Bugle 4148 - Panda Time

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4148 of The Bugle.

We are recording on Friday the 10th of April 2020 news evolving at an all-time record speed.

Since I began talking approximately 30 seconds ago, economics has been temporarily suspended for the first time in more than 25 years.

No economics will take place until next Thursday at the earliest.

The Dow Jones will bunk off for all of next week.

London's FTSE will not be allowed to switch itself on.

The Nikkei is being

forcibly isolated.

This follows money as a concept losing 36% of itself over the course of this week before pulling itself back together last night after a few drinks and a hot bath.

But money still down 8% in credibility, a significant but just about manageable decline.

And another quickly breaking news story: Estonia has hibernated

and no end date on that.

These are confusing times.

I'm joined from various points around the universe.

Well, firstly, from a long way away in Australia, Alice Fraser.

Hello Andy, hello buglers, how are you?

I'm adequate.

Let's not go overboard.

What about you?

I am slowly losing touch with reality.

There's something to be said for doing a daily satirical news podcast set in an alternate dimension while you have no access to the real world.

I've been losing touch with reality is

something that I've been just working on gradually over the past 45 years.

Also, joining us from considerably less far away, in fact, just a few miles away here in London.

It's Al Murray.

Hello, Al.

Now, I'm pretty much convinced this is only happening to me, and this is like the world's most elaborate practical joke.

And my whole street are in on it.

My street doesn't do anything together, but last night they were all out clapping like they knew each other.

Totally ridiculous.

Just lean out of the window and tell the joke before they start clapping.

Yeah,

what a wonderful time to be furloughed with a toddler.

If this child were a year younger, it'd be fine, more manageable, a year older, we'd be able to reason with it.

However.

So how old precisely?

Two and four months.

So right in the sweet spot for her.

She's just learned how to say no.

Which is not what you want when you're not allowed out.

I mean, we're furloughed.

You know, we've been locked down.

She doesn't understand.

Yeah.

You know?

And

we were out for a walk the other morning, and she ran into a friend who's had it.

And he was keeping his distance and everything.

And she ran to give him a cuddle and he ran away from her.

And it was like the most heartbreaking moment of all.

She encapsulated the entire situation.

Yeah.

Almost like Alan Border in the 1989 Ashes, all over again.

We are recording on the 10th of April 2020 on this day in the year 837.

Halley's Comet made its closest ever approach to Earth at just 3.2 million miles away, as measured by brother Ethel Grauch in a monastery in Lindisfarne, who is apparently a dab hand at judging celestial distances.

Halley's Comet not due back until 2061, although there are rumors that this could now be delayed until 2062 because of the coronavirus crisis, which has already seen two comet fly-bys cancelled and another indefinitely postponed.

As always a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week how to keep yourself occupied during lockdown.

We've been giving you various tips but with lockdown now in full swing across many parts of the world what do you do other than listening to each week's episodes of the Bugle and the Last Post 10 times over and analysing the hidden messages within?

Well, luckily for you the bugle this week gives you a smorgasbord of ideas for things for you to do alone with your housemates, partners, with your family, or with the increasingly awkward door-to-door salesperson who called at very much the wrong time just as lockdown was being imposed and is now stuck in your house for the foreseeable future, along with the 18 sets of double-glazed patio doors that he has persuaded you to buy.

Alan, can we please talk about something else?

Have I mentioned the advantages of a bifold door?

F you, Alan.

I want you to leave.

So, we have an entire week of activities planned out to keep you busy and active and stimulated to fill the aching void in your daily schedule.

Monday's activity is navel gazing.

It's not often you get the time and opportunity to clear the introspective decks enough to indulge in a prolonged bout of self-indulgent reflection on exactly what you're doing with your life.

So take this opportunity to spend a full afternoon really sinking into a soup of regret, doubt and worry like a not especially comforting tepid bath.

And the great thing with navel gazing is that it's not something you can get done in a day and then put to one side.

It can keep you occupied and entertained for weeks and weeks on end through the interminal human pertmafrost of lockdown.

Tuesday, existential dread.

This is a genuine family activity.

Gather around and think about all the implications for the world, all the things that have gone so disastrously wrong as the result of decisions we've made or not made in the past, and the things that are likely to go disastrously wrong as a result of the decisions we're making now and will make in the future.

Don't worry if your dread is interrupted by occasional eruptions of wild optimism about forging a new, more collaborative, more humane world order.

This is perfectly natural and all part of the process of coming to the conclusion that we are in fact totally doomed.

Wednesday, midlife crisis.

Consolidate all your activities from Monday's navel gazing and Tuesday's existential dread into a full-blown midlife crisis.

It doesn't even matter if you are in the traditional midlife age zone.

Everyone's life is currently at the mid-stage between pre-virus and post-virus.

So legally it counts as a midlife crisis, however old you are.

Panic about your personal future, priorities, values, philosophy of life, finances, political views, status, prospects, ambitions, hopes, fears, relationships and general spiritual id.

And don't forget to take regular breaks for snacks, meals, hydration, and looking at the sky wondering what the fk it's all about.

Thursday, bickery.

Much as we love our families, there are only so many board games, sing-alongs, film nights, biscuit bakings, experimental poetry recitals, seances, and educational dissections of the mouse corpse you found at the back of the cupboard you finally got round to clearing out of a decade's worth of accumulated junk that any family can take.

So pep up the day with some trivial arguments.

Allow those simmering irritations that have been bubbling up to boil over into genuine rancor.

A well-structured day of squabbling will encompass a mixture of ephemeral snap grudges, peevish oversensitivity to mild criticism, long-held gripes and groundless resentments about nothing in particular.

You might like to consider having one of your cohabitors, family or otherwise, for, for example, not finishing their sentences, eating salad too noisily, working in the international arms trade, or being the kind of person who might work in the international arms trade, or building a shrine to the 1960s pop legends Hermann's Hermits on the Sofa without full written permission.

Anything to get the squabble going, then riff it from there for as long as it takes until you get a solid week's peace and quiet from each other.

And Friday, paganism.

Lockdown is a great time to learn new skills, and in these times of cosmic uncertainty, why not get back to human basics with an introductory home home course in the basics of pagan worship.

Online lessons are available covering everything from basic incantations via effective and hygienic sacrificing to entry-level henging.

Begin with paper, then move up to cardboard within a few days, wood in a week or two progressing all the way to stone inside six weeks.

Also consider exorcisms.

A great way to bond as a family unit and cleanse the spirits of your loved ones.

Plus have some hilarious stories to share afterwards about the paroxysms of spiritual excess that the X or C went through as the demons left their bodies.

And finally for the weekend, Saturday, whimpering on the sofa.

You've made it to the weekend, relax and spend the day in a fug of low-level misery on the couch.

And Sunday, making vague plans that you have no realistic hope of actually putting into action.

Put the negativity of the past week behind you by thinking about stuff that you might do in the future before giving up on that and watching a TV cop show.

That is your bugle guide to how to keep busy during the lockdown.

Well, I'm picking a historical period by which to live each week,

matching my diet, manners, and acceptable thoughts to think to the period I've chosen.

This week has been the Regency period.

I spent yesterday in epistolatory correspondence and today planning a ball.

Very strong.

I mean this is one of the few occasions where you can say things were better in the old days.

It's actually viable to be actively nostalgic.

And

it doesn't even have to be the old days.

It could be four weeks ago.

Things were better for, you know,

we're actually, if you're into nostalgia, fill your boots.

Your moment's here.

This is your moment.

I'm just beating myself up over missed chances all the all the times even four weeks ago whether i could have just breathed on someone uh with impunity i feel sad that i'm

well that's one of the joys to look forward to when all this is behind us the the freedom to just go up and breathe on a stranger without repercussions

we take stuff for granted

as man in the bbc version of the little of the lion the witch and the wardrobe what a giant glove puppet

You did some great breathing and

is that not what we all are, Al?

I don't know what you've got up your butt.

Giant glove puppets on the hand of fate.

Top story this week, the virus again.

It's getting slightly irritating to have to keep coming back to this, but there is literally no other news in the universe currently.

How short a period ago was it when we were sick of Brexit and Trump?

And now it's...

I would have given anything anything to not have to talk about Brexit or Trump anymore.

And now

I mean, Trump's managed to get himself pretty well.

Well, Trump, yes, Trump has managed.

I mean, God bless him, he's managed to find a way through to in this story, hasn't he?

To cut through, regardless.

It's his unique ability, isn't it?

It's no matter what the calamity is, he's on hand to

find his way to the very center of the story and make it about him.

It's sort of heroic, really.

On some, I mean, that's not how the historians are going to write it up but at the moment um

uh it's sort of it's sort of extraordinary isn't it you know and uh because i was listening to the today program the other morning and he did call it a hoax didn't he he did call it he did call it a hoax and there was some uh u.s spokesman going he didn't call it a hoax like

come on let him just say yeah he did call it a hoax because it doesn't even he is so capable of operating that in a way that it doesn't matter if he called it a hoax or not it just it it he's extraordinary.

He lives in this 24-hour cycle.

Every day's a new day if you're Donald Trump.

It's fantastic.

He's got Snapchat for a brain.

Once something's said, it just evaporates into the mist of time.

It's gone.

It's long gone, never to return.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

Well, I mean, Al, you have a small child.

Yes.

It's one of the great privileges of being a child that you can flatly deny having said things and clearly said.

And

we've seen this with Trump.

There was further evidence as to the extent to which he is essentially a child.

The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Gebriisis, urged governments not to politicise the pandemic.

It's not too difficult to work out exactly which governments he was most issuing this plea to.

On Wednesday,

he said, we will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave.

Now, that use of the word behave, it couldn't have made it clearer that he was, in essence, speaking to a child.

Yeah.

Unless he'd said to Mr.

Trump directly, look, Father Christmas is not going to come unless we have a coherent cooperative international effort.

Well, you know, I mean, the thing is,

you're absolutely right though, Alice.

You said

to talk about anything other than Donald Trump, but like, it is that.

The worst that could happen until the coronavirus was Donald Trump.

And now the worst that can happen is Donald Trump and the coronavirus.

Yes, it's conservative.

There's no indulgences like the Catholic Church.

You can't wipe out one wrong with a right.

And he's literally catalytic, isn't he?

He increases the reaction without changing himself.

A bit of science.

Bit of science for you there.

Lovely.

Australian.

Britain has had no prime minister this week, as we will touch on later, and America has had no president for a long time.

Effectively, Donald Trump has abdicated but remains in office.

He's resigned, to all intents and purposes, but still has to pretend to do his job.

He's had considerable criticism, as you'd expect, from the

non-Trumpian media.

The columnist Q.

Julius Schlosnitz in the esteemed political journal The Natterer wrote, American democracy is spluttering for breath, begging for the oxygen of decency, leadership, and good sense.

The political protective equipment of its constitution bunged into an incinerator and replaced with a tattered piss-stained flag.

Not my words, the words of someone I'd just made up.

He's this week blasted through his 17,000th presidential pardon for himself for voluntary manslaughter arising from this crisis.

Now, he wouldn't have been necessarily guilty of all of them, but I guess better safe than sorry when it comes to comes to these things.

He offered Boris Johnson,

the stricken British leader,

some of his free medicine.

I can't remember exactly what he said to Boris.

I've said four really great drug companies.

Everyone says they're the most amazing drug companies in the world.

I've sent them to the doctors.

He's got really good doctors around him.

That's what he said.

He didn't name them.

I mean, it's so brilliantly bonkers.

Four of them.

All right, okay.

Not three, not five.

Four unnamed drug companies.

It sounded to me something like this.

And

it is quite strange to see the President of America peddling scam cures, essentially.

This is unprecedented since Calvin Coolidge tried to convince America that bunions could be cured by marinating your foot in a strawberry milkshake, or Ulysses S.

Grant promoted snakes as a cure for worms.

Britain news now and

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been in and thankfully now out of intensive care having tested positive for the coronavirus some time ago now.

This was

well Al it's been a it's been a very curious week, hasn't it?

Fantastic.

Boris has shown the virus who was boss and the country who his deputy was.

And

the deputy is Dominic Robb, as we all know, is an actor possessed by the master in Doctor Who.

He just looks like every little CEO picture at the front of an annual portfolio, Dominic Radha.

He's going to unzip his skin like this.

At the press conference, he's going to reach in and unzip his skin from his belly button and emerge.

And he's the master.

There's no other explanation for it.

I mean, well, you know, basically a bunch of grifting idiot Tories who've been over-promoted have ended up in charge of the clown car.

I mean, that's the other explanation.

Well, it's hard to know which is the right one, though.

I I can't jump to conclusions in these turbulent times.

Well, Daniel Street's bigger on the inside than it looks.

So

it could be.

Maybe he's the master.

He looks like the captain of a high school karate team who just peaked in high school.

And, you know, he wouldn't have been the one going, sweep the leg, Johnny, but he would have been the one standing behind the guy saying, sweep the leg, Johnny.

He's that guy.

I'm glad that Boris Johnson's better because now we can make fun of him again, which is nice.

Don't get me wrong,

I want him to feel incredibly ill, but only in the moral sense at the Nietzschean moment of having to look at himself in the mirror every morning and see only the void staring back.

He does seem to be on the mend, and hopefully will soon be able to return to his lifelong dream of being a wartime leader thus far.

Been more Neville Chamberlain than Winston Churchill, but still, but baby steps.

It was kind of weird the reaction to his

to his illness and

his colleagues and deputies saying we are sure he'll get through this because he's a fighter which is about as relevant to dealing with this horrific disease and saying we're sure he'll get through this because he's got blonde hair or because he's a rugby fan or because he owns a pogo stick or because he's a bit of a tosser and a congenital liar none of which is really relevant to whether or not he was able to fight off maybe a coronavirus you can fob off

maybe your immune system goes uh i'm not really here

I don't know.

We don't know, do we?

Maybe he has it.

Maybe there are some of the qualities you've just listed are actually, you know, we're all going to have to be injected with dishonesty

as the vaccine.

We don't know yet.

I mean,

I think you're rushing well ahead of the science here, Andy.

That's a pickup line someone used on me once.

Can I inject you with some dishonesty?

What I really love about British politics, people go, we have an unwritten constitution.

That's what's so brilliant about it.

And then the Prime Minister is potentially mortally ill with the illness that's wiping the country out.

And, oh, no, we don't actually have it.

We don't have a procedure in place when

he's made ill, when he's ill and he can't do his job.

No, not really.

No, we haven't got one.

And then everyone shits the bed.

Understandably, but it's unwritten, so it's better.

I mean,

the old things.

You know, maybe it's time to...

Maybe we don't have to write it down.

We at least have talked about it, maybe.

Well, we've seen the true horror of the cabinet of none of the talents that has been

built up by Prime Minister Johnson, brought home by the sight of Dominic Robb,

and also the lack of sight of Home Secretary Pretty Patel.

Now, you'd have thought the Home Secretary would be fairly prominent during this current crisis, but I think she's been kept behind the government's emergency force field, which we spent billions on preparing for an alien invasion.

I mean, what the f is that actually about?

about?

I mean,

to cut to the sort of, what on earth is going on?

Is it because she said so many embarrassing things about the people who are now having to

haul the country out of this?

So you know,

all these key workers who are from a, who do turn out to be an awful lot of them from abroad and so on, and she's been making all this threatening noises.

Is she in bat?

I mean, have we discovered that Pretty Patel actually does have a sense of embarrassment?

That we've hit her shame membrane?

that the virus.

Maybe that she's been injected with that with some kind of special sh shame-activating serum.

I mean, to be fair to Rob and

Pretty Patel, I mean, it's easy to be negative and cynical at times like this, but they are in the top 40 to 50 million British people best qualified for high-level political office.

In fact, I've just got the official rankings here, and there are, in fact, 38.73 million people precisely in Britain better qualified than Raab to be Foreign Secretary.

And he's only actually a million or so places ahead of me.

So he's not quite as bad as many people have been saying.

Boris, I mean, it's a very strange situation because we've seen the Scottish Chief Medical Officer having to resign for not following her own advice and have Robert Jennerick, another cabinet minister, being heavily criticised for not going completely by the letter of government advice.

But the Prime Minister a few weeks ago was observing social distancing guidelines with even less rigor than i observe kosher guidelines and i assume they're guidelines they might be stricter than that

i forget

um his father stanley johnson said uh amongst the extraordinary things that have been said about this this whole uh

um issue uh to use that american expression he almost took one for the team

we've got to make sure we play the game properly now now i don't know in what way boris johnson was taking one for the team or almost taking one for the...

I don't know if we had to assume that if the virus had succeeded, and shall we say permanently incapacitating the Prime Minister, it would have just packed up and moved on to another country.

And, you know, he would have saved the nation by his sacrifice.

I don't know if he's been heroically diving in front of vulnerable oldies in nursing homes, snatching the virus from their very mouths, gobbling it down and saying, this one's on me, Deirdre.

And those words, we've got to make sure we play the game properly now.

Yes, but we also had to make sure we were playing the game properly f ⁇ ing weeks ago, as evidenced by the story still coming out about surgical gowns running.

You could have got school kids to sew surgical gowns out of leftover bits of cloth from school kits.

Sorry, it's very rare that, very rare, Andy, that you actually show true anger.

Often, I find the anger on this program confected and

contrived, but for once, true emotion displayed.

The bugle listener doesn't realise that we're doing it, probably doesn't know that we're doing this by Zoom, so I can actually see Andy as he descends into this froth of fury, this boiling pit of rage, uncharacteristically so.

Surprisingly.

That's an awful lot of froth.

More froth than I was expecting, frankly.

Al,

you're a published historian.

And

you've written about.

I've written about history.

I haven't written any actual history.

been written.

You've written about

the Second World War.

And there's been

an unstoppable deluge of war references, war language,

war analogies.

Boris Johnson on the 23rd of March says, in this fight, we can be in no doubt that each and every one of us is directly enlisted.

There's kind of a queen referencing Vera Lynn, and I think there was a draft of a speech Boris Johnson was due to give this week before he was sadly hospitalised,

in which he pretty much lifted straight from Churchill.

We shall fight on the sofas, we shall fight on the landing, we shall fight in the kitchen and in the bedroom.

We shall not fight in the hills.

Please stay at home.

Do not go to the hills to fight.

You have to stay at home.

We have temporarily surrendered in the hope that we can desurrender when the time is right.

Go Team GB.

Teachers are closed.

Is it helpful, do you think, to have all this sort of thing?

It's all we got.

It's all we got.

It's all we got, right?

I mean, you know, you can't compare this to Henry VIII and and his six wives, which is the only other thing people know about history-wise.

I mean, is this virus Catherine of Aragon or is it Anne Boleyn?

You know,

we have got nothing else in our national historical locker.

I mean, interestingly enough, or the only other thing anyone's got is the Nazis from GCSE history when they have to do the Nazis, GCSE Nazis.

And that doesn't quite fit here.

At least not yet.

You know, not until Plodd is actually going through your shopping trolley to find out whether you've got the essential items you require.

That hasn't happened yet, but it's all, you know, it's all we've got.

I mean, I mean, you did it yourself.

You described him as Chamberlain rather than Churchill.

I mean, I think he's much more in the Asquith role.

And the First World War is a far more apt metaphor.

But no, I don't know.

You know, I mean, it is.

Of course,

the sweet ironies roll on.

The Bundeswehr, the German army is sending us ventilators.

And a friend of mine, a German friend of mine,

he put up Facebook going, oh, for fk's, you know, because

he's sick of all the war talk here

and always has been, even though he is a Second World War historian.

He's just, he just, he looks at it through this mad prism and of, have you any idea what it's like to be German with this going on?

And then, and I say to him, you started it.

And then what?

Because the thing he always forgets is that

because it's essentially, because there's a large slice of nationalism in the way people talk about the war like this that essentially it adapts and survives so if he so the bundles we're sending us ventilator ventilators of course they ought to they owe us that's how the that's how the second world british second world world mindset adopts to that yeah they owe us the favor because we saved them from themselves so they owe us those ventilators i don't care if we spent the last three years telling them to off and basically trying to start what would have been a war you know i mean the way we've tried to walk out on our on all of our international arrangements for the last three years would have started a war in the 1740s

or even the 1880s you know that we've done stuff but it won't they won't bite well the bastards won't bite anyway the point is

but the but the point is is it's you know it's a it is all we've got historically it it it's that or the six wives of henry the eighth can you see stalin behind me i've got a stalin bass drum head there i'll um anyway see him glimpsing through dalex in the house of comments yeah the stalin glimpsing through the the ether there there he is god bless him oh well no not god bless him.

No,

no, exactly.

The Second World War.

But it is all we've got.

It's the only game in town, you know.

And

it is interesting, though, because

I've friends who are paramedics, and they are talking about being the front line and going into fight.

And I'm not going to tell them they shouldn't.

I'm not going to go, oh, I don't know you should talk about it like that because they're on the receiving end of this thing.

I have a friend who's an NHS worker and he's classed as an essential worker.

And he's very embarrassed because everyone who knows that he he works for the NHS is calling him a hero, but what he does is filing.

Well, we shall file them on the beaches and so on.

I mean, someone's got to do the filing, though.

Is this the thing?

Yeah, yeah.

All right, I'll clap a little less next Thursday then because of the people doing the filing.

Yeah, no, you're doing filing.

Sorry.

Well,

these national rounds of applause on Thursday evenings have been

quite remarkable, really.

It's

quite a moving noise.

It was outside my house yesterday, and you can sort of hear from all the streets around this people clapping and and yeah, banging saucepans and and all that.

It's a phenomenon that is uniquely British apart from all the other places that were doing it before us.

But it's uniquely British nonetheless, like so many other uniquely British things.

And but it is you know it's good to see a centre we are gradually awakening to who and what is really valuable in society.

And this in turn could save the economy quite a lot of money because it could lead to a massive pay cut for NHS staff and carers and and the like because these jobs must be so spiritually rewarding and paid for with

the honey of public applause that to then give people decent money for it cheapens and trivials.

Andy, have you ever heard that much applause on a Thursday evening around 8 o'clock?

Well, around 8 o'clock, I have.

That's usually by the time I finish at 10 o'clock.

Especially as you're on your books are doing 15 minutes.

Anyway, to balance things out with these very positive rounds of applause on Thursday, on Monday evenings at 8 p.m.

from next week, there will be a national boo as well for all the people who've really done absolutely nothing to help in the current situation, the politicians who fail to heed warnings and take precautions, the disaster capitalists and hedge fund shyster punters who are profiteering from the misfortunes of the world.

And also, you know, the lower-level workers who deserve our opprobrium as well, the bailiffs and the payday loan shock.

So do go out 8 p.m.

next Monday and really let let rip

bogus theories news now and apparently the virus is not caused by the virus itself but by 5g communication masts um this is according to no less a source than multiple celebrities online leading to physical attacks on telephone poles um

Which does suggest that we've got a little way to go in evolution as a species.

Other people are blaming it on landlines or yoghurt bots with strings attached to them suspicion of communication is deep set in the human collective psyche really uh pretty much ever since the bubonic plague was spread by carrier pigeons and um

i guess it's one of the lessons of the social media age that there is absolutely nothing that could happen on this planet or elsewhere in the universe that will not be met with an absolute niagara of online bullshit apparently woody harrelson has been putting out the news that the uh 5g towers are responsible in some way for the coronavirus.

Why would you follow or believe in the real news when you can follow and believe Woody Harrelson, a man who's famous for playing drunks and maniacs?

It's astonishing to me how personally celebrities are taking the coronavirus from the stars who we're realising are completely at sea without a team of people telling them what not to do, like Madonna in a milk bath talking about equality or basically anyone in Hollywood that isn't Tom Hanks.

But they're having a disproportionate impact, apparently.

A study was done saying that while they are putting out about 20% of the information on coronavirus, they're having much more of an impact on the hearts and minds of people who are taking what they say very seriously.

You're absolutely right.

5G weren't happening now, it would be whatever was happening, wouldn't it?

It would be the it would be gramophone records, wouldn't it?

Well, what caused the Spanish flu?

The the the the gramophone, probably

uh, the Spanish.

Hey, hey, now, steady on,

steady on.

Um,

there's no

It's funny.

Yeah, it's...

Because someone burned a 4G mask down last night in Birmingham, apparently.

Oh, the wrong mask.

Right.

The wrong...

I mean, that's what whole G out.

It's our own goal.

Trump again has been in the forefront of

crackpot theories.

He's saying that the virus could be caused by factor 30 sunblock, but cured by factor 50 sunblock.

Also cured by a paste made up of crushed-up tamazepam ioli stick deodorant and cobwebs, syringed into a bullet casing and fired into your own foot from a cult 45.

He's also claimed that the virus could be cured simply by grabbing someone by their genitals.

Retreading his much misinterpreted advice, so widely publicized in the build-up to the 2016 presidential election on how to make women immune to scurvy.

Oh, is that what vitamin C stands for?

nature news now, and well, nature continues to exist

despite the virus.

And in fact, it's made a bit of a comeback in some ways.

There have been goats roaming the streets in Britain.

The first sighting of an auroch in Britain since the Bronze Age.

For 3,000 years, those horny-headed, fluffy bastards have been lying low.

And

well, also, pandas

have apparently been mating for the first time in years.

Alice, you are our animal sexual congress correspondent.

Bring us up to date with the

latest news.

Yes, everybody's favourite celibate panda couple, Ying Ying and Lili at the Ocean Park Zoo,

have started banging again.

And all it took was the zoo shutting down.

They'd been

they've spent about 10 years not having sex in front of people.

and now the zoo's shut down.

They are at it apparently, potentially leading to a coronavirus baby or the first of the coronials, as the new baby boom will be called.

And

what it means to me, I think, is that either the pandas are enjoying the privacy, they don't like being perved on while they're banging, which makes them unique among politicians, or

they're really turned on by the idea of humanity in crisis.

Well, it's their moment, isn't it?

Quick!

Make some babies.

The planet will be ours soon, isn't isn't it?

It's I don't know.

I don't know, that's the panda's accent.

Um, I've watched too much Paddington, um,

who seems like an awfully nice, um, sort of fae gentleman, Paddington.

Anyway,

I mean, it is.

I mean, the thing is, this is a very interesting idea that they're at it now that they're not being watched anymore.

Does that mean if you don't watch Pornhub, they do they have even more sex?

You know,

the watched panda never fks, isn't it?

It's

also a fking panda is right twice a day.

Yeah, very philosophical.

Well, it's the time to be philosophical, isn't it?

Andy, I mean, there's a f ⁇ all else to do.

Unless you're a panda, in which case there is something

else.

F all, yeah.

But I've seen the photographs.

I mean, I've, because they have...

published images haven't they and it and it's one panda behind the other in what you know i believe this is the classical sort of

doggy style.

I don't know.

I don't know.

That's what it was certainly.

It's pana style.

Well, it's panda style now, isn't it?

They're going to redefine the entire thing, aren't they?

I feel like pandas would have a poetic name for it.

They seem the type.

What, the praying lotus or something?

I mean, we don't know.

It could be like the 5G.

It could just be coincidence.

They could have just been engaging in extremely extended foreplay for the past 10 years.

Yeah, that's right.

It could be.

It's understandable if you're in a zoo, you know, locked in a cage with another animal for 10 years.

You know, you don't want to make things awkward.

You don't want to spoil the friendship.

You've got to take your time.

Pandas, the male pandas be saying, trust me, sex would just ruin everything.

We're really good friends.

I just imagine, I imagine that they've been trying both.

They've had unrequited crushes on each other, but it's sort of like a Hugh Grant situation in a rom-com where they just keep awkwardly having, making mistakes and then feeling too embarrassed.

You're saying the panda is British, yes, As a species?

That's definitely the case.

In other natural world news, scientists have found a sea creature made up of, quote, millions of clones that takes the form of essentially a bit of silly string 120 meters long.

It's formed of a predatory colony of clone organisms that hunt down and slay their enemies, to which the obvious response is, what the fishing is the last

thing we need right now, an army of fishy clones preparing to take over the fing world.

It is possible, of course, that the ocean clone beings are working in tandem with the virus in some kind of tag team apocalypse, but these are deeply distressing times.

120 meter long bit of clone silly string.

It looks like a sort of runny cow pack, doesn't it?

Have you?

I mean, I think it's so beautiful.

It's sort of bioluminescent.

It's like this giant...

It's essentially a Borg hive mind.

It's bigger than any of the other creatures of its type that have yet been discovered.

It's very coordinated and it's also an awe-inspiringly beautiful piece of the natural world.

A lot like Lizzo.

Just.

That was the only joke I had.

I reckon you guys are too old to get how good that joke is.

Andy, who's Lizzo?

I thought it was a cleaning product.

Isn't it someone from Greece?

She's very beautiful and very coordinated and also quite big.

She's a pop star.

She plays the flute.

Get into it, man.

Okay.

I'm still catching.

I haven't finished the 50s yet.

Sport now.

And there was some sport last weekend.

The virtual Grand National.

I don't know if you...

Did you see this, Al?

The computerized version of the Grand National

last weekend.

It was graphically realistic.

There were some glitches in the technology.

However, the pre-pseudo-race, pseudo-favorite Tiger Roll, who won the real Grand National the last two years, was kidnapped by some terrorists who'd accidentally transferred across to the virtual Grand National from the counter-terrorism simulator game Snake Breaker Dominion of Rage.

This left things clear for the 28-1 shot Spartacus Tootsie to take an early lead before he fell at Beecher's Brook, Fence 6, and in obvious distress was then graphically put down by a military attack helicopter

as the game took some liberties with Grand National reality.

A glitch in the programming then resulted in the robot horse ridden by Yul Brynner joining the race and shooting the then leader, the hotly tipped Whit Me I Like It and its celebrity virtual jockey Winston Churchill.

People's choice entry champion the Wonder Horse, the 1950s TV star horse who was voted to take part from a short list of popular celebrity horses, ran creditably to finish ninth, avoiding the carnage when Lewis Hamilton's car mowed down six of the virtual horses.

The company Sham Sports, who were were running the Virtual Grand National, were also running a virtual F1 race on the same afternoon, and there was apparently a bit of a glitchy crossover.

It then looked like 12 to 1 second favourite Dostoevsky Daddle was going to romp home after clearing the loss, but a very realistic-looking Emily Davidson ran out from the crowd at the elbow to rugby tackle him.

Bit anachronistic and inaccurate, but a nice touch, leaving 50 to 1 outsider Terrapin Hoodwinkle to win after the three horses in front of him started buffering due to a dodgy internet connection.

Next week, there'll be a virtual boat race.

It's going to be HMS Victory versus the Mary Celeste.

Andy, in the absence of sport your mind is a truly marvellous place.

Pugal home education section now and I did promise you a history exam

last week and we've overrun once again so we'll just do a couple of questions from it and then we'll have part two of the history exam.

Next week Al I know you're a keen, keen history supporter.

That's my team.

That's who I turn out for every Saturday afternoon.

The past.

So I'll let you get some answers to some of these questions and for any

bugle listeners home schooling you can set this for your children as well as well.

Question one is an odd one out question.

Pick the odd one out from the following seven historical figures.

Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan, Emperor Nero, Vlad the Impaler, Tamerlaine the Great, Shirley Temple and Joseph Stalin.

I'm going Tamerlane the Great.

Alice, any guesses on that one?

I don't know, Emperor Nero.

It's in fact Shirley Temple.

She's the only one who would not have been allowed to be a member of the Marleybone Cricket Club before 1995.

Question two is more of a kind of essay type question.

Explain how different history would have been if humans had evolved with snouts on their faces.

Refer to at least three of the following historical phenomena, the Ming Dynasty, the Renaissance, and the Eurovision Song Contest.

With a snout, there'd be no need for a Ming vase.

We'd be looking at trading Ming bowls, so you could get your snout into the bowl rather than a vase.

Because if you've got a snout, you can smell...

flowers at a distance so you don't need to bring them into the house put them in a vase so that i think is one of the one of the main differences in human history.

What were the other eras?

The Renaissance.

Oh,

well, we just wouldn't have had one.

I think we're having a denaissance.

Oh, yeah, very, very definitely.

Totally, totally denaissanced.

Yeah, yeah, no,

we just wouldn't have had one.

So, things,

you know, and that would have meant no reformation.

It would basically still be like the 13th century.

Right.

Well, that's something to cling to.

Yeah.

And

question three, the last question this week, we'll have the rest next week.

In no fewer than one word, outline the four most important factors in the avoidance of a bilateral war between Canada and Indonesia in the years 1250 to 1600.

You can answer that one in your own point.

Anyway,

that

brings us to the end of,

since it's holiday time, we don't really need to do

homeschooling right now.

But anyway, I'll have the rest of the history exam next week.

Thank you very much for

joining me.

Alan, have you got any other

virus lockdown projects on the go that people can tune into?

Well, I'm doing, if people are interested, my Second World War podcast, we have ways of making you talk.

Me and James Holland, who's actually a historian, me going, what?

No, come off it, and him telling you exactly how many merchant seamen died in the second world.

It's amazing what he knows.

Um, and we're doing that at the moment, and we've been doing a load of extra content.

I've been doing sort of we've been finding books that are out of print, and I've been doing them as audio books and putting them up on our.

We've got a little Patreon site now.

Oh, that's so nice.

Yeah, it's actually been, it's, it's, it, it's been, actually been, I, well, it started off as I thought, well, this is a good idea, and then once you've read a whole book outline, you think, oh, God, and oh, god, I'm gonna have to do another one.

But it's been really cool.

I've got reading a book reading a book by at the moment by a guy who was a fighter pilot on malta but who was also an artist so his descriptions of it all are incredibly vivid because he's because he's always thinking in terms of the color and the spectacle and it's um uh so i'm doing that that's what i'm doing where can people find uh find all the moment

um well there's a twitter account called at we have ways pod

um because it's called we have ways of making you talk and it's on a cast and then there's a patreon with the same name but you know if people are interested and it's it's it's fun and we've we're collecting people's family histories as well from the war, which has been really amazing.

Really, really incredible stuff people have been telling us.

Alice, of course, the last post just threw its hundredth episode.

Yeah, since the 1st of January, it's been 100 episodes of absolute fing nonsense.

Wow, you are motoring, aren't you?

That's amazing.

My brain is slowly disintegrating under the pressure.

Also, my special Savage will be coming out on Amazon Prime on the 17th of April.

I'll be having a live-watching party for that with Neil Gaiman.

So look at my social media for that.

That's alliterative A-Li-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E on Instagram and Twitter.

Thank you very much for listening, Buglers.

We will play you out, as always, with some lies about our premium voluntary subscribers.

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

Kim Stromstadt once signed into an online forum to discuss the best domestic uses for sporting equipment with the apparently innocuous username Glockenspiel eucalyptus, only to be met with a barrage of invective from another user who went by the pseudonym Unbeloved Chocolate.

Kim explains, Unbeloved Chocolate had suffered a childhood trauma when he was hit on the head by a glockenspiel falling out of a eucalyptus tree.

He was perhaps understandably a bit cross.

Alina I was involved in that online discussion and won a forum record number of likes for her suggestion that two heat-coated Babminton rackets could be used to grill toasted sandwiches, a baseball glove would make a serviceable coconut ripener, and a rugby ball with halved squash balls glued to it would work very well as a communal dummy for a litter of young puppies or kittens.

Rhys Finney is the proud non-owner of any cutlery or crockery.

I don't believe humans should have any further advantages in the food chain, says Rhys.

We've already got opposable thumbs in industrialised farming.

So if I can't eat stuff using only my bare hands as implements, I'm not interested.

Hashtag food fairness for all species.

Isabella Cawthorne dreams of setting up an orchestra for people who cannot play musical instruments.

For too long, argues Isabella, top-level classical music has been the preserve of people who have put in years of effort to learn an instrument.

This is patently unfair to people who did not have that opportunity or couldn't be bothered.

Catherine Fearon volunteers to be the first member of Isabella's instrumentless orchestra.

Many people have a talent for doing impressions of instruments, says Catherine.

I, for example, play the invisible trumpet very well indeed.

I can do a passable air bassoon too, and my friend's uncle sounds like a tuber when he's drunk.

This plan is on.

Vivek Anand Sridhar believes all political leaders should walk on stilts and wear massive cloaks, like mythical giant rulers from another dimension.

I think we would respect them more, argues Vivek Anand, and they might talk less rubbish if they were having to concentrate on not falling off their stilts, or if they were outside on a windy day, not being blown over by a strong gust of wind to the cloak.

And finally, Brian Meissner once convinced a waiter in a restaurant that he was exempt from paying for his food until the following day because he was a believer in metabolism, a legally protected spiritual sect that held that a meal was not complete until the full process of digestion had taken place.

To be fair to Brian, he did return to the restaurant the following day and pay.

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.