Bugle 4153 - A Dutch Village

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers.

Welcome to the Bugle livestream live.

During the course of this show, we will have all the news from the worlds of technology, food, other stuff, the world, America, which is to all intents and purposes now entirely separate from the world.

Britain, Ditto, there will be full frontal nudity, but only other peoples in a news story, not that kind of show.

And a very, very, very special 200th birthday.

We will always

put right all the wrongs in this flawed planet of ours.

I'm just hearing that as subject to legal challenge, as always.

And we'll keep you up to date with all the breaking news from around the world.

I'm just hearing, in fact, on the wires, that America has declared itself a rogue state and launched a war against itself.

Also, this being a lockdown live stream show, it means legally we are obliged to include a quiz.

All lockdown shows have to to have a quiz.

That's advice from the World Health Organization who absolutely love quizzes.

How did this virus start?

How do you stop diseases spreading?

And what type of leadership does worst in a pandemic?

That kind of thing.

Also, quizzes recommended by the British government.

That is their official advice that they've scraped out of the toilets wherever they keep their infinite number of policy-formulating monkeys with typewriters.

Quizzes, of course, are recommended by the Boris Johnson regime on the grounds that if people are trying to answer questions right, they will not have time to ask questions right.

So we will be bringing you the inaugural Bugle Live excessively multiple choice live prize quiz with no prize.

But first, are you shitting comfortably?

I will take that as a resounding yes.

Let's meet our Bugle co-hosts this week, Technology and Zeus Permitting, joining us on what is where she is appropriately enough.

Already the 17th of May, World Telecommunications Day, no less.

Maybe we should have done the show tomorrow as our guest is doing.

It's also Work from Home Day and she is at her current home.

Very trendy these days.

All the way from tomorrow on the other side of the world, it's the priestess of percyflage the not very reverent Alice Fraser hello Andy hello buglers that was exciting what an adventure

well it was an adventure in the same way that it would have been an adventure for Christopher Columbus if he'd sailed out of harbour on the way to discover the United States of America or whatever or as he was supposed to have done and just crashed into a dolphin and sank also joining us in what I assume is the same time zone as he is three miles up the road from my shed as the crow flies if it's flying in a car or on a bus.

It's Sergeant Satar himself, Nish Kumar.

Hello Nish.

He's forgotten to turn his...

Oh Nish is muted.

There we go.

Years in Shobis between us.

Nish.

That is an absolute

burn from Chris who continued to mute me.

But I think we can all agree I've always been on the bugle as the very much the eye candy.

So it does make sense.

Hello Andy, hello Alice.

Hello Chris.

Hello, Buglers.

I can't

believe this is working.

You can't spell bungle without B-U-G-L-E.

Right.

And yet, somehow, I think buglers might be interested to know that there is obviously a chat window that some of you might be familiar with

on the Zoom function.

And the chat window, just to give you a flavour of the backstage shenanigans that have been going on in the last 10 to 15 minutes, I'm just going to read you some random assortments.

All of these are in block capital letters.

We're not live.

Andy, I need you to speak.

Hold on.

Andy, hold on, hold on.

Audio has dropped out.

Oh, shit.

So it was a direct transcript from my wedding by coincidence as well.

Sounds like the last transcripts of a submarine going down in World War II, but sure.

Potato, potato.

So welcome, Bugles.

We are recording this on the 16th 16th of May 2020, or if you're using the new calendar, the 16th of NHS Ember in the year one CVE.

It is World Fiddle Day.

Not that kind of fiddle for any celebrating tax lawyers or corporate accountants out there, and not that kind of fiddle either, obviously.

But jaunty violin music or fiddle music, so-called because in old medieval times, dodgy accountants would advertise their questionable or fully scammificationary services, walking through town centers playing the violin in an excessive chirpy way.

That is the first fact of today's live bugle, the first of zero.

Also

as always some sections of the bugle are going where buglers?

I can't hear you.

As indeed you could not hear me not very long ago.

They're going in the bin of course.

Some sections are going straight in the bing along with our technological credibility such as it was if you can throw something in the bin that never existed.

In the bin.

It's learn to swim day today and so we have part one in our audio teach yourself to swim guide so if you are a non-swimmer buglers keep this on your audio device at all times so if you do find yourself in a swim necessitating situation you can play this and splosh your way out of trouble step a do not breathe if both your mouth and nose are underwater step b waggle your arms about and if that isn't working on its own waggle your legs about too and step three imagine there is a giant but quite slow moving shark 20 meters behind you we will complete the teach yourself to swim course over the course of the next four years another section in the bin, obituaries, an obituary section in the bin.

Interesting, as soon as I said obituaries, Chris launches the commercial side of this operation.

If you want to pay for a voluntary ticket or an other form of voluntary subscription, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the

donate button for a one-off or recurring donation.

Amongst the obituaries in the obituary section in the bin, the economy, optimism, comprehensible statistics, unalloyed joy, governmental credibility, which passed away finally after a prolonged series of debilitating illnesses and self-inflicted injuries here in London.

Sadly missed by all those who think they remember it ever existing.

And above all, British celebrity gardener Monty Dons recently bakarked dead dog.

And that was the first, I don't know if you saw this story, Nish.

Yeah, I did.

Alice.

It was, I think, the biggest news story that's happened in this country since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

And it showed how desperate we are for some non-coronavirus news.

That the sad death of a much-loved TV presenter's beautiful dog really rocketed to the top of the news chart.

Just anything that did not involve a virus or some absolutely baffling numbers.

I can't believe you thought that governmental credibility was alive in the UK.

If anything, it was a zombie that had come back to life, had its head chopped off, and then come back as a vampire and we've garlicked it to f ⁇ .

I I saw a 22 minute eulogy video for an Instagram hamster the other day and I was super tempted to click on it so that's where I am in my life right now.

Right.

But I think that's where humanity is in its life right now, Alice.

I mean,

we will come onto more things that we didn't expect to happen in the universe later in the show, but a 22 minute video about a hamster.

That's got to be right up there.

And your final section in the bin is question one of the excessively long multiple choice bugle quiz.

And so you have your answer sheets, buglers, which are a bit of paper that I hope you have and a pen.

If you haven't got them, imagine them or go and get them now.

There will be questions interspersed through the show.

Multiple choice, far too many choices for the quiz to have any fluency or relevance, but that is the way we do things on this show.

And the question one is on the 16th of May, today's date, on this date, exactly 100 years ago, what happened to Joan of Arc?

Joan Joan of Arc, 100 years ago today, was she A, voted hottest honey in the whole of history at the inaugural session of the League of Nations.

U.S.

President Woodrow Wilson passed the casting vote and declared, in a heartbeat, hell yeah.

B, option B, on this day 100 years ago, Joan of Arc had her sentence reduced on appeal 489 years.

After being burned at the stake, she was sentenced instead to 488 years of imprisonment and told that she was now free to go.

Option C, she was posthumously signed by Real Madrid after club president Pedro Paraguay

had a divine vision of the former French alleged heretic scoring the winning goal in the Spanish Cup final.

He was wrong.

Madrid did not in fact win the Copa del Rey again until 1934, although interestingly their equaliser in that game was caught scored by someone called Juan, which is a bit like Jong.

Option D, 100 years ago, a parasol salesman in Santrope claimed he saw Joan of Arc, the 15th century heroine, buying a sandwich and a belated bottle of sun cream in a local cafe, sparking a mass pilgrimage which turned the south of France into a prime holiday destination.

Option E, she became one side of the first ever cubic coin issued by France to celebrate peace after the end of World War I.

The other five sides of the cubic coin of course showed a baguette, a man on a bike in a stripey jumper with a string of onions around his neck, a man having an affair, a shrug and an overhead but angry looking goose.

Option F, She was picked out of a hat by George Bernard Shaw in a drunken game of play topic bingo.

Shaw's play St.

Joan duly came out three years later.

His fellow playwrights were set less easy task.

J.M.

Barry had to write a five-act drama about Snitty the Magic Hedgehog and Queen Victoria's underpants, whilst T.S.

Eliot penned a seldom performed drama entitled My Ding-a-Ling.

Or option G, 100 years ago today, Joan of Arc was canonised by Pope Benedict 15th.

Those are your options.

What could it possibly be, Buglers?

Write down your answers and I will give you the correct answers at the end of the show.

Just as a content note, before this all began, you said, would you like to add any questions to the quiz?

And I thought, Does one, when perceiving a drowning man, throw him a rock?

I've never felt such a sense of dread as I thought about the fact that there are 26 letters in the alphabet.

I'm not going to do any with all 26, Nish.

I promise you that.

Right.

Let's get some discipline into this operation.

It's time for your top story this week.

Here we go.

There's a jingle.

I mean, this is.

I mean, the thing is, this happens in all TV shows.

Nish, you yourself would know this.

They just don't go out live.

So you have editors to chop out the

dodgy bits.

Like when Jackie Shobiz drops the F's and C bombs, they just cut it out, make them look good.

Now,

I've never felt more grateful to have editors in my entire life.

Or indeed, let's face it, hair and makeup.

What?

Do we have to beep ourselves, Andy?

Yeah, please do.

It depends whether you were beeping yourself when you said, do we have to beep ourselves at that point?

So

these are the things.

No, I would have just said, do we have to shit ourselves, Andy?

Oh, shit.

Okay, fair enough.

It could have gone a different way.

Must be.

Go bleep yourself.

Now,

Andy, if I could quote from yourself, family show.

Yep.

Fat family show.

Literally, family show.

My house is over there.

I'm in the shed.

My family is in that house watching this.

So if you guys could raise the tone a bit, I'd be very grateful.

Top story.

I tried to introduce this about three minutes ago.

Top story.

The virus is a girl.

We finally know

what gender COVID is, COVID-19,

aka

the microbial Mephistopheles, aka the titchy tyrant, the invisible shitbag,

the

it's um basically everything the world's assorted baddies have always dreamed of doing but never achieved.

That virus is, it turns out, a girl.

Don't take it from me, take it from no less a scientific authority than the French language itself, which knows the gender of all things.

It's decided in its infallible Gallic wisdom that COVID is lack of ide and not lid.

Alice, as Bugle correspondent for the unbotestical community, how are your people reacting to the confirmation that it is all your fault?

Well, yes, Andy, this is great news.

The Académie Française, whose job it is to make sure that French stays pure and unpolluted, has announced that COVID is indeed a feminine.

It's en femme.

And it's not because the French are sexist, though, of course, they are sexist.

It's a part of French culture to be sexist because they've been sexist for hundreds of years and they don't like change unless it involves decapitation.

So it's la Covid dysneuf, not le covid dysneuf.

It's an acronym of a disease, which is why it's called a woman.

Disease is malady, which it means it's a girl.

I don't know why malady is a girl.

I assume that they think all diseases are women.

The point is that French culture is the least relaxed culture about maintaining the standards of how relaxed they are.

They're just consistently like, no, no, no, nothing will ever change.

We're going to stay real chill all times on pain of death.

It is a classic move from the culture that invented hypocrisy, or the word hypocrisy.

We all know that the concept of hypocrisy was invented by the Egyptians.

Don't tell me to be in three-quarter profile all the time.

You married your aunt, who's also your sister.

Sorry, beep.

Family show, Alice.

Well, obviously, I don't know quite how they managed to sex COVID at this, presumably based on a range of evidence that the French linguistic scientists who, of course, have decided that a lawnmower is female,

extramarital affair is female, bread is male, and a potato is male.

So, you know, readings about whatever you want.

It's sex to COVID based on a range of evidence.

The official statement said, We've found that COVID has been very well organised through this crisis, prepared to socialise with people it doesn't know, able to multitask and be flexible, and is relatively kind to children, albeit while still being a virus, and doesn't waste its time putting up

unnecessary shelves or rewiring things.

It all points to it being a lady virus.

I mean, we're off the hook here, aren't we?

As

males?

Well, I don't know about you, Andy, but I am furious.

This is political correctness gone mad.

COVID, more like Cuckvid.

There are little boys out there right now, Andy.

Don't search that on corner.

Yeah, do not

search any of these things on corner, please, for the love of God.

There are little boys out there right now who are looking at this whole saga and thinking, well, I guess I can't be a disease that wrecks untold devastation on planet Earth and alters the very fabric of society.

I guess I'm going to have to settle for being the president of everything.

This is the future that the Liberals wanted, Andy.

Does this mean that COVID has to wear the exact amount of makeup that will make them look like they're not wearing makeup, but in a way that lets you know they've made an effort?

Yes, almost certainly.

It does.

I mean, a lot of the pictures look like it's put

a bit of lipstick or blusher on its little crowny bits, but that's possibly something it picked up from the Queen, who does the same thing.

But I mean, generally, when you look at the performance of the the world's leading genders during this this crisis,

you know the the leaders in particular, you know, Trump Bolsonaro Johnson versus Jacinda Ardern, Angela Merkel saying when the president of Taiwan, I mean it's it's not been a great time for fans of the male species.

I mean is it because these people are men who dream of being alpha males?

Is it simply because they are f ⁇ quits who happen to be men?

Or is it because they're f ⁇ witted men who dream of being alpha males and quits simultaneously?

It's very hard to say.

Well, the real research I want to see is in what the relationship is between world leaders who are handling the crisis well and world leaders who have come to see me do comedy.

Because in 2016, Jacinda Ardennes came to see me do a show at the New Zealand Comedy Festival, and she is now handling the virus very well.

And you're welcome, New Zealand, okay?

She got the experience up close of handling a total disaster.

And now, look at where New Zealand is.

It's almost, Andy, it's almost like the qualities traditionally associated with leadership are ideological legacies predicated on a society where victory used to be a matter of being able to bash the other guy's head in with a stick from a horse and you can't just joust your way through a four-hour briefing on epidemiology.

Right?

Just maybe.

It's possible, but don't destroy our dreams.

Don't destroy our dreams.

I mean, do you think, Nish,

as members of the male team,

we've got to assess where we are

as a gender at this point in history?

Is it time for us to just take a break?

I mean, patriarchy is in need of some fresh ideas, I think, a reboot.

Maybe it's time for us to go away as a gender, think about some of the things we may have done wrong and come back refreshed in a couple of years, ready to go for another few millennia of domination.

Is that a fair thing to accept at this point?

Yeah, I think it's not a bad idea, especially our tactic over the last sort of four or five years, which has been to send pretty much all of our worst players on the pitch at once.

We have elected...

We've really...

It's not just that they're men.

It's the fact that they're some of the worst men of all time.

And yeah, look, the patriarchy has had its time.

Maybe we just need to...

Maybe we just need a bit of a refresh.

We just need a bit of a refresh, take a bit of a relax, and then see if we can work out how to not send the most f ⁇ ing idiotic examples of our agenda to the absolute top of the most powerful positions in the world.

One

woman from history who's been getting a lot of big raps this week on her 200th birthday is longtime bugle favourite,

Florence Nightingale.

I'll try and keep this as decent as possible at this, oh yeah, this section.

Some hospitals have been marking the occasion by, Chris, take that off the screen.

I'm trying to focus.

I'm at work.

That is not suitable for work.

Some hospitals have been giving their staff full Florence Nightingale masks to wear.

It turns out it's cheaper than buying Turkish PPE kit and slightly more effective.

And

you know, it's been a great time to appreciate Florence Nightingale's

legacy to the world.

Alice, are you a Nightingale fan?

Yes, and I want to wish a happy birthday to Florence Nightingale, the lady of the lamp, the woman of the wound wound care protocol, the femme non-fatale, the gimme more of the Crimean War.

Just an

astonishingly complex,

competent, latex-snapping chart-carrying, human feces-cleaning, knowledge-heavy problem-solver.

And apparently, Florence Nightingale's birthday is also associated with International Nurses' Day, so that's a wonderful thing.

Why don't you celebrate International Nurses' Day by dressing up as a sexy patient for once?

I've been doing that all my life.

Nish, what does Florence Nightingale

mean to you?

Well, unfortunately, Andy, Florence Nightingale's entire legacy and all of her humanitarian work and the incredible things she did in the Crimean War have entirely been overshadowed by a decade of being exposed to your ceaseless boner for her.

And unfortunately now, when I hear that it's Florence Nightingale, all I can think about is you getting Randy in your cricket stats shed.

You've ruined Nightingale for me.

Well, I mean, obviously, she has a great legacy to the world, including linguistically, interestingly.

Here's a couple more facts for you.

The term nighty comes from Nightingale.

The cloaks worn by Nightingale and her fellow nurses in the Crimean War, which shot her to global stardom, they worked such long shifts and had such early starts, had to sleep in their medical overalls, which had been designed by Florence, of course, and the Nightingale gowns became shortened to nighties.

Her nursing colleague Jemima Pandlehurst designed the underwear of course.

The phrase

Pandlehurst really has hit the sweet spot for me.

The phrase go with the flow also comes from Florence Nightingale.

It was the soldiers who would willingly submit to Florence Nightingale's instructions, unusual for the patriarchal world of the 19th century after seeing that she was very much opposed to unnecessary death, which was a significant break break from military medical tradition.

Now, that moves us on to question two of the

bugle quiz.

Today, get your answer sheets at the ready.

We'll tell you the answers at the end.

And this is a true or false round.

All quizzes have to have a true or false round.

But this being the bugle, this is a false or very false round.

All these options are false, but one has a very small element of truth in it.

Can you tell me which one?

And this is on the subject of etymology.

Option A, the term ketchup originates from when tomatoes were introduced to Europe from South America in the 16th century and a mashed up spiced tomato sludge was marketed as a remedy for impotence.

Ketch was a contemporary term for a gentleman's Todgington, hence the term ketchup.

Option B, barbecue.

The origin of the term barbecue comes from, well during the papacy of the notoriously dictatorial Pope Lurid II, when it was only legal to eat meat when about to have your hair cut, hence stalls would be set up selling grilled meats to people waiting outside a hair salon, hence hence barbecue.

Is it option C?

Avocado.

French lawyers back in the revolutionary times or advocates would represent big water owners after a court case against the new newfangled water-hungry foodstuff.

They became known as les avocado and it became attached to the foodstuff.

The term none of the above comes from the elevated Sisters of Pontificator, a dogmatic sect of extremely Christian nuns who live their entire lives on special raised platforms to be close to the Lord.

Under siege in 1187, the sisters refused to come down from their ledge or accept any of the range of demands of the invading Mangalorean army, hence the term none of the above.

Option E, the term oi we,

oi we comes from a traditional

facial covering worn by Jewish people when disappointed to cover their fury, known as the oi veil, shortened to

oi.

Oi

option F.

Ostrich, the term ostrich comes from an ancient Germanic legend of giant fighting orcs with telescopic necks able to run as fast as the wind and peck your eyes out, which are rumoured to come from an eastern kingdom or Ostreich.

Or is it option G?

The term quarantine.

During the time of the Black Death in the 14th century, the Venetian government forced people suspected of having a celebrity infectious disease,

plague, to isolate and eat nothing but a hybrid health-giving fruit-vegetable cross between a carrot or quarrel, as it was known before Samuel Johnson's standardised spelling,

and a clementine, hence the term quarantine.

So, those are your options.

A through to G.

Jot down your answer, and we will give you the answers at the end of the quiz.

I think we all need a break now.

Let's just have a.

Oh, sorry, I missed the start, Andy.

Could you just repeat the question?

At one point, I forgot what was happening, why we were doing this, and who I was.

Don't blame me, Nish.

That is also the tactic of the British government in helping people

will ignore what they've done through this crisis.

That's seamless link.

I'm not awake enough for this.

Oh, well, it is.

What time is it?

7:30 where you are?

It's about 6 o'clock in the morning now.

Oh, right, it's gone backwards.

It's 9pm here, and I don't have a f ⁇ ing clue what just happened there.

Is this still the top story?

Also,

I had a very ill-advised coffee at about 8.30pm.

And all I'm saying is, I'm buzzing.

There is half a chance that in about 45 minutes, some of this live broadcast may come from a different room in my house.

That's all I'm saying.

I'm putting it out there.

That's where you did the whole of your TV show from, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

The ass report.

It's been, there was very nearly an American topical show that was rechristened John on the John, but that luckily didn't happen.

Maybe get the camera set up elsewhere.

Now, last week tonight.

I've got a million of this.

Right, let's move on since we mentioned the British government.

It's been an interesting week.

for Britain in its

corona narrative.

The UK government is famously a living Petri dish experiment in what happens if you try to make a diesel engine work by filling it with rat vomit.

No one really wins, not even the rats.

Last weekend they announced a new strategy which was to be even vaguer about what their strategy is, perhaps trying to lull the virus into complacency given how easy it had found it to reduce this nation to a baffled jelly.

They announced from their trademark Babel Tower of Embafflements a new slogan instructing Britain to stay alert

rather than stay at home.

Finally, learning the lessons of the 1660s bubonic plague outbreak, which was caused, of course, by people being a little bit blasé and inattentive.

Nicholas Sturgeon

described the slogan switch to stay alert as, quotes, potentially catastrophic, which by great coincidence are the words Boris Johnson uses on his Tinder profile.

So

Nish,

how alert have you been this week?

I mean, you're always absolutely, absolutely on it.

Oh, I am, Andy.

I'm.

Look, before we move on, it's just going to haunt me for the rest of my life if I don't return briefly to the subject of John Oliver, his show title, and if he did it from the toilet.

The answer obviously should be ass cheek poo shite.

Now we can we've dealt with that and now we can move on.

Yeah, the

UK government policy has shifted again

and Boris Johnson is now treating the coronavirus like it's one of his biological children in that he's just passing responsibility and sort of hoping it goes away.

Last Sunday there was a televised broadcast from Downing Street and I don't know if anybody has seen any of the footage of it but it was genuinely very very weird.

He didn't do it live.

He scripted it in advance and pre-filmed it and then released it and all I can say watching that As someone who has been making a television show in his house for the last six weeks is it's not as f ⁇ ing easy as I make it look is it Forest you fing

that was surely the most worrying thing about all of this is that that was somehow the best take at one point he was just screaming a list of jobs because he also picked up a new rhetorical flourish because obviously he's obviously been told that he's lacking gravitas owing to the fact that he you know his whole brand is i'm a bit of a laugh and that's not really the vibe that they're going for right now so he was sort of banging his fists on the table

and and then just kind of shouting every third world.

Yeah, it was absolutely insane.

It was like watching a toddler have a tantrum and then afterwards finding out that that toddler is now all that stands between you and dying because the air is full of poison.

Yeah, so they've changed the slogan.

The slogan is now stay alert and the announcement officially was that you're being encouraged to go to work, but you can't use public transport and you can't really arrive at the time that you would normally basically you can go to work but the only way you can get to work is via a DeLorean and I don't know if it's possible to be any clearer than that.

And the next morning on Monday morning a slew of government ministers were passed around all of the various different shows just to desperately clarify what the finger Boris Johnson have been banging on about.

And there's this gem that I saved from Monday morning.

Victoria Dubb show does a British sort of talk show that covers lots of current event issues, had Dominic Raab on.

Dominic Rubb, some of you might remember, was the

Brexit secretary who quit in protest at his own Brexit negotiations.

And also has the vibe of someone who's definitely murdered.

I can't prove that.

Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, citation needed allegedly, but he has that vibe.

And this, Dominic Raubb was supposed to be clarifying the government's policy.

And this absolute gem came from the Victoria Derpshire Twitter account, which was live tweeting everything that Rubb was saying.

This is a direct quote.

Dominic Rubb says you can meet your mum in the morning and a different relative in the afternoon if it's outside and in England.

I can't say clearer than that.

It's like a Lewis Carroll nonsense poem.

Our government's coronavirus policy is essentially that thing where William Burroughs used to write random sentences, cut them up, put them in a bag, shake them around and throw them on the floor.

Through this,

Boris Johnson has been floundering around like a lactose-intolerant arachnophobe who's forgotten his safe word at a cheese and spiders fetish club.

Especially

he's been put up against the new Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, formerly one of Britain's top lawyers, who's been giving Boris Johnson in Prime Minister's questions enough metaphorical rope to metaphorically hang himself, only to find that Boris Johnson is on the phone to a timber yard ordering everything he needs for a fully functioning gallows and asking, are we going short drop or long drop it's it's basically it's been like a policy Sudoku essentially the government's approach well this means that can't be that which means that that also isn't possible so that must be that but it can't be because that has to mean that or that so I think it means that legally I'm allowed to lick a bench

but only if it's outside and in England

I watched Prime Minister's Question Time.

Kier Starmer looks absolutely baffled.

Because, as you say, he is a lawyer and what happened on Wednesday was the equivalent of him going up to cross-examine someone and then walking up to the stand wearing a t-shirt saying I killed the k

he looked absolutely baffled Boris Johnson is playing Roper Dope but like he forgot to watch the end of the rumble in the jungle and so he now just thinks that Muhammad Ali leaned his way to the championship

it's unbelievable the number of things that are happening way too late we've talked about this on the bugle in over the last few months.

Contact tracing, they're now starting to think about.

The government has basically sprung into action very much like Santa Claus crashing down your chimney in mid-March.

No,

you cannot have a glass of f ⁇ ing sherry.

My kid has been in tears for 10 weeks, you cotter.

And they're paying these contact tracers, army of contact tracers, minimum wage, because nothing says you are a massively important part of our national struggle, like paying them the equivalent of entry-level toilet cleaning.

Result, not enough contact tracers.

Team GB, Team GB.

Alice, Australia's been doing

rather better through this.

I mean, helped by the fact that it's a massive desert,

obviously.

How is the Australian view of the British

struggle been going?

I mean, look.

If we wanted vengeance for the whole convict thing,

you're delivering it.

In Australia at the moment, we're coming out of lockdown because we've handled the virus super well.

And if everybody is responsible and does social distancing, then we're really going to knock this thing on the head.

I went out yesterday and ah, f, everyone's licking each other.

Everyone's out playing suck and blow in the middle of the mall.

For f's egg, just put a mask on.

Do you have no, we seem to have no version of you're not locked in your house that isn't quick, use my leg as a stripper pole.

People can't be trusted with their own lungs.

What like you're allowed to go outside should mean is like peep your little nose out like a quivering marmoset being told will the wolf has headed west.

And what it turns out to mean is just plaster yourself all over each other's faces like you've got no idea how it's going.

On the bright side, looking at the UK does make us feel a lot better about ourselves.

How good would it be if the combination of Brexit and the coronavirus handling in England meant that Scotland and Ireland end up leaving, going to the EU, and the only UK member state that isn't part of the EU anymore is England?

I don't care about Wales.

Welcome themselves.

Well, you say it would be fun, but speaking of someone who is English and a fan of Europe as a continent,

I love other continents too.

That's nothing against South America or Antarctica, but

I do like Europe.

It would be a harrowing tragedy.

But that's what democracy's all about, Alice.

Democracy and the virus are all about.

The latest government advice, just a few more details on holidays.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said there will be no big, lavish international holidays this year, or as they used to be known in this country, an empire.

These

Holidays will be allowed, but only on your own and if you stay at home.

Regarding quarantining, the government has announced they will be politely asking people coming into the country to quarantine themselves after a rigorous scientific research project over the last three months into whether or not not quarantining people works as well as quarantining them as a means of preventing the virus spreading.

Turns out it doesn't.

Here's the clever bit: if you're from France, coming from France or Ireland, you don't have to be quarantined because baguettes and leprechauns give you immunity.

I think that is the level of science that we're going with here.

And it's a bit late.

Again, it's a bit like Churchill saying, yeah, we should definitely send up some fighter planes to deal with that shit in November 1943, shortly after the Nazis had turned Lord's Cricket Ground into a lader hosen factory.

Yeah, and it's not unlike Churchill going, listen, if you're out and about and you see a Nazi, punch him.

Just punch him in the face.

We're not going to fight a war with an army.

Why would anyone do that?

But if you happen to be out at Tesco's and you see a Nazi in the frozen fruit, I'll smack him right in the chops.

Ideally from 1.5 metres away.

I'm not really in a position to criticise not doing things in time.

I still haven't finished my Italia 90 World Cup scrapbook.

But

I'm not in a position.

Someday, someday, never say never, buglers.

We've seen what can be achieved with this technological miracle that is unfolding before your eyes, albeit after it slightly

stops.

But other people are in a position to judge, and they seem to be unimpressed.

The Daily Telegraph has been criticising Boris Johnson, which is like seeing Boris Johnson criticise Boris Johnson.

It's just something that simply shouldn't happen.

Meeting your family.

Now there's a lot of talk about what you can do.

So as you said, two people from different households can meet in outdoor settings as long as they stay more than two meters apart.

You can visit your parents, but only one at a time.

Or if you see them both, then you have to catapult one off a cliff into the sea or something like that.

I forget.

But it's like a mission strategy.

There's loopholes.

It's like a missions trading.

So my parents, my friend's parents, live overseas.

so I'm using his allowance to see both of my parents simultaneously.

But I will only look at them one at a time.

And the latest advice says it's like a Medusa.

So, if you speak to someone while looking in a mirror or a shiny reverse side of a shield, it doesn't pose a risk.

To be on the safe side, I will remain at least 20 meters away from my parents and use a loud haler and make them stand behind a special prism to make them seem smaller than they actually are and therefore harder for any passing viruses to spot.

I will speak to them in a New Zealand access accent because that seems to work pretty well.

All clear.

All clear.

Right.

Yeah,

I genuinely had to have a conversation with my mum this week where she suggested that we meet in a park and I have a conversation with her while my dad hides in a bush and then we trade places.

And I was trying to explain to her that I don't think you can hide from the coronavirus.

I don't think that's how it works.

Let's move on.

Shall we move on to the USA

for our

American viewers?

We've been enjoying the death of American democracy.

I mean,

it's had underlying conditions.

It really hasn't looked after itself.

So is it dying of Trump or dying with Trump?

We don't know, but he has certainly accelerated the process.

He's very much Donald Trump, the proverbial puppy that never learned to crap in the garden, and now three and a half years into the dog's first term of office, the living room has become a complete no-go area.

And good luck trying to teach that now pretty old dog not to dump on its favourite shit sofa.

So

also, he's one of those dogs that only barks at black people for some reason.

At this point, I'm so sick of Trump dominating the news landscape that I am willing to invent an entire alternate dimension where he's just slightly less prominent.

He is too deluded even to be a villain in an action movie, because at least the writers have to give them a coherent backstory for them wanting to destroy the world.

Man who sees the entire population of the country he rules as non-player characters in a game of sims he can't wait to delete is too on the nose even for a Vin Diesel triple X sequel.

He's now essentially, depressingly, just given up on fighting coronavirus and has sort of lurched into campaign mode.

And he is now trying to sort of

as usual, he sort of thought about doing something about coronavirus, but he's just defaulted.

And you know, when you default, we've all got our sort of default modes.

And he has just gone back to being racist and trying to blame everything on Barack Obama.

So he's used this week instead of

updating Americans on the testing regime or even wearing masks in public.

He's instead just working on a new scandal that he's calling Obama Gate.

So last Sunday, he tweeted 126 times, which depressingly is only the third highest of his presidency.

126 tweets is the bronze medal.

That is roughly five tweets an hour.

There are bots that are designed only to tweet, that are tweeting less frequently than the president of America.

Now, to explain what the latest strategy is, this is what Al Jazeera said.

They described it as an unproven narrative that Obama, along with Joe Biden and then FBI Director James Comey, and with in collusion with intelligence services in the US and abroad, planted a phony theory that Trump was colluding with Russia in order to win the 2016 election.

Once planted, the theory was allegedly picked up by members of the anti-Trump deep state in the US and used to spy on and frame members of Trump's inner circle.

Now, I know, I don't even know where to start with this, right?

This ObamaGate thing.

There's absolutely no substantiation for it.

He's offered no evidence.

He's just been tweeting about it relentlessly.

And yet, for some reason, the thing that has annoyed me the most is the fact that he's referring to it as Obama Gate.

Now, that is not how the gate

system of naming works for scandals.

It was Watergate, not Nixon Gate.

How is he this shit at everything?

Well, Nish, I think you're being very, very unfair on him because, yeah, he put out that tweet that people said just one word, Obama Gate, but it was misrepresented because if you pronounce it correctly, Obama Gate, you will know it's an ancient Japanese martial art

that Mr.

Trump practices.

Now, Obama Gate, for those who don't know it, involves shouting abuse at anyone and everything that you see.

It's a very good workout for the lungs, it's an equilibrializer for the spirit.

You should try it.

It's very similar to swearobics, if any of you buglers have ever given that go, very popular amongst football supporters.

I think it's time now, essentially talking about Trump, to have question three of the Bugle Prize quiz, the excessive martial choice prize quiz.

And this this is on Donald Trump.

It's a very simple question.

That question is, which of the following things did the President of America, the leader of the free world, the figurehead of the self-proclaimed greatest democracy in the world, not do this past week?

Only one of these things the president of America did not do.

A.

Accuse a TV news presenter of being a murderer.

B.

Face a Supreme Court hearing over his tax returns, which also touched on allegations that he'd paid hush money to a porn star.

C, he was accused of violating the US legal system by facilitating the release of a man who pleaded guilty to misleading the FBI on his behalf.

D, he tweeted his support of protesters who were harassing a journalist.

E.

He boasted about having a super-duper new missile, presumably one that can take out a virus microbe at a range of 10,000 miles with collateral casualties below 50 million.

Or F, he told a press conference that Joe Biden shot JFK whilst working for the Cuban mafia and then had a torrid affair with Muppet Muppet star Fozzie Bear in the 1970s, their unholy progeny, of course, becoming the notorious Fraggles species.

Only one of those things he did not do.

And even, I think you know what it is, even that one, he probably

thought of doing.

I mean, the rest, I mean, admitted, again,

nothing that Lincoln or Eisenhower or one of the Roosevelts wouldn't have done most weeks they were in charge, but these days, it just seems a little bit off.

He also, he announced a couple of really

announced a new policy this week that amazingly had absolutely nothing to do with coronavirus.

Uh he unveiled something uh he unveiled a new missile system uh as part of his flag ceremony unveiling for his new Space Force and he

I can't believe I'm reading this out but he said

He said that we have no choice.

We have to do it with the adversaries we have out there.

We have I call it I call it the super duper missile and I heard the other night it's 17 times faster than what they have right now.

Now coupled with the fact that his naming system for the new vaccinations for coronavirus is now called Operation Warp Speed, which he claimed he was called that because he said it means that means big and it means fast.

But he also said it's a massive scientific industrial and logistic endeavor unlike anything our country has seen since the Manhattan Project.

Which begs the alarming question, does he think the Manhattan Project is the name given to when they built the empire state building because i cannot believe he's talking about a policy of vaccinations against a deadly virus and comparing it to building a nuclear bomb

the michael flynn story is um it's quite interesting he's the former national security advisor who had been in jail he'd previously admitted that he lied but is now saying he lied about lying.

So

we're in a kind of

Schrödinger's perjury situation here.

At the very best, he told a white lie, and by white lie, obviously I mean white lie as in a falsehood told with good intentions rather than white lie as in Donald Trump's view of the history of the United States of America.

When he accused that MSNBC anchor of murder, the MSNBC anchor was in a different city and the lady had a heart attack and fell over.

Like that is.

Yeah, but that just makes it the perfect crime, doesn't it?

What did he send her such a bad dick pic that, like,

what?

Oh, that's that would be a hard one to recover from.

He's been

still at war with his scientific advisors, and just seeing Trump engage with science.

We talked about last week the kind of jarring juxtaposition of Trump with Abraham Lincoln at that town hall meeting, and seeing him kind of doing it.

And he's talking about science, it's like seeing him next to Isaac Newton with his trousers and underpants round his ankles, swinging his nutsack from side to side, shouting, Look, I can make my balls bang and bang together against each other, too.

You're not so special, you're a dead loser.

What kind of dweeb gets hit on the dweeb gets hit on the head by an apple?

And there's your Isaac Newton joke for the week.

I would have probably done better if I hadn't stumbled on it.

Right.

My favorite, can I just say my favorite conspiracy theory before we move on?

My favorite one is the one where they think Bill Gates is trying to vaccinate you with nanobots to track and control you because he, like in 2012, he

you know, he put in a vaccine patent for a completely different coronavirus,

which is like screaming at your newlywed for sleeping with your sister when, in fact, you mean they slept with you.

Like, it's a completely different thing.

And the idea that they're super worried about nanobots going to track you and control you, like you haven't already ceded all privacy and control to social media algorithms that literally know and influence what you're thinking and where you are at all times.

The call is coming from inside the house, and it's your phone calling you, and you're making the fing call.

Like.

Thank you for joining us so far, Buglers.

If you want to

pay for a virtual ticket, you don't have to, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click on the donate button.

That's also where you can find our volunteer subscriptions.

There it is, Chris.

Chris, like,

look at that.

That kind of technological mastery we've come to expect from this young triathlete.

I've actually updated it.

People

now have a nice blue button they can click on, which is always nice.

It's nice to click on a new button, isn't it?

It's always, always nice.

So if

you want to contribute to the Bugle, pay for the show that we've been giving you tonight, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate link.

Now,

the Dutch have gone a very Dutch way about this and they've issued a piece of

official advice in which they've advised people to find a sex buddy to see them through the lockdown.

Well done, the Dutch you win national stereotype of the week this week.

And it does make you wonder, we've seen so much hypocrisy from governments.

Are the Dutch government going to set an example with this policy, or is it going to be another classic case of do as we say, not do as we do?

Is the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutter, auspicious name in the circumstances, going to announce an official briefing, don't tell the wife, but me and Femke are going to be going at it, hammering Dutch tongues this weekend for the good of this country?

And

this is one policy, Nish, that our political leaders here in Britain might actually have a chance of not being volcanically hypocritical about.

Surely this is a policy Boris Johnson was born to announce.

Sure, I mean that guy, given the rate of, I mean, I don't know how to pronounce it, given his F number,

if we can use the parlance

of our age, Boris Johnson's F number is normally in, at very least, the high two hundreds.

And given his, you know, this sort of enforced lockdown, I'm actually genuinely blown away that he hasn't announced this policy.

But yeah, it's the Dutch are responding to this.

In fairness, we are also responding to this, as you would expect from our nation in Britain, in that we're in denial about anything that we might possibly have done wrong, which has very much been our default position since the sort of mid-19th century.

But yes, the Dutch area.

BC,

just BC.

BC.

No, it wasn't supposed to have a roof on it.

No, that's how henges are supposed to be.

Bloody stones.

Not good enough, are they?

Like, I want to be on the fly on the Zoom call for these sex buddy conversations.

Like, how do you broach that with a pal?

And what do you tell your grandchildren, if you happen to have any, as a result of this?

Oh, the government suggested a loveless interlocking of genitals in an attempt to suppress excessive isolation first trap-induced blue balls for the ladies.

That's uh, that's known as flap lock,

which I'll write, which concerns a Dutch village.

Um,

but um

uh well, also, you know, those questions that you'll be asked by your friend, what did you do in the great virus war?

I guess the response will be, what do you mean, what?

Do you mean who or what?

Right, we are heading towards the end end of this show and we still have a question to go in the Bugle multiple choice quiz.

Well, we've got seven minutes, Andy, so if you start now.

Here is your sports question.

This is the sports section this week, in the absence of

all sport, basically, or almost all sport.

Here's a sports question.

What failed to stop the Cleveland Indians pitcher Ray Caldwell from finishing a major league baseball game against the Philadelphia Athletics in the year 1919?

So one of these is true.

The thing that did stop him,

that did happen but did not stop him finishing the game.

Was it A?

He was attacked by a dog and had his finger bitten off.

Was it B?

He ruptured his shoulder, elbow and wrist tendons throwing a fastball.

Was it C, he became vice president to Woodrow Wilson after Thomas R.

Marshall temporarily stepped down due to a trampolining injury?

Was it D?

He was attacked by his girlfriend's furious husband and had his nose broken.

Was it E?

He was attacked by his own furious wife and had his eardrum perforated.

Was it F?

He was attacked by both his girlfriend's furious husband and his own furious wife and had his nose broken, his eardrum perforated and his testicles clattered with a baseball bat.

Was it G?

He was arrested by Chicago police on a suspicion of murder but pitched on in the 9th.

Was it H?

He was arrested by Chicago police for attempted murder after attempting to kill athletics hitter Drellard Buttclark with his own bat.

Was it I?

He was abducted by aliens, returned two minutes later claiming he'd been away for 20 years and pitched a new unplayable 125 mile an hour fastball he said he'd learnt in outer space.

Was it J?

His wife gave birth in the dugout.

Was it K?

He gave birth in the dugout.

Was it L?

He died of Spanish influenza.

Was it M?

He ran out of balls due to the number of home runs conceded.

He finished the match pitching apples in the ninth.

Was it N?

He signed for the other team.

The athletics mid-match and pitched the ninth innings for both teams, leading to a change in the law.

Was it O?

The Treaty of Versailles failed to stop him from finishing the game.

The treaty was signed on the 28th of June 1919, and Cleveland-hating President Woodrow Wilson inserted a sub-clause making it illegal for anyone to pitch for the Cleveland Indians in among some of the blurb about carving up the Middle East.

The news came through as Calder was preparing to pitch the 8th and he declared, well, I'm still at war, and pitched two more shutout innings in defiance defiance of the treaty before being arrested and placed under the purview of the British Empire.

Was it option P?

He was hit on the head and forgot how to pitch.

Was it option Q?

Flatulance.

A nervous Caldwell ate his way through three kilograms of dried apricots during a tense match and was, quote, uncontrollably gaseous by the later innings.

He bravely pitched through his distractingly audible posterial exfulgence, attaining previously unachieved speeds, giving rise to both the phrase, like the wind, as a term for quickly, and the tradition of pitchers holding their gloves in front of their nose and mouth.

Was it option R?

Mary Pickford, the silent movie star, arrived at the match as Calder was preparing to pitch the fourth innings.

Caldwell, who'd been obsessed with Pickford ever since seeing her star in the 1912 film of Female of the Species, saw the movie Megastar in the stands and pitched through the final five innings in what local newspaper, the Cleveland Snouter, described as, quote, a state of visible excitement.

Or was it option S?

He was struck by lightning.

Or option C, he went to viewpodcast.com and clicked on the donate link.

Those are your options.

I told you I wouldn't get to Zed, Nish.

I promise you I would not get to Zed.

F.

The nerve of you.

The fucking brass balls of you to ask for money at the end of this.

Make it more difficult.

People complain quizzes are too easy.

I've given you 20 options to make it harder.

Oh, my God.

Earn your prize.

Right.

So

we'll give the...

Do you want the answers?

Should we have the answers to the quiz questions now?

No.

What?

You can't have a quiz without answers.

You cannot.

No, you can't.

Right, the answers are.

Question one, Joan of Arc.

She was, it was option G, the last option, canonised by Pope Benedict 15th.

Option two, etymology.

The slightly less false version was quarantine.

It did arise during the Black Death in the 14th century from the Venetian government, but nothing to do with the Carrot-Clementine hybrids.

Question three, Donald Trump.

He did not claim that Joe Biden shot JFK, but all the rest he did do.

And finally, there, Ray Caldwell, the 1919 pitcher, he was struck by lightning, but got up and

pitched the final innings.

That is the end of your quiz, buglers.

If you've got all four questions,

you have won

the right to re-watch this show every day for the rest of your lives.

Congratulations.

Huge pro.

We've talked quite a little bit in recent weeks about facial coverings and the new trend for

need for people to wear facial coverings and headgear of various sorts that we probably didn't think we'd ever need.

And it's very difficult for many of us.

I hate the idea of having to wear these facial covers.

But a friend of mine, he's always worn them.

He's obsessed by facial coverings, he is.

And in fact, I asked him if he thought that people having to cover their mouths and noses is going to be a brief necessity that goes away or a long-term fixture for humanity.

And he replied, After a bit of contemplation,

is it just a phase?

Mask me in a few months

In a few months,

that was amazing.

He always wore.

Can you mute them, please, Chris?

He's always worn masks of different types.

Did make relationships a bit awkward, his face-covering obsession.

His favourite thing to do on a date was a multiple-choice quiz, similar to the one that you've all been enjoying so much in this show, in which his dates had to guess what he used to do for a living.

And the correct answer was the 14th option.

In fact, he used to assess the quality of Italian motor scooters made in the year that the film Toy Story came out, and Nelson Mandela Mandela inspired South Africa to win the Rugby World Cup for the first time.

So yes, the correct answer to what he did for a living was option 14, N95 Vespirator.

Yes, I mean that's the correct

N95 Vespirator.

N95 Vespirator.

It was so much better when that came up in my head.

He had very trouble, great trouble, of course, with the relationships and sex, not just caused by his obsession with covering his face, don't forget to donate,

during the act,

he used to wear a woolly head covering with holes just for the eyes and mouth only, but also some of his terminology for his his organs.

He used to refer to his membran woolliosus as his Vesuvius and his gentleman's ejunculatory fluidicals.

He used to refer to Alice as his Bolaclava.

No.

No.

Yep.

He told me the other day he's developed a vaccine, but it'll only work if it injected into men, not women.

He called it a he jab.

Right, du don't worry, only only

a couple more now.

And he used to have erotic dreams about prolonged kissing sessions with senior police officers.

He said, I'd love to neck a chief.

But anyway, some of his showbiz friends, he told me, and I'll finish with this, were struggling with what to wear as their new headgear.

And he told me, Andy, I had a call from the more successful of the two remaining members of the Beatles.

And he was telling me that he was having momentary urges to wear a nun's headdress.

And I said to him, I wouldn't do that on a whimpole.

Right, is that

the time?

I changed my background as a protest to me with my head and my hands.

Yeah, I see that, Nish.

And Alice, I see you've gone on disappearing protests.

But, you know.

Protest.

I was enjoying it so much that my legs gave out.

That's what happened, Andy.

Yeah, we've,

you know, we've to be, this is Chris's, it's Chris's fault.

Yeah, I wasn't going to do them, but he insisted.

What?

Hang on a second.

Victoria, Andy, you should, you should do, you should do some puns.

You should maybe do some puns on scars and face coverings, and uh, yeah, because I think the audience would love it.

And I said, Really?

That's snoods to me.

Oh,

yeah, there we go.

This is it.

He always

makes you think he's done, and he's not.

I am done now.

I am done now.

Bugle as that is the end of this live bugle.

This show is now over.

I will do

uh, this show is

over.

Thank you very much for watching, stroke listening,

stroke suffering through it.

Thank you very much for listening.

If you have enjoyed it, Buglers, do go to thebuglepodcast.com, click the donate button to pay for a virtual voluntary retrospective ticket.

Thank you to Chris for setting it all up.

And after that brief glitch at the start, making things run as smoothly as an egg.

Don't forget to listen to the last post, Alice's wonderful podcast

from the Bugle Stable.

Anything else to plug, Alice?

Oh, yes, my stand-up special, Savage, is available now on Amazon Prime for streaming.

If you do not like Amazon, it's still available as the trilogy podcast for free.

But if you do have Amazon Prime, stream it and then maybe they'll let me do more stuff.

Nish, anything to let our listeners to?

Tour of your own living room?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's still three episodes of the Mass Report on BBC iPlayer, which you can watch.

And if you don't live in Britain, you've all seen it on YouTube.

So

thank you.

If you've enjoyed this buglers, let us know.

If you haven't, constructive feedback will be ignored.

Welcome, it'll be very welcome.

And I'm sure we'll do another one at some point in the not-too-distant future, unless everything turns out to be fine with the world.

Thank you once again for joining us.

Huge thanks to Nish Kumar and Alice Fraser.

Thanks to producer Chris.

I've been Andy's Altsman signing off from the shed.

Until next time, goodbye.

Goodbye.

Are we done yet?

I mean, to the best of my guesses, we are now no longer streaming.

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.