Bugle 4144 - Mo' moons mo' problems

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4144 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a pestilent world.

I am Zaltor, all-curing god of health.

Sadly, I'm on a badly timed sabbatical.

I've spent the last couple of of decades in the all-too-human form of Andy Zoltzmann.

I'm in London where danger stalks on every street.

Not danger, kebabs.

It's not a different kind of danger.

The virus has not shut down the bugle, nor this recording studio here at something else with its super hygienic virus-proof microphones.

They're totally safe, aren't they, Chris?

And there's no way you could possibly transmit a virus through one of these things that has hundreds of different people talking into it every week.

Yes.

They've They've deliberately put a porous coating on top just to absorb and trap the most.

Well exactly, because the foam bit of the microphone acts like a maze for viruses.

Viruses, as we know, they love to try and solve a puzzle.

That's why they keep mutating and they've got a very clever, clever species, the virus.

Anyway, they get a bit excited by the foam you've got on microphones and they think, oh, this is a hell of a lot more fun than a nasal cavity.

And then they get lost and trapped deep

within the maze of the microphone.

Then they disappear into the microphone itself, where they eventually degrade and are transformed into commercial radio jingles.

You're making me think that the virus is like Jack Nicholson at the end of the shining.

It is.

It's anyways.

It's very much like that.

Joining me in this still uncancelled recording, one of the few things that is still happening in this universe.

Actually, I'm just hearing that tomorrow afternoon has been cancelled on

health and safety grounds.

I'm going to

skip straight from morning to evening.

So at midday tomorrow,

things will just move to 6.30pm.

Joining me right now, a new guest on the bugle, former world chess champion Anatoly Copp.

Oh no, he's been cancelled as well.

Just one week.

It's the Brazilian football legend, Gorinch.

Oh no, he died several decades ago.

Bench time

into the breach at emergency short notice.

Alice Fraser and Tiff Stevenson.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi.

Has the world been cancelled because it's problematic?

It does seem that way.

The planet has been struggling for a while, and I think it's probably the best for everyone if it just takes a 10-year sabbatical frankly.

Maybe this is the opportunity we've been waiting for because really I don't think the planet's caught up with stuff since basically

you know the day that God took off at the end of creation all those years ago.

6,000 odd years ago now.

This is the new dinosaurs dying.

Well thanks for bringing me in at last notice.

I was going to spend the morning writing jokes for this hilarious podcast but unfortunately I was waking up with the news that the the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is cancelled so my my plans are in chaos.

I have to decide whether I, you know, I have to project whether the world is going to descend into absolute chaos, in which case I should go back to Australia and be with my family, or whether it's only going to descend into moderate chaos, in which case I can sort of hang out in London and take pot shots at scavengers from my window.

Ah, yeah, I'm supposed to be going to America, but Broadway's gone dark, guys.

Let's talk about the real issues.

Broadway's gone dark.

And then I was going to go on to LA where they've cancelled gatherings of over 50 people.

What's really great is seeing comedians originally it was 250 so what we've been seeing is a lot of American comedians showing off that they sell out 250 plus rooms by going guys my show's not happening but the show's in the smaller rooms.

So if there's still a way to make this whole thing about ego we will find it.

I mean they shouldn't bother cancelling gatherings of more than 50 people.

They should bother cancelling gatherings of people over 50.

Right.

Given that those are the the highest risk demographics.

You know, it should be old people should isolate themselves.

They don't have problems with loneliness at all.

We can just push them into the fringes of society where they belong.

My parents, who are both in their 70s, just went out and ate at a restaurant yesterday, like they give zero fks.

And I think my plan later on this afternoon is to spend an hour teaching them how to do an online food shop or order, how to order food online.

After which, I normally need about three hours of therapy when I do IT support with my parents

because it is

painful.

Just don't tell your mum about online porn.

That's a

deep well, she won't come out of it.

We've had many wise pieces of advice on the bugle over the years, but maybe nothing quite as insightful and sagacious as that, Alice.

Family shows, we keep saying.

As always, we will get more onto the virus

later in the show, As always, some sections of the bugle are going straight in the bin, along with basically the entire world this week.

I mean, this is very difficult.

Alice, you had the news that the Melbourne Festival has been cancelled.

I've just,

whilst I was on the tube on the way here, England's cricket tour of Sri Lanka has been called off.

Devastating.

I mean,

the thing is...

You're allowed to do a full screen for a minute if you're not.

I'm doing that on the inside, too.

I thought I'd manage to restrain myself quite effectively.

I mean, I've been doing that for the better of the the last 15 years, but

pretty much since John went to America, actually, for some reason.

So, I mean, there's got to be, I mean, there has to be.

I think the key is, as a sports fan, the Formula One season suspended until May, that will make no difference to me.

I'll just go and watch the traffic outside and imagine it going a lot quicker.

Oh, football's off.

Even ice hockey, the NHL is off, the British Elite Elite League is off.

If the Streatham Redhawks charge to the National Ice Hockey League South Division gets derailed by this virus, there will be riots on the streets of South London.

I'm telling you that for free.

Blades at Dawn.

Yeah, it's going to be horrific.

But the problem is, for me, you know, it'd be all very well.

I could just sit and watch YouTube videos of sporting events from the past, but I generally know all the results that have ever happened.

So it's that watching something without knowing what happened that's

going to miss it.

The pain of omniscience.

You and God, Andy.

You and God.

Peas in a pod that neither of us really exists.

If God is everywhere, that means he watches poo.

He's watching us poop, and that means God is a pervert.

Sorry.

Only if he's enjoying watching us poop.

Yeah, he might be a proctologist.

Anyway.

What if God was?

In the bin this week.

Oh, wait.

What if God was up your butt?

I'm sorry.

Not sorry enough.

In the bin this week, a travel section, but not any travel section, a thinking about travel section.

We give you the load on all the trendiest travel destinations to think about going to.

All the hypothetical hotels that you might be staying in.

And all those wonderful journeys that you could have had were it not for this goddamn virus.

and we review Scluton Malvain's new coronavirus pop-up non-brassery medible a Thea restaurant as Malvane calls it a non-existent restaurant where for just $120 a head and of course no service for the non-existent staff so that saves you a lot particularly if you're American

for that price you'll receive an email telling you all about the meal that you might have experienced had the restaurant existed the decor you could have enjoyed the wine list you might have perused whilst thinking how can one bottle cost that much before plumbing for the third cheapest not the second it's a special night out.

Of course, a dazzlingly inventive menu of unthought-of-commensible wonders to emerge from the mind of Malvain.

The waiting staff that you might have had a surprisingly potent one-evening crush on, and the fist fight you might have had to pick.

And the fist fight you might have had with the prick on the table next to yours who sneezed without covering his snoutal area.

The star dish

in the theater restaurant tonight is rampantly cockled aficionado of Longostine served on a fresh-counted 12 of sea marinated seaweed, strapped by a gutless alarm of celebriac and phaubergine.

Faubagine is for the non-vegan market.

It's made of chicken.

That section

in the bin.

We are recording this on the 13th.

Is it the 13th?

It is.

We are recording this on the 13th of March, which coincidentally is World Blame Someone Else Day.

And I think the President of America got in a day early on that one.

And to mark this, Blame Someone Else Day, we're giving you free bugle scapegoats to blame for anything you like in the world, the virus or any other issues, including the French literary celebrity Voltaire, the Inca civilization, Egyptian cat goddess Bastet, and Pablo Chuckfish, the retired non-existent Mexican wrestler.

Also, today is World Sleep Day.

It's going very badly for me, actually, as evidenced by the fact that I'm talking.

And tomorrow, the 14th, is, as we record, crowdfunding day and International Ask a Question Day.

So the question we ask is, do you want to voluntarily subscribe to the bugle?

In this case,

two birds of one stone.

Go to the bugle website and click the donate button.

Top story this week, the world is in spluttering meltdown.

Well, as we've already touched on,

it's affecting not just ordinary people, but comedians as well.

And I mean, you wouldn't have thought that obviously we're immune to the virus because, famously, laughter is the best medicine, so we have a natural immunity to all diseases.

It's true that laughter is the best medicine, which explains why the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies have taken out patents on the giggle, the snigger, the guffaw, the cackle, and the wry chuckle.

And they won't even let people in the world's less amused nations use cheaper, generic laughs.

So these are strange times.

I think

I found just myself just watching, just feeling sad all week.

And that's unusual.

Well,

I mean, maybe it's just because my distractions are being ripped away from me, but I think I've shown the fragility of everything we base our entire world on, the finances, the distractions, the delusions, the hopes, the assumed certainties, and the basic necessities of existence like food supplies, medical care, and sports.

The whole thing's just been shown to be as solid and immovable as an egg in a tumble dryer.

The problem, as my dad often says, is that we evolved from fish.

So

our whole...

So we haven't blamed the fish yet, haven't we?

So our whole sort of front head area is moist.

It has to be moist because we evolved from fish.

And so we're just carrying around our own little horrible breeding grounds in the front of our heads.

What we need is a next step in evolution, I think, so that we just become dry and sanitary.

Dry and sanitary.

There we go.

I mean, that's a good amphit for Tampax, isn't it?

Well, I hear the United Kingdom, there's a petition currently being debated in Parliament to temporarily change the country's name to the Flu Night Kingdom so that people in the public can better understand the extent of the virus pandemic.

The Under Secretary for Disease, Timothy Hyphen-Ampersand, said, quote, there's no problem we British can't solve through the application of weak as piss wordplay.

He then listed his favourite song as Billy Eilish's I'm the Bad Guy, but then he plays it while interrupting it loudly by saying, Hi, the bad guy, I'm Dad.

I think what's interesting is we've seen

the reactions around the world, and

political actions that might have been considered a bit suspiciously lefty or too soft for the harsh realities of our great commercial planet or not really economically advantageous, like employment rights, healthcare, free when needed, and demanding and expecting social responsibility from big business.

They've suddenly become accepted and mainstream, almost.

And why is that?

Because the markets are collectively shitting themselves.

So this is kind of an ironic circle of economic necessity.

We've been pushed into lefty-ism

by a tiny little virus.

I think it's nice that people, you know, because there's two options here.

One is that we all rush out to get the virus as quickly as possible so it's over and done with in sort of an economically feasible time frame.

And we haven't chosen to do that.

We've just decided to sort of try and protect the weaker members of our society, which I think is great.

I think it sort of contradicted my initial impression of people, which is that they, you know, when you play a video game and there's non-player characters, I think most people walk around London thinking of everyone else as an NPC.

Oh, yeah, someone open-mouth-sneezed outside Tesco.

I was tweeting about this.

I saw it from about 30 feet away, and we can put in place as many measures as we like, but we can't legislate for it.

It's

just so many things.

It's going to open mouth sneeze and not bother to even cover their face.

It's already affecting our lives particularly.

We normally begin the bugle episode with the traditional round of open-mouth hand kisses and we've had to dispense with that for today, which I think is terrible.

Sometimes we might even tongue.

Yeah.

You know, tongues come out.

I mean, if no one's...

Podcast has changed.

Well, you and ITIF will often.

You and ITIF will often just whisper secrets into one another's mouths like toddlers.

Yeah, yeah.

That's basically what podcasts are, essentially.

Look, no one is immune from this.

Tom Hanks has

got the virus.

Corona's got a full Hollywood.

Who's doing its PR?

I want to get Tom Hanks.

That's got to be at least 100 million opening weekend, right?

I can't believe he's got it, even though he spent all that time on that island, isolated from Yanni.

His only company was his wife/slash basketball, Miss Rita Wilson.

I mean,

if Tom Hanks can get it, anyone can get it.

Likeability is no protection.

Well, when you say that, top actors are, of course, better placed than most to ride out the virus because no matter how bad they've got it, they can really convincingly pretend that they're fine.

You know, just act their way out of it.

So even when they're spluttering their guts out, calling for a priest and having flashbacks to the first time they felt portrayed in childhood, they can just seem like they're fine.

But it does show that the virus is no respecter of box office and awards season success because, you know, if it can get a Hollywood superstar whose films have grossed around $10 billion, that sends a very worrying message to us all.

The virus, it seems, attacks celebrities far more rapidly than, for example, the legal system.

I think

I was just saying, they're in Australia, they're in your home country, and they're worried that they've spread the virus because,

like, contrary to a lot of very famous people, they seem to be quite genuine and down-to-earth.

He's a very licky person, isn't he?

Well, he's very licky.

How do you know?

She's his popsicle.

But they interact with their fans big time.

Accidental pun.

But Tom doesn't want to be a ladykiller.

You know, he's not going, all catch me if you can.

He's castaway in the burbs.

It's a real drag.

Net, something, something, Apollo 13.

That was a big effort.

Well done.

Well done.

A number of other

celebrities,

prominent people.

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, the wife of the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, the Arsenal football club manager Mikel Arteta, Nadine Dorrie, the British government minister, the children's cartoon character Yogi Bear, and King Lear, the Shakespearean supercodger, contracted the virus after an infected drama student sneezed on a script.

So

no one is safe.

And as you say on the subject of acting, Broadway has been shut down.

So my planned Broadway circus stand-up satirical crossover show, Trapezi Targets, is now off.

There has been a slight change on that today.

Some shows will be allowed to go ahead, but only if they're guaranteed not to draw a crowd.

I'll probably be fine as well.

Following shows are still on.

Ferris, the unstoppably shitting dog, the musical.

Rat Rotica, which is a Broadway transfer for the CD New York peep show involving mating rats who are wearing lingerie made of cheese.

A history of Turkmenistan tennis, a stage extravaganda.

Just not a lot to build a show around.

With all due respect to Johan Byramovas, a sent to number 568 in the ITF Junior singles rankings back in 2014.

It's a terrible person.

It's a tough watch.

The long, slow death of Big Bird,

truly harrowing for everyone, particularly Sesame Street fans.

And Snakes in a Theatre, the theatrical follow-up to the hit Samuel L.

Jackson movie Snakes on a Plane, which has really struggled at the box office, described by one unhappy punter as way too realistic.

Those shows.

Still, travel's been banned.

So we had Donald Trump banning travel from EU member states, excluding the Republic of Ireland, and also excluding recent EU member states, the United Kingdom, on the grounds that no one knows.

On the grounds that he has golf courses on them.

There we go.

So that on those grounds.

On the grounds that he has grounds there.

On the grounds of his grounds, yeah.

I mean, in his speech, he sounded vaguely reasonable or ill.

I don't know which, maybe both, or maybe I've gone crazy at this point.

But he seemed to

kind of be quite calm and reasonable, laying out the plans for what they were going to do.

And that's, I think,

you know, look, he's the president, so he's going to speak on it.

But here, we're just getting everyone pop up.

We've got Farage popping up on news night, like giving his opinion on Corona, which in many ways is suitable because he is the physical embodiment, ugly, parasitic, obsessed, not just with self-isolating, but isolating an entire nation.

Yeah, yeah, on a bus.

But like,

those are the people I just don't need the takes from.

You know, the Facebook post that's like a friend of a friend who works in a hospital that knows your uncle Bill.

F Bill.

And his opinions.

Stop trying to panic me.

Well, Trump did seem to attempt to calm a worried uncertain nation.

And in doing so, as you might expect from a cannibal in a care home, it sparked widespread panic and

stock market mayhem and the stock markets.

I mean, it's very hard really to understand as a non-economist, despite the fact that I'm a published economist.

The funny thing is, Annie, you are

the stock market, like the coked-up tryhards that they are, have absolutely shat themselves over the past week at the prospect of troubled times ahead.

A bit of a pattern of behaviour emerging there, but still, as long as we keep leaving our entire economic system totally dependent on them, I'm sure someday they'll crack it.

I heard the Dow Jones was low, but most Welshmen I know are depressed anyway.

Boris Johnson also came out with his

most serious face.

I mean, this is an interesting because the world is full of kind of clown pseudo-leaders who've accidentally got into power, and they're now having to dig out some serious faces as politics has been dragged, kicking, and screaming from its comfort zone of deception and fantasy role-playing into the irritating reality of pandemic pandemonium.

And Boris Johnson warned Britain that people would lose their loved ones before their time, which is a bit disrespectful, I think, to the tens of thousands of British people who are still dying of other diseases, whom Boris Johnson obviously thinks have had a fair innings and deserve to pop it.

At least someone's had a fair innings, Andy.

Yes.

But Boris Johnson's face did really scream, this is the kind of serious shit that I did not sign up for.

Well, Farage is quote tweeting Boris, calling him an ineffectual leader.

It's been great on Twitter.

Katie Hopkins is quoting that tweet, telling Farage he's useless.

So she's quoting a tweet of a tweet of a tweet, which is twat seption, I believe.

Or like watching three rats fight in a bin when the bin is on fire.

Why am I watching it?

Is probably

a good question, but we're all just going to be on social media now relentlessly when we self-isolate.

I'm looking forward to it deeply.

Love a flame war.

That's a lie.

I hate a flame war.

Apparently, did you know that masturbation makes you

help your immunity?

So

if you masturbate, that you can ward off various diseases.

Is this from the government?

I don't know.

It's just the latest government self-isolation.

I don't think that Boris masturbates so much as has unprotected sex and just, you know, knocks women up around the country.

Yeah, but he's pretending they're not there.

So is it the same?

I just realised this is why teenage boys think they're invincible.

Well,

someone responded to this news with a gif of like bears dancing saying boys when they hear the news.

But that is to assume that girls don't masturbate and it's just it's just less obvious.

You don't have the cracked socks when girls do it, but you do have like cuddly toys that have been decimated during teenage years.

A lot of baths.

A lot of baths.

Cuddly like care bears, turns out they really do care.

Like and I don't know how aware men and boys are of the fact that teenage girls obviously I mean, I've never heard of this.

This is just huge.

It's a very British thing, to be fair.

I talked about it at a show the other night, and it got a big laugh of recognition from women in the room.

So, Alice is trying to extricate herself.

Maybe you used a book, Alice.

It's funny because it's true.

Some little paper cuts.

Family show, Andy.

Family show.

Family.

But apparently, it does boost your immune system.

And I was doing shows in Manchester at the weekend that were like 500 people at the early show, 500 at the late show.

So they must have all been wankers because they looked in rude health.

It probably showed up on the Richter scale.

I mean, life expectancy back in the 14th century when such things were frowned upon was what, mid-20s, wasn't it?

So obviously there's proof since

life expectancy around the world has shot up since masturbation was discovered in, I think it was 1514.

I don't remember.

Was it before Christ or after?

Well after.

Well after.

Because the Victorians used to, if you were depressed as a woman, they believed it was due to hysteria and you could go into the doctor and they'd frig you off with a big vibrator.

Which is not fair because now

if I'm not well, I'm going to get Prozac.

I want to get frigged off.

It's not fair.

That's one rare time that it was actually better back then.

Well, I don't know how that works in America with health insurance.

Was Was that

covered?

I don't think it's cool.

You have to go through your employer.

Yeah, we'd have to ask Andy, who's technically our boss.

Let's move on, shall we?

A man made more uncomfortable by the very concept of sex should not have two children.

China

appears to have

significantly declining rates of infection and has apparently opened up a robot hospital.

Now this is clearly where

the world is going.

I mean human doctors

notoriously still let a lot of people die.

Whereas the robot doctor of course will be totally infallible as robots are.

Yeah there's six different kinds of robo-doctors in this new hospital which is in Wuchang in Wuhan.

They're going to do all the sort of dirty work which is nice.

It's nice to take that out.

And the whole hospital is equipped with 5G Wi-Fi, so people can tweet from their deathbeds, which is handy.

I'm super excited to see the new sitcom, the drama that's set in the new robot hospital, and it's going to be called ERR2D2.

Just the romance, the drama, the complete lack of emotion.

It's like house, but with robots.

Yeah, you don't want a power cut.

I would have thought, in a hospital like that.

Well, the fascinating thing about this hospital is that it was set up in less than a week, and the robots were donated by Chinese cloud robotics company Cloud Mines.

And the fact that

they had enough robots on standby to set up our hospital in less than a week implies a huge reserve of robots that is worrying to me.

Yeah, I wouldn't trust any of them.

You've seen those Boston tech videos, right?

Yeah, of the advanced

robot dogs.

Yeah, have a thousand work.

Here, have a thousand robots.

Don't ask any questions.

Well, it does look increasingly like this planet is no longer viable.

So attention, as always, turns to potential other worlds that we could live on.

And some very exciting news has come through recently that astronomers have observed a distant planet called WASP-76B,

where it rains molten iron.

I mean, that's not bad.

At least if it rains iron, iron won't rust in the rain.

Good point.

Yeah, it'll just get more irony.

Ah, the irony.

I mean, it's the perfect planet for British people.

I have some real weather to complain about.

Oh, it's bloody raining.

That's the last thing my hard drangers need, molten iron, pissing it down.

Don't get me started on the bloody wind.

Over 10,000 miles an hour again.

I've got through six umbrellas this year, and it's not even the end of finging March yet.

If it's raining iron, that's fine.

If it also rained vitamin B6, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid, vitamin D, I wouldn't need my cornflakes in the morning.

I'd be very happy.

Gives a bit of perspective on global warming as well, because this planet,

WASP 76B,

daytime temperature of 246.

What position does he play?

So

he's

an outside centre with one of the junior teams.

The daytime temperature is 2,400 degrees Celsius.

And, you know, yet here we are on Earth getting our global knickers in a considerable twist about a diddy little two or three degree rise.

so you know yeah sounds like it that would be a good good tourist hotspot i mean literally a hotspot a year on this planet is only 43 earth hours long but a day lasts forever because the lazy ass planet can't be bothered to rotate

but um but that's a big plus because a 43 hour long year means there would be an olympics in earth terms once a week it's like having a toddler yeah given that olympics last over two weeks that's you know permanent double olympics

You would be so happy there, Andy.

It would just be eternal sports.

Oh, well, it's obviously only summer Olympics.

The giants are more curved.

No coronavirus.

It doesn't transmit when it gets hotter, of course.

That's what people are relying on.

And it's Christmas every day, though, because it has,

you know, days last forever.

Right.

So it's also Valentine's Day every day as well.

It is.

But the 70s Glam Rockers wizard who said

they wished it could be Christmas every day.

That wish is granted on a WASP 76P.

And it's not quite, I imagine, how they envisaged it.

Dear Santa, thanks for the scale extra.

Nice idea.

Sadly, instantaneously vaporised in this 2,400 degree heat.

Any chance of a heat-resistant reindeer, onesie?

It's got to be functional at 2,500 Celsius.

Thanks.

P.S.

I suppose some snow's out of the question.

I cannot imagine anything worse than Christmas every day.

Who wants the drunk aunt vomiting into the kiddie pool for eternity?

Hostility over turkey.

That's my kind of day.

I'm into it.

That sounds like one of the sandwiches you've been eating in LA.

It sounds like a very hot planet.

You could probably benefit from drinking some kind of liquid in a glass, maybe half full or something.

I don't know.

Wrong universe.

Half a glass of molten iron.

Moon news now.

Alice, you're the Bugle's planetary satellite correspondent.

Yes, apparently we we have got a new moon.

We have a new moon that is rotating in the sky.

You can't see it.

It's about the size of a car.

Elon Musk is already looking into sending a car there to park obnoxiously close to the new moon and play Grimes tracks as a tribute to the pending Grimes Musk baby.

I mean, this

can, I mean, I don't know philosophically, you know, does it count as a moon if it's the size of a car?

I mean,

I mean, you have the Holden Astra, right?

That's the size of a star.

Right.

But only if the star is the size of a car.

It's getting very philosophical now.

I'm worried that two moons will mean more periods.

That's my main concern about the two moon scenario.

Extra tides, more periods.

Yeah, more crying.

28 days more of.

So it'd be every 14 days.

It'd be every two weeks.

You know, the more hydrated you are, the more you are in tune with the moon.

Oh, really?

Because the water in your body moves with the moon.

The moon water.

I was just doing some unrelated water-related research for a different project.

Don't worry about it.

Moon water does sound like a great fragrance for you to release, though.

Or a very bad euphemism for something else.

I mean, Tiff and I are a really bad combo.

I'm realising that on a sentence-by-sentence basis.

Have a gravitational pull towards the gutter.

I do worry about this new micro-moon that we're going to have to rewrite history, basically, aren't we?

Neil Armstrong.

Neil Armstrong was the

first human on the larger of the two moons.

It's not just the first on the moon.

The first on a moon.

It's the first on one of our two moons.

Now there's a race to get people to the tiny moon.

The tiny moon.

Imagine.

Is it going to be moon two?

If there's more than four of them, one of them have to ride in the moon boot.

Moon two, Tokyo Drift.

What?

Moon the sequel?

But Buzz Aldrin's still alive, isn't he?

So, I mean, this could be his chance, could be finally his chance.

Get off the silver medal step onto the gold.

Fire him into space.

What a way to go.

This week in Britain the

new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, issued the government's first budget since the general election.

And well it appears that after seeing off the Conservatives they've uncaked a hard left spend, spend, spend budget

in a desperate effort to camouflage the 10 years of devastation that they have inflicted on Britain.

Strange times, but very excitingly, particularly in the context of how this episode has gone, the government is planning to finally scrap the tampon tax.

The tax on

the luxuries that you ladies get to enjoy that us men aren't really.

I'm wearing sex right now.

I'm not even on the rack.

You're going to take full advantage of this.

Yeah, well, if the price comes down, I might start buying them.

It does take some of the glamour out of it, though.

Before, you know, they were a luxury product.

They were categorised as a luxury, and it just made you feel a bit special, you know?

But now...

Not that.

Cheap.

I don't believe they were luxury because then there would have been Dolce and Gabana with wings.

And I, you know, imagine you're going into the toilets.

And you're like, what are you wearing?

Yeah, I've got a Burberry.

I've got a Burberry up there, mate.

Yeah, so we're scrapping

the tampon tax, which was supposed to happen, I think, about four years ago, five years ago.

This seems late in itself, because you'd have thought that it would happen as soon as anyone had noticed that it came into existence.

There was a bit of delay, as it's often the case.

Well, apparently, this tax is going to save every woman in Britain approximately £43 a year, which doesn't sound like a lot.

I mean, if you think about it as a whole part of the budget, there's also now been calls for the government to pay that money back, perhaps, to something that would be nice for women, flowers or whatever women like.

Film producers that aren't rapists.

You could fund a whole film producer for a whole year with something in the back sector.

Well, we haven't gone, actually, sorry, it depends on how much you've got on this because

I'll use Scottish boyfriend.

Okay.

I don't think we've gone far enough because

actually in Scotland, they've made sanitary products free in a bid to tackle period poverty.

Obviously, because it's in Scotland, I'm not the best person to explain this.

So,

I have got Scottish boyfriend explains a thing.

Period poverty.

So, the government has finally scrapped the tax on disposable menstrual products, and it's about fing time.

Calling tampons luxury items, then taxing them suggests that menstruating is a conscious decision based on self-care, like going for a manicure.

Aye, pampering yourself, are ya?

Aye, I thought I'd maybe spend a few days in pain, shedding my uterine lining, then shove this cotton wool up my chaff and just chill out, you know?

Bet of me time.

Again, Christ, you're good to yourself, Hen.

Menstruation isn't your choice, and didn't he forget, if it didn't happen, none of us would even be here.

So to be forced to pay for the privilege is bad enough, the only hang worse than having to pay for a bodily function is being taxed for it.

Which is why it's great the tax has been scrapped, but up in Scotland, we've gone one step further.

In an effort to eradicate period period poverty, the Scottish Government is to provide free menstrual products to women of all ages.

Get it up, yeah, literally.

A cornucopia of clunge bullets of every magnitude

are to be free for all.

No longer will women who are financially struggling have to improvise their fanny ammo or shoplift bumper clocks.

A huge step forward.

We have some subtitles.

A huge step forward.

Hopefully, the next step is the use of non-euphemistic language when describing the products.

Sanitary products being a term is a problem as it suggests a natural bodily function is unsanitary.

Either call it the disposable menstrual product section or change the sign above the toilet aisle to horrible, unsanitary, big, smelly shit wiping paper that you wipe actual shit off your sticking asshole with aisle.

I always find it shocking when people are disgusted, and this is for you, listener, if you are disgusted by the very discussion of sort of uterine lining or interior redecoration, as I like to call it.

You wore that shit as a hat for nine months.

Like, calm down.

Yeah, yeah.

Chill out, chill out.

Hopefully, pre-birth.

Drinks news now.

Alice, you're the Bugles energy and carbonated drinks correspondent.

Some massive news from the energy drinks industry.

Yes, indeed.

PepsiCo is planning to purchase Rockstar Energy Drinks for $3.85 billion.

Pepsi, as you know, has been sinking into relative obscurity in most English-speaking countries since the cola wars of the 1690s or the 1960s or whenever they were fighting.

But now Pepsi plans on taking back a chunk of market share by expanding into this energy drinks market.

You might think caffeinated drinks like colas were already energy drinks, but I'm here to tell you that if you thought that, you're an idiot.

A fing idiot who doesn't know anything about anything.

Rockstar energy drinks have more caffeine and more other sort of vibing chemicals, and if you drink too many of them, you smell like plastic.

I know that from travelling in a car with Brendan Burns.

If you drink enough energy drinks, they'll give you heart palpitations.

If you mix them with alcohol, they'll keep you upright long after your self-preservation instinct would have rendered you too unconscious to make bad decisions anymore.

They're therefore the primary choice for young people who don't have access to cocaine.

They're a good stepping stone up to cocaine or down from cocaine because they're basically cocaine but with more sugar.

Unless someone has cut your cocaine with sugar, which is excitingly the original recipe for cola drinks.

What fun.

Energy drinks, it's an extraordinarily valuable market.

They've filled the gap over the last 25, 30 years that used to be catered for by, for example, sleep, a proper work-life balance, and nutrition.

But the likes of Red Bull have stepped into that.

Now, I was looking at Red Bull, of course, the energy drink made by vaporising a live bull in the nuclear reactor, then condensing the dead creature's gaseous remains back into a liquid.

That is not vegan-friendly.

It's naturally carbonated, of course, because they only vaporize the outgoing or bubbly bulls.

They sold one million cans the year in 1987 or the late 80s, early in

their existence.

Toddled along selling not that many until around about 1993, they started expanding internationally.

And what does that coincide with?

The release of the Bon Jovi song, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

Eventually, it'll be a lot of fun.

Also, the end of apartheid.

Well, I mean, you know, there's always different ways of interpreting history.

I'll live when I'm alive, and I'll sleep when I'm dead.

And I'll be racist when I'm drunk.

Said Bon Jovi.

That was not an official lyric of that song.

Now, Red Bull sells 7.5 billion cans a year.

Clearly, Bon Jovi sparked, you know,

he's such a global influencer, Bon Jovi, that people thought, well, you know,

I no longer need to sleep because my spiritual guru, Bon Jovi, has said there's time for that post-mortem.

But interestingly, you know, not only has energy drinks gone up, but more people are dead now than at any point in human history.

So you can read into that what you want.

I think Bon Jovi was fine with it because he's wanted dead or alive.

Well, exactly.

So for him, he's kind of like Schrodinger's cat.

Yeah.

Many people have said that.

And I know

that makes Richie Sambora, one of Aristotle's hedgehogs or something.

Yes, Bon Jovi, very famously, his older brother, Bon Bon Jovi, the sweeter Jovi.

Coincidentally, whilst energy drinks have gone up, mattress sales over the same period have collapsed by 98%.

That's a lie, but it does explain why mattress companies advertise on podcasts and energy drinks companies own a range of major sports franchises and turn over billions of dollars a year.

Bon Jovi has got a lot to answer for.

That's what I'm saying.

We can't drink a mattress a day.

Oh,

my mum actually thought mattresside was death from being pushed off a bed and nearly strangled her.

That is a very old joke of mine.

That is a very, very old joke of mine.

Memory funds.

I'm interested in the fact that the Coca-Cola was originally sort of cocaine heavy in its recipe because I just like to imagine all the Gold Rush era guys coked up talking about what nuggets they got that day and how they should all go into business with each other because I got a nugget, you got a nugget, maybe together, we're getting lots of nuggets open up in the bank.

Sort of a time travel.

Such a good actor, Tim.

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

Well, as discussed, not really much to plug, to be honest.

The bugle show in Norwich on the 4th of April is currently still scheduled to go ahead, but whether that remains the case I'm not sure we will keep you updated via the

Twitter feed and future future podcasts

and you can plug non non-live shows I can plug my probably cancelled show on on Sunday in New York and my probably cancelled Monday show or actually I'm plugging my Vimeo that's what I'm doing I've got a special on Vimeo called Madman you can download it for a Fiverr and I think if you want to support you know performers and artists when this is happening, buy some merch, download their specials.

I think I shared both of yours as well.

Alice has one on Amazon.

I'd forgotten I did one, to be honest.

The one is still available, is it?

Yes, you all go faster stripes.

So, you know, you can fling a fiver to everyone virtually by buying those.

Yes, I have a trilogy of podcasts available for free on podcasts.

It's called the Alice Fraser trilogy.

My Amazon special of Savage, which is a solo show, is coming out on the 19th of April on Amazon Prime.

I also have the Resistance up on Amazon Prime, so that'll be two for for your Amazon Prime subscription, or you can sign up to my Patreon, patreon.com/slash AliceFraser, at the $5 level, and you'll get Ethos and The Resistance, which are two of my one-hour specials, for free with that subscription.

So, not for free, for two and a half pounds each.

You can unsign at the end of the month if you want to be a f about it.

Thank you very much for listening to the Bugle.

We'll be back next week, even if I have to record it in my shared podcast.

Also, The Last Post.

Oh, yes, The Last Post.

Yeah, Let's plug that.

That's a podcast.

It happens every day.

It's a podcast that's being done by another Alice Fraser, but it appears in my email inbox every morning and I put it up to take credit for her.

So, do we know yet where it's coming from?

It's presumably a parallel dimension that's quite close to our own.

Okay, so

sort of diverged.

I'm occasionally sending her emails because obviously I'd prefer to have her permission to put up this content, given that we have a very similar voice and I'm taking credit for everything that she does.

This is very similar to the plot of Carl Sagan's contact.

Just saying, guys.

We will be back next week, even if it's me in a shed talking to myself, putting on a silly voice, pretending to be my own co-host.

The bugle will outdo this virus.

You can't catch it through headphones.

Remember that, buglers.

Thank you for listening.

Goodbye.

Hi, Buglers.

it's producer Chris here.

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

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

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