about less than three weeks until I will officially be done with comedy and most other aspects of my life.

Don't worry, it'll come back in 20 years, like everything else.

That's great.

You know, because

stand-up careers tend to work that way.

Like, it's best if you stay out of the spotlight for a couple of decades.

Yeah.

And

I did not get where I am today by looking for the spotlight.

Oh, no, hang on.

No, wait a sec.

So, no, no, things are great, though.

I'm very happy.

Good.

Well,

good luck.

Enjoy it's the wrong word for

well anyway

We are recording on the 3rd of August on this day in the year 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain on his first trip to the Americas.

What the fuck were you thinking?

And where were the compulsory staycations when this planet really needed them?

On this day in 1527 the first known letter was sent from the Americas to Britain by John Rutt who had landed in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

The letter included the line, man, did they get cranky when I asked if they were American, as well as some confusion about the rules of ice hockey.

And on this day in 1946 the world's first themed amusement park opened.

Santa Claus Land in the town of Santa Claus, Indiana, was opened in a fit of post-war Christmassiness.

It's now known as Holiday World and Splash in Safari.

The PC Brigade stealing Christmas again and making a splash around in lion-infested swimming pools just in case anyone whose auntie was eaten by a shark in a lion outfit one Christmas gets offended by people swimming without being attacked by a big cat.

Typical.

The theme park has broadened its themage from its original Santa Claus Land

incarnation after a new ride in the 1980s.

Manger Mayhem prompted multiple complaints due to its, quotes, graphically realistic depiction of childbirth and obviously fake and occasionally foul-mouthed archangels.

The village of Santa Claus, Indiana.

Have you ever been there, Harry, in your travels around America?

Santa Claus, Indiana?

Yeah.

No, I have a feeling if I went to something that deep in Indiana, you wouldn't be speaking to me right now.

It was named after

Santa Claus, the proto-hipster, consumer communist, and workplace health and safety skeptic.

It's the only municipality in the world where it is legal to break into people's houses, provided that you do so via the chimney.

And also, also, interestingly enough, it's where the Christmas cracker was invented in 1875 during a pistol shootout in a saloon bar between two elf impersonators squabbling over a toilet roll.

As always.

Wait, wait, so a Christmas cracker is another nickname for Santa Claus?

I mean, do you have, I don't know, because obviously we have very different Christmas traditions

on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

And in my family, obviously, we just sit around saying it's all a fraud.

And

he stole our market share.

But

is the cracker,

is that a part of American Christmas tradition?

I should tell you, Andy, I might not be the right one to ask as a Hindu.

Right.

I mean, you've lived in America for a while.

I had never heard of the Christmas cracker until I came to the UK.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I had never heard.

No Christmas crackers.

Unless it's just not a thing I've been exposed to.

Again, my Christmas was made up of a plastic Christmas tree,

a few presents, and no knowledge of the Bible whatsoever.

Why not?

Yeah, I guess you've got enough things going bang in America without...

Well, I guess that's what happens with different gun laws, you end up with or without Christmas crackers.

Yeah.

Yeah, Christmas crackers is what we call gun violence

around the Lord's birthday.

Potato, potato.

As always, the section of the bugler is going straight in the bin.

And this week, with rumours that the government in Britain is going to lock down people over 50,

sorry, Mark, but it turns out you are entirely obsolete as a human being.

We have a special tool for our elder buglers, to those over the age of 50 to make you sound like you're younger than you are.

Special section here with tips for how to sound like you are like 10 or like even like 20 years like not as like old as you like like would like like like to like to like be also a voice degraveler which can make me sound like this.

Having a few teething troubles with that.

And also to help you sound younger and optimismificator to help turn phrases such as these things never turn out well into the kind of phrase a younger person might still use hope translated into I'm sure everything will be fine or the phrase we need to learn the lessons of history and the lessons of history tell us that we'll definitely f it up into the younger this time this time

or the phrase everything we know and love is disintegrating before our very eyes into the hopeful youthful phrase there will definitely be a vaccine soon that section in the bin Oh, I quite like it.

Would they come round?

Does someone from the council come round and nail you in?

And then you can go like, like a month only like 23 and shit, innit?

Like, you're months here, gonna stay in the crib on that.

Like, they're unfair, you get me, fun.

I think you'll be gonna leave this chap in.

My son hates it when I do that.

We don't sound nothing like that, innit?

He doesn't do it so much now.

When he was about 16, he did.

Yeah, like a cup from Croydon and shit, innit?

You live about 50 yards from South Norwood boating lakes.

It's like, when there's no wind and shit, you're getting me fum like.

They're calm, and it means like you can't go out and tap nothing across the lake and shit.

Top story this week, the American election is off,

potentially in the minds of

President Donald Trump, Egocrat of the Year.

Once again, in Megalomania Monthly magazine, the New York Times has ran with a headline this week.

Donald Trump does not like what he sees in his crystal ball.

That's possibly because what he sees in his crystal ball is history slapping him in the face with a froden turd of despair.

Hari, as our correspondent for the slow disintegration of America as a credible nation,

how do you respond to the

Trump's latest suggestions that the election could be delayed and that postal voting threatens the very core of your nation.

Well, let me first respond to the phrase frozen turd of despair.

Because that implies there are happy turds, turds that are filled with joy.

I mean, most are unfrozen, but I'm going to question that particular phrase.

We'll get the lawyers involved.

But yeah, I think

I'm in the rare opinion that pushing the election would be a good thing.

Most people in his party disagree.

Democrats obviously disagree.

But let me bring up two major points.

If you push the election later, it means there'll be more public Trump rallies during COVID, which would kill off some of his voting block.

Right?

That's useful.

Secondly, and this I think to me is the more important point.

The longer Trump is in office,

which implies that COVID will continue to be bad, it's more likely that rent in New York City will keep going down since fewer people will move there, allowing a young father to

be able to perhaps afford a second bedroom, perhaps even a third bedroom, at prices not seen in New York since the late 70s.

1870s or 1970s?

Oh, 1870s.

I mean, look,

clearly,

I think he's trying to push the election, which he can't even do, by the way.

That's not even...

He actually has no constitutional power to do that.

You needed an amendment to be able to change an approval of two houses of Congress.

So apparently, this might be surprising, but he just made it up.

Apparently, that's not a thing.

It's almost as if he's a giant liar who knows nothing about American democracy and won the 2016 election as a result of racism, sexism, and uneducated American populace and potentially tampering from Russia.

It's almost just like that.

It just makes me worry, I think,

because it seems, I mean, first of all, let me just say that he's trying to avoid jail.

The longer he can keep himself in office, the longer all these cases that are open will like not get resolved and he can stay out of jail.

So I think that's kind of...

of oh is that a real possibility i think so wouldn't it be brilliant if he actually manages to do one of his carry out one of his promises and put hillary clinton in jail and then he gets put in the same cell

that is a sitcom waiting to happen

i mean i feel like

i mean the press is wondering whether it's going to be a peaceful transition and now they're worried that if if trump is trying to push the election even if that's no possibility it's kind of a hint that there there won't be a peaceful handing over of powers.

And no, it won't be peaceful.

What gives you any indication that he will handle losing well?

He doesn't handle winning well.

He's been asking to lock up Hillary Clinton for four years.

She lost the election.

This is going to be a shit show.

Jimmy Carter is going to have to monitor elections in America.

And he's expressed great concern about the potential for postal vote frauds,

which I guess is understandable from his point of view, when you've got a pandemic ravaging your country, largely due to your own flamboyantly incompetent leadership, when your national economy is crumbling like a depressed cliff on a particularly rough ocean coastline, when you're sending in troops against your own people, when you're busy saying, I wish her well, about a rich white woman charged with horrific sex trafficking offences who's evaded justice for over a year in somewhat stark contrast with what you've said about for example less rich less white people proved innocent of crimes they had not committed I guess when you're doing all those things you probably think well we can't have a few hundred dodgy ballots spoiling the unsulliable purity of our democratic process

you've got to start with the things that you can you can at least control well though the thing is where does it oh sorry no but they will the the the amount of well hurry you'll bet there's far better than me but just the things that that I've seen that have happened even in the elections over the last couple of years, the suppression of voters, is extraordinary.

That one, you know, but Georgia,

8% of the polling stations were just closed.

Were all in the poorer areas.

With, with, again, there was one good thing about this, was, of course, it encouraged the poor to get out more in ways that haven't been happened.

And it might be a good thing to

have those polling stations relocated to places like the top of the taj mahal and the hanzon collider so that the poor get out rather than being stuck in their own shitty little neighborhoods we're helping them

just the amount of things and there was a hundreds of thousands of people are taken off the registers aren't they because their name doesn't fit exactly what's on the card and the card that the bureaucracy have will be wrong or there's a hyphen there was loads because there was a hyphen that was missing or something like that sorry sir you can't vote there's a hyphen in there, and then they're just sent home to hundreds of thousands of people.

So, if he still loses after he's fiddled that, I mean, Saddam didn't bloody fiddle elections and then still manage to lose, did he?

At least he wasn't that incompetent.

Bless him.

Well, I mean,

there are, there are, I mean, there's billions of people not allowed to vote in the American election who should be allowed to, and that is the entire population of the rest of the world who really must be allowed a say.

Yes,

it affects us deeply.

And you, Americans, you're too close to it.

Wouldn't that be brilliant in 68 if everyone in Vietnam had a vote and stuff like that?

I mean, I feel that,

you know, Obama talked about the end of voter suppression

and he called for a few steps to kind of improve it.

Because even if you take out the like making it impossible to vote or like making the hours in poorer neighborhoods like end earlier or a whole number of other things as ID laws, even like the basics of voting in this country are meant to suppress, right?

Like, we don't have automatic voter registration, right?

That's something that he calls for.

That would make things significantly easier, as opposed to filling out paperwork to get a card to fill out more paperwork.

You just, you know, do it.

Because it's not like you have to fill out a registration to speak and practice your religion or anything else.

Or buy a gun?

Do you need, I mean,

it's easier to buy a gun than vote.

It's so much easier to buy a gun than vote.

Brilliant.

Obama thinks ex-convicts should get their vote back because they serve their time.

So why are they being suppressed?

There should be new polling stations and early voting because apparently voting only over the course of one Tuesday every four years might not be the best way to

preserve.

this democracy.

And also, he suggested a national holiday and election day, making it easier to vote.

Because apparently, if you do have a job and you only have a few hours early in the day or the end of the day, you might not bother with voting.

And that sets up my point, which is it's almost like these things were put in place to make it harder to vote in general and giving people with schedules that allow for such inconvenience the best opportunity to vote.

Thus, elderly people are essentially taking us with them.

That is what is happening.

People who have no idea what is happening today or what the current issues of the moment are are voting on the future

because they have empowered.

So that's what's happened here.

Don't you think it's time that you've voted according, your vote was weighted according to the amount of time that you've got left to live?

Surely.

Oh, God, yes.

Surely.

So if you're, given that if you're 93, why has my mum, who's 95, got a vote that is going to affect things that...

That's just mad, isn't it?

I mean, why did she ever have a vote?

My mum, that was odd.

Oh, dear.

Is it voting day, dear?

She was like that 34.

God, you can't let this.

What's the chances my mum hearing this?

Not good.

Oh,

Edna from over the road said she heard you talking about me on the bugle on the podcast, dear.

That was a nice thing to say while I was

queuing up to book petrol immobility scooter

well Edna is one of uh one of our contributors to our voluntary subscription scheme actually so and if uh if the rest of you want to join her go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button shouldn't biden just go away shouldn't he if he wants to win yes shouldn't he should just go away to somewhere like a really remote part of Iceland Yes, and then come back the day after the election.

Oh, this is a complete rope-a-dope situation.

It's best for him not to do anything, let Trump punch himself out, and right at the very end, make a few comments, remind people to vote, and just take it home.

I think it's pretty straightforward.

I'm not sure about Iceland, though, Mark, because I'm basically what you're saying: he should hide inside a volcano before taking over the world.

I think

the optics of that and the traditional are a little bit dodgy.

All right, well, somewhere.

COVID news now and well it's turns out still still going strong.

I'd slightly forgotten about that while spending three weeks face down in the gloriously soothing balm of cricket.

Hari, how's uh how's COVID going in America?

Well, it's going bad because there's still an issue with people believing that masks work.

I you know, luckily I think people are starting to believe that hand washing is effective.

Maybe perhaps studying what happened with the black plague so many years ago.

But yeah, it doesn't help that a video was released this week with a bunch of doctors in front of the Supreme Court claiming that you don't need masks and that hydrochloroquine works.

And it spread like wildfire on the internet, millions of views.

And

it was fraudulent.

Now, I realize it was tricky, right?

Because these doctors, these so-called doctors, were wearing lab coats, right?

I don't know anything in a lab coat.

Lab coats are extremely hard to find, you know, unless you were a doctor or a scientist or an owner of a medical supply shop or a costume shop or a thrift store or had access to any of these stores or knew anybody who worked at a hospital or lab or any of these aforementioned shops and so forth.

Well, you're a cricket umpire.

They wear them as well, essentially.

Yes, yes, but yes, I doubt if they had them out there, but that's what when it comes here, it'll be that

cricket umpires.

Oh,

it's mad of all the things.

Wearing a mask is communism, all that.

Oh, no.

Karl Marx

said it is imperative that the proletariat rise up and take the means of production from

the bourgeoisie that

doth oppress us in order that they can wear masks.

And

unbelievable.

I think Britain and America is sort of competing neck and neck to be the most stupid country ever at the moment.

Just, and then, oh God, I mean, but

I've been telling this, Harry, I get the impression Trump isn't really listened to now.

Every day he gets up at that thing and said, I found a cure, it's a pineapple up the ass, it's a fantastic cure, or whatever it is.

And sort of

people people don't really take any notice anymore or do they

no there there would be people who would sit on a pineapple

there would definitely be videos right now being passed around with people sitting on pineapples claiming the cure that would by no means be the most mental one he's come up with would it

it's so hard to get past bleach in the lungs that's so hard

right like

it's a strange way to ingest pineapple but

we won't kill you immediately.

In fact, you might even like it.

It could probably distract you from feeling ill.

I mean, at the very least.

This video follows another video called Plandemic,

which claimed that underground elites were using the pandemic to make profit

and to

gain increasing power.

And the video was created by Andy Zaltzman so he could call the video plandemic

well you know you got to do what you got to do to get a pub

they're even but here it's just incompetence I think is sort of rivals the the madness and nobody knows the rules now absolutely no one there's a rule now that you can't visit relatives in your house unless what you can do is turn your house into a pub and

charge everyone who comes around £9 for a bowl of chili.

And then they are allowed round because it's safer to do that in front of a load of random strangers who are coughing and spitting than it is to go and visit your uncle.

And they're just, no one has a clue.

Do you know what I was thinking?

The rules now, they're like a 1970s game show from Britain.

And they should have a boat with a green spangly jacket game.

So here are the rules.

They're all quite simple.

There are six people allowed in your bubble at all times.

You must stay together unless there are five people in an alternative bubble it

at no time is anybody allowed inside the kitchen unless they're outside of the kitchen you're not permitted to travel unless you're going to work or you're outside in which case you must stay inside at all times wearing a mask while you're drinking as long as you pour the beer over your lap and if you hear this noise wah wah wah you can shout i'm having my eyes tested in which case you can break all the rules for the next 30 seconds and the first person to climb up a ladder into the self-isolation unit and shout coronavirus with this marvellous set of carving knives.

Are you ready to play?

No one has a f ⁇ ing clue.

And then they announce that, and all these rules, right?

All these rules that were introduced when Manchester was put in a new lockdown, the health secretary announced them at nine o'clock at night on Twitter.

Because if you want to get across a major new policy in order to prevent everyone from dying, do it.

Who doesn't follow Twitter at nine o'clock at night and pay particular regard to the fing health secretary and the dictators of the great adventure then next time we are going to announce a policy at 5 30 in the morning during farming today

in a language invented by a person in a secure institution it's just

incompetent and you sort of get people going oh of course you know what they're doing what they secretly want to do is herd immunity they're not no they're just useless i mean a boris johnson at

a month ago, masks are

without useless.

They are not to, you can wear them if you must, but don't put them in your ear or whatever.

And now they're saying, now you must.

And no, but it's no wonder nobody wears.

I'd go in the shop and wear one.

I'm the only fing bastard wearing one.

So then I think, well, what's the point?

You know, I might as well just

gob over everybody like everybody else.

What?

We deserve to die, don't we?

That's what I'm saying.

I've been saying this finally.

Somebody who's on this, yes.

We deserve the poor dinosaurs, they just

bad luck.

We fing deserve this.

Poor dinosaurs.

If they were watching the stegosaurus, you'd be going, if we get this much warning, we'd have fing hidden from the asteroid.

And there'll probably be some American

American Stegosaurus.

Hiding from the asteroid is communism.

I'm calling it.

You're going to let the asteroid win.

I like you, Mark.

Speaking my language, I do.

Yeah.

Well, scientists in Britain have criticised the British government's quotes shroud of secrecy.

Well, what kind of shroud did you want them to use?

I mean, generally, shrouds are pretty secretive.

Also, we need to stop them.

The thing is, you guys are very cynical about this, but we need to stop the virus knowing what we're planning.

So, we have to kind of confuse the discourse.

We didn't airdrop leaflets over Germany in 1944 saying, Have you thought of a beach holiday in Normandy this July, did we?

You know, William the Conqueror did not have a Bayer tapestry embroidered as a potentially leakable tactics board before the Battle of Hastings, did you?

So, you've always got to do what your opponent would least want you to do, and viruses hate uncertainty.

Uh, exhibit A, Werner Heisenberg, the physics celebrity and quantum mechanic, inventor of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, did not die of a virus.

So you can read into that what you will.

Another thing from the scientific world, Professor Graham Medley, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, the SAGE Committee, who have been advising the government through this crisis, has suggested that if schools are going to reopen in September, we may have to close pubs.

So, I mean, which is more important to a functioning society, pubs or schools?

I mean, it very much depends who you ask, where you ask them, whether their children are listening whilst they answer, how much they've had to drink before you ask them, and whether they are an elected politician keenly aware that school kids cannot vote, but wasted booze hounds who've just chucked another 10 quid in a quiz machine after failing to correctly guess the capital of Portugal again definitely can vote.

There's a couple of other important questions to ask with this.

A, what the f ⁇ does a scientist know about pubs?

That square has been snouted down in the laboratory for the last 30 years while the rest of us have been out in the real world living a bit of actual life inside a pub with people basically exactly like us.

And B, why would a scientist want the schools back open anyway?

The more kids get educated, the more competition there is in the science circuit, the more threat to Professor Sneezy's cushy little number telling us we're all gonna die.

No wonder he's floating the ideas that pubs might have to close, knowing full well that Britain will be literally up in arms about the pubs that we fought two world wars for being closed to appease the PC Brigade who want children to grow up with hope, knowledge and expectation, even though history shows that that all three of those things will be crushed out of them by the unstoppable steamroller of inevitability.

Why don't you just do schooling in the pubs?

I mean,

it feels like, I mean, from what I hear, like you all start drinking at what, seven or eight anyway, right?

Yeah, well,

this is true, right?

So when my son was 11,

there was a pub, there was a lovely old pub in Crystal Palace.

It's sadly been done up and all the rubbish has been cleared out of the corner and stuff now

with its charm.

But it was a dodgy pub and I went in there with a mate and my son was 11 and he sort of sat in the corner and as a joke after we'd had a drink each and it was time to get another one my friend said go on Elliot Elliot's my son go on Elliot you get around him ha ha we had a little joke and Elliot got up and I thought he was going to the toilet and when he came back he had two pints of Guinness

and he said well you told us to get around him and they'd served him.

He was 11.

Well, that's good practical education, isn't it?

It gives him the life skills of being a British citizen, which shows that, you know, for the right price, you can get anything.

On which subject?

A new round of peerages has been announced, people to sit in the House of Lords, Britain's second chamber.

Now it's evolved the House of Lords.

Britain, thankfully, grew up as a democratic entity around the end of the 20th century and largely abolished

staffing the second chamber through hereditary peerages, giving people power based on who their father was.

Instead, we made a quantum leap forward to a system where the government can stuff the second chamber full of cronies and make people call them a silly little title, like the feudal relic, lickspittle, grovelers we've always dreamed of being.

So, in the latest round of democracy befailing peerages, the Prime Minister has appointed to the House of Lords A, his own brother, B, a Russian media tycoon, Evgeny Lebedev.

Now, that is one mogul who will not prove to be a bumpy obstacle.

There's a little quip for any freestyle skiing fans out there.

Assorted political lackeys, and, and this is the exciting bit, Mark, cricket legend Ian Botham.

Now,

for our non-crickety listeners, and I'm in a Hari, I'm including you.

I don't know if you, Hari, are aware of Ian Botham.

No, I am not.

No.

I mean, this is a tragedy that you Americans have to bear.

I mean, he was, I mean, he was one of the defining figures of my childhood, one of the greatest cricketers, England.

How would you sum up Ian Botham for our American listeners, Mark?

Well, as a player,

he was iconic as a player, but he was just by sheer personality so extraordinary that he was someone that you get in sport who manages to transcend sport and becomes a figure just so full of life and optimism that everybody finds him just magnetic and is

the and he won almost entire series not quite on his own but oh it was it was just an amazing player and it must be very very difficult to find anyone else who has been so brilliant in the first half of their life and then so shit in the second half of their life.

I just

almost as if like Isaac Newton, after he discovered gravity, then got a job shoving fireworks up a dolphin's ass.

Just

what's happened to him?

And he was quite a rebel in his own sort of way.

He was

during the time when he was this iconic, talismanic, great English sporting figure.

All sport, not just cricket.

I mean, people,

he was just so, so extraordinary.

And

he was

suspended at one point for

supposedly smoking dope.

And he is one of the few cricketers who didn't go and play in apartheid South Africa because two of his closest friends were West Indian cricketers and he said they wouldn't be able to look him in the eye.

So he was such a

brilliant figure in so many ways.

And now he's become this, well, exactly, what was it you just said?

Lick Spittle feudal relic, whatever it was.

He's all of those things.

And now, because he was a big Brexit supporter, that's his reason for being unless boris johnson is belatedly awarding him a peerage on account of the fact he got 149 not out in a match winning innings in 1981

well it but it is possible i mean you think you know he was a truly phenomenal cricketer and if he if he does prove to be as good at legislation as

you know in the early years of his legislative career as he was good at fast medium swing bowling devastating middle-order counter-attacking batsmanship and supernaturally reflex slip catching in the early years of his cricket career well then all of of Britain's political problems will be solved within about a fortnight.

However,

if he proves to be the parliamentary equivalent of late period Botham the cricketer selected purely on his name without any justification, oh hang on, no, that is exactly what the House of Lords is all about, then anyway.

I mean, yeah, he's raised a phenomenal amount of money

for charity through millions and millions of pounds.

And also he took 13 wickets in the Mumbai Jubilee Test of 1980, in the course of which he also scored a century in a match in which no other batsman reached 50.

But does that qualify him to scrutinise legislation?

Other sports news now and sport has yet again been rocked by a scandal.

The Barcelona 2020 race, apparently the self-styled Tour de France of international pigeon racing, has been, well, I mean, it's been rocked, Hari.

11 birds have been found dead after a suspected poisoning.

The race, which is a thrilling race between 15,000 pigeons over a thousand kilometers across the Pyrenees with a

huge kind of prize fund, and the celebrity winners often go to pigeon stud for a cost of 200,000 euros to hump as many other pigeons as they can possibly manage.

I mean,

this is probably the biggest scandal in the history of all bird-related sport.

Absolutely.

Most people

did not know that pigeon racing existed until this article came out.

So it is certainly the biggest news.

Right.

I mean,

and what you are our pigeon racing correspondent, and you've obviously been a devotee of the sport

since childhood.

Can you explain some of the tactics involved in getting a pigeon to race 1,062 kilometers across a European mountain range?

You let them go, and they don't really know what's happening, and they just keep going, and

the people below are like, oh, they just hit the first mark.

But the pigeons don't know what's happening

at their marks.

They just think they're flying to freedom, but in fact, they're in a race and they had no clue.

So they're going the right direction, though, don't they?

If it was with wasps, it would be very hard to keep them going in the same

right direction, I guess.

I don't know, maybe there is wasp racing.

I bet there is.

I bet somewhere in the world there is wasp, and I bet it's on Skysports 9.

Somewhere in the world.

Hey, this is Big Freddy coming up now for his third race.

Let's have a look at the stats on Big Fred.

Suddenly

with a 3 to 1 buzz ratio and a 4 to 9 on the sting.

I mean, 11, like the French pigeon racing.

Society, I guess they're called the French Pigeons Fanciers Club,

which, by the way, is like the NASCAR of pigeons, or depending on who you are, the Nambla of Pigeons.

Basically,

are pulling out all their birds because 11 died.

11.

Just 11.

Which some would call an overreaction.

Others would call it a major overreaction.

And others would say, who gives a shit about pigeon racing?

The head of.

Pigeons care.

pigeons love it i still think the pigeons have no idea what's going on

i mean the president of the french uh pigeons fanciers club uh philippe odent which already shocking that he was willing to give his name for the article um

he uh he said that the people who killed these pigeons uh were were vultures uh not seeing the humor in naming another type of bird or the real possibility that it could have been vultures.

All right, I'll just wrap it up.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

Mark, thanks so much for joining us.

Have you got any online shows or anything to alert our listeners to?

Nothing to buy until the year 2051, my own funeral,

which we will be covering live on the bugle.

And Hari, well,

next time we speak,

you will be a parent.

Yes, we will definitely be speaking again.

Yes.

We'll see, Andy.

I really don't know what's going to happen.

At this point, the idea of podcasting while holding a child seems highly unlikely.

But

I could give it a go if you want.

Yeah.

Yeah,

why not?

I mean, that actually sounds like a good title for a podcast, Podcasting Whilst Whilst Holding a Child.

Right.

Albeit that, in fact, almost every sentence that anyone utters these days is probably already or soon to be the title of a podcast.

Thanks.

So do you have any

things you'd like to tell our listeners about?

Sure.

My Netflix special, Warren Your Relatives, is still available, obviously.

Also, I'm in the Netflix documentary, Spelling the Dream.

And

my documentary, The Problem with Apu, is available on HBO Max.

I have no idea if you can find that in the UK and I think you should illegally download it if you can't find it because I get no more money out of this.

Well, thanks

great

having you on as always.

And in case you didn't hear our micro sub-sub-episode last Friday, Buglers, Bugle merch lives again.

Just what are we now?

12, almost 13 years into the existence of the bugle.

Our second line of merch has

now

come out,

shortly to be followed by a third line, or at least the rest of the second line.

So far you can choose between

well anything that is a t-shirt or a pair of socks.

And a Christmas, you can pre-order the Christmas jumper as well.

It is very much the retail event of the year.

I mean, that's actually probably closer to truth than ideally would have been the case.

But anyway, there is merch available.

Go to the website and click the merch link and there it will be for your delectation stroke disgust.

Thank you very much for listening.

I'll be back on the cricket if you're into that kind of thing from Wednesday this week for the first Englandly Pakistan test and I will have some really aggressively obscure statistics for any cricket fans out there.

Thanks for listening.

We'll be back next week.

We'll be recording and releasing early in the week

for the next few weeks.

And we will play you out this week with some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers.

To join them, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Simon Savadent does not think equinoxes are all that special.

Seriously, says Simon, who gives a flying one if the night is the same length as the day?

It's not as if you're going to get 12 hours sleep and 12 hours of pure unadulterated partying, is it?

They're just another couple of bullshit days concocted by the greetings card industry to shift overpriced bits of paper with sub-primary school level poems about equal length days and nights on.

Equinoxes are rubbish, blasts Simon.

James Gutzell accepts Simon's points and expresses regret that the true meaning of equinoxes has been overtaken by commercial considerations.

However, he urges Simon not to be entirely negative about them.

Equinox is a lovely word to say.

Equinox.

Go on, continues James.

Try it yourself.

Equinox.

What a great mouthfeel from three syllables.

Equinox.

Oh yeah, he says.

Actually, that does make me want to spend half of an entire day in bed.

Soren Anderson does not see the need for fake pineapples.

Real pineapples are weird enough as it is, states fruit offician Arto Soren.

so if you think you need to create a fake version of it, I'd suggest you have deeper problems regarding accepting the natural world for what it is, not what you want it to be.

Sorin has no trouble, however, with fake cantaloupes.

I'm not eating them for reasons that are no one's business but my own, so frankly I don't care if they're made of actual melon or some oddly realistic resin.

Alison Dimter sees a gap in the market for a restaurant-come museum in which you can eat all the artefacts, which would be edible replicas of significant objects from around the world and indeed universe.

Allison has in fact just teamed up with celebrity chef Scluton Malvain and the provisionally titled Musee Yum will offer dishes such as a parsnip parthenon and an Egyptian sarcophagus of yummified fruit and carmoon.

Rory Guy is right on board with this and sees multiple franchising possibilities.

If successful, speculates Rory, we could follow the Musey Yum with the Aquarium, where you will be able to study the biology, behaviour, physiology and life cycle of aquatic creatures before ending that life cycle by eating them.

Educational and nutritious, albeit potentially disappointing if you have a late booking, notes Rory.

And finally, Carl Nestor has also fully bought into this strategy of expansion, although his plans for a third branch in the franchise, the Sanitarium, have, I'm hearing right now, just been quietly shelved.

I'm just not sure it's the right time, admits Carl, but he insists the planetary yum could be sensational.

Sid Neptuna steaks in Jupiter bread.

Yes, please.

He admits that the Uranus dish might be a tough sell.

We probably will have to call it sweetbreads or something, concedes Carl.

Here endeth this week's lies.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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

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

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