Bonus Bugle - Last Post and 104

Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle issue 4141 sub-issue A.

We're taking a week off this week for one or more of the following reasons.

A half-term stroke holiday.

B.

My final attempt to qualify for the GB Olympic freestyle skateboarding team.

C I'm announcing my entry into the Democratic Party presidential race.

D, joining an expedition to try to find the elusive third pole.

It's out there somewhere, I know it, and it's going to be way more commercially exploitable than either the north or the south.

E.

Gardening leave or F some high-level espionage that I really cannot talk about right now.

Suffice it to say that if it's true what everyone says about the Moscow Mafia, look, I've said enough.

Anyway, instead of a full bugle, what you're about to listen to is an episode of The Last Post.

The Last Post, if you've you've not heard it, is the first edition to our enormous, beautiful, new stable and is hosted by Alice Fraser.

It's a daily satire show which has travelled across to us from a parallel universe.

In this episode, Alice chats with a celebrity called Andy Zoltzmann about a crisis that has hit the city of London.

A hidden tribe of ancient Britons has been discovered underneath the city, and no one knows what to do about it.

Hello, posters, and welcome to The last post, the final word on this, the most final of worlds.

And today is the 12th of February of the year 2020.

Happy birthday today in 1809 to both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, twin originators of both the movie Sliding Doors, and respectively the idea of evolution and a figurehead of the nation that holds the biggest number of intelligent design anti-evolution theorists on earth.

But only one of them has a car named after him.

The rapper Chuck Dee took his name from Charles Durley.

Shrill into birds, was he?

Celebrations today include National Plum Pudding Day, a dish that most of us only know through the vector of fairy tales, and your guest today is Mr.

Andrew Zoltzmann, recently back from his vivisection tour of the UK.

Well, it wasn't, I don't like to think of it as a vivisection tour, I just had a few incidents on the roads with some slow-learning badges.

Yeah, well, it was that habit of yours of strapping blades to the wheels of your tour bus like Boudica.

Well, that's what we voted for Brexit for, isn't it?

Back to good British forms of transport.

The bladed-wheeled chariot being, of course, one of them.

Coming up, we'll be talking all the biggest bigotry news in the under London revelations, but first, some headlines.

In the news today, in the wake of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's Saturday afternoon announcement that Australia will be introducing new control measures that will see all non-Australians travelling from mainland China barred entry at the border, concerns arising that coronavirus-based Chinese racism is not a victimless crime, as proposed travel bans against Chinese nationals have come up against the reality of international economic interdependency and the fact that Chinese tourists bring in $12 billion a year to the Australian economy.

The media is calling the ban unprecedented, despite the fact that we did have a wide Australia policy for a while.

A quick sport story, Alice.

I know you're not that into sport, but the Olympics are apparently they're going to include online hate speech as a demonstration sport in the 2024 Olympics in Riyadh.

Oh,

how will they score that?

Similar to sort of rhythmic gymnastics or something?

Yeah, I mean it's a mixture of technical merit and artistic impression and vitriol.

But the thing is, it's quite interesting because there's a lot of discussion about what sports should and shouldn't be in the Olympics and people say, well, it's not really a sport, but it is global.

It doesn't need high-tech equipment, actually.

It's quite an equal sport for lots of non-sunted, even if they don't want to be.

That's right.

And people would love to watch it.

So, I mean, why have rowing, which has none of those things, rather than online hate speech?

I mean, the thing that rowing does have is occasionally when they're standing on the pontoons in their Zoot suits, they will all get bonus at the same time.

Right.

That's.

I mean, you used to do a lot of rowing, Alice.

I did indeed.

I'll take your word for that.

And Mars Prison Colony worries as recently Chase Bank has claimed a number of Mars convicts who have been freed have hacked into a bank from a small satellite orbiting Mars.

They claim it isn't a victimless crime, as it is only a matter of time before these criminals branch out from big-time bank crime to small personal annoyance crime, when spammers will catch on and we start having to field emails from Alpha Centaurian princes with implausible inheritances and cut Price Sialis from the dark side of Uranus.

Hot signals are in your quadrant of the galaxy and they want to chat.

And that is your headlines for today.

It's time for your classified ads now.

Remember you can submit an ad by email to thelastpost at somethingelse.com.

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And that is your ads for today.

The last post!

And your top story today, of course.

It's all the newest news in the Under London news.

Andy, what has happened to London?

Well, it's very, very dramatic, isn't it?

And

we were talking about the transport issues the other day, and, well, clearly it's got way out of hand now.

And,

yeah, I mean, the controversy of exactly

who these people are,

where they've been all this, have they been there?

How long have they been there?

I mean, there's an awful lot of unsubstantiated rumours going around.

I mean the argument that they are in fact the picts seems to have been borne out by the delegation coming back with square-headed axes,

bronze and iron axes.

Yeah, but anyone can make an an axe.

I mean how do you test for pictishness?

Can you do a blood test?

Is it right okay?

Well that's

I mean that was the British hieroglyph, wasn't it?

And after an early surge in sort of unity among the British people in excitement about these new Under Londoners being potentially the solution to Brexit trade woes,

Piers Morgan and Nigel Farage have once more sort of taken a step back and have decided that these are a threat to the sanctity of British people.

There's bigotry, of course, surging up among Londoners and people outside London who are not obviously part of this.

Did the Victorians not, when they were building the London Underground, basically how they filled up all those museums with interesting ancient stuff?

Was that some kind of

deal they made with the Picts in the 1850s, 1860s when they were...

I mean, we do not have the documents.

It's all extremely worrying.

I think because clearly they must have found, I mean there is this rumour, wasn't it, that the Victoria line was already existing.

People are now saying that was a

Pictish tunnel, yeah.

Tunnel and there were ready-made tunnels with air shafts and obviously they just ascribed it to the will of God.

At the time the Victorians were very good at that and also ignoring things that they didn't like.

The thing that I'm really worried about for today's episode

is the bigotry that's coming out, the fear.

You know, we saw this with the coronavirus, people wearing masks around Chinese people.

A man in Australia died while having a heart attack because people were too worried about the risk of infection to give him CPR.

And now people are looking at butt masks for their toilets as though these pics are going to come up through the toilets and get their bottoms.

I mean, it's a surge in these butt masks, and people are walking around in the streets wearing these

ridiculous butt masks.

Well, it's sort of the new Southern Cross tattoo, if you know that, in Australia, or the whatever you guys, the

St.

George's Cross thing.

But now it's a butt mask.

What have they been waiting for?

Because they obviously thought, well, we're going to hold out until the Romans have gone.

But at no point thought now it's alright.

It's possible that the Romans leaving, they realised that the Romans had left when Brexit happened.

Right, okay, so it's a communication issue.

Yeah, communication issue.

Well, I mean the...

Literally the EU left, including Italy, which carries Rome with it.

Okay.

And they must have read about it in a discarded newspaper and thought, at last,

we can rise.

Yeah, because I mean,

if the way you're working out is by overhearing conversations and the language, the changes, it's not like the Romans left overnight, is it?

No.

So they wouldn't have...

It's almost too slow a process, don't mean, we're not going to suddenly go back to speaking whatever we speak.

Well, people kept using baths and roads, didn't they?

You know, so they didn't rid themselves of the shackles of Roman occupation entirely.

I don't like the way that Farage has turned against them because, I mean, essentially he's been saying that unless you can prove that someone in your family personally dragged a bluestone from Wales to Stonehenge, you're not really British.

And yet these people I mean they're more British than any of us in many ways.

Well this was the thing.

Initially we all thought that it was going to be like a new phase of unity online with people who were you know pro-Picts and in this way of uh cultural exchange and Farage seemed to be very pro-Pict in their in their Britishness But he's taken a step back from that position and says, in fact, that he never trusted them.

And he's always been wearing a butt mask, even under his pants.

And in many ways, but they should be seen as an inspiration to us that

in these kind of Brexit times that they've managed to maintain existence for thousands of years in complete literal darkness.

And we can do it in metaphorical darkness.

If they can do it in literal darkness, we should see that as a...

I think the way that we will start broadly as a society to accept the the pics as as as part of us is when some of them turn out to be really really good at sports and

w we can you know bump up our national sports teams with them.

Maybe they're really good at flame wars Andy.

The newest Olympic sports.

Yeah.

It's it's possible.

I mean it is a pretty sick burn to just disappear for a thousand years.

And it's tricky isn't it to say because you know the the general trope of the insular xenophobe is go back where you came from.

But clearly that's that's exactly where they, as is generally the case,

exactly where, you know, underneath underneath London, I mean

that's where they've always been.

They don't seem to be wanting to come out anytime soon, or certainly not until we figured out some sort of treaty.

Delegations continue to go in and come out, but we're not being informed, as the people, we are not being informed of these processes, a very non-transparent process.

And I think that's one of the reasons why people are getting so angry and so worried, particularly about their butt health.

Right.

I mean, it is a time of uncertainty and confusion, and I think this has really added to it in a very striking and unexpected way.

Well I for one have been poking Mars bars down the drain in order to propitiate them in case they turn out to be a hostile force.

Well so offerings of goodwill.

Yeah offerings of goodwill in the form of Mars bars.

Yeah.

But I mean I think it's something I think we should probably embrace it as a nation and

yeah, there's too much hostility in the world and I think when you find a lost civilisation living under your own capital city then you're duty bound to the bottom of the corner.

Yeah, and isn't it the most British thing, having an upstairs and a downstairs?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Just need some bells so we can summon up snacks from them.

News is still emerging from the under London city that we are still figuring out how we're going to engage with.

We're going across to our reporter on the scene, John Hastings, who is standing by to let us know all the latest development.

John, what's going on down there?

Alice, it's quite a time.

I'm inside a weatherspoons that's inside another weatherspoons.

It's of course inside a Prédemanger cup inside of an Argos dressing room.

Where Nigel Farage has just announced that he is back to being pro-picked after being against the picks and then pro-the picks.

No one's really sure what's caused this flip-flop, but we all know it's because of his fishman heritage.

Oh, what's that?

He is now against the picks.

No one's really sure why he's here or what is going on, but Lord knows it's a delightful distraction from any quote-unquote actual issues facing Britain.

Well, certainly figuring out how to integrate these people into the societies is playing into Nigel Farage's opinion because he was all for them when he thought they might be Tory voters and now he's against them now that it's considered they might be a drain on the welfare system.

You bring up a good point.

Polish people all across the UK are rejoicing in that they are no longer the scapegoat for every decision Conservative politicians have made.

The PICs have already been blamed for a lack of employment and also a rise in unemployment and also a rise in hiring within the United Kingdom.

The NHS has already reported that they need more nurses, and this is being blamed by the picked people's refusal to get into nurse costumes and just pretending to actually be nurses.

The Met is facing a rampant amount of strain because they're not sure if they are allowed to police underground based on a variety of treaties that were signed under Henry VIII that have been uncovered in the PICT society.

I mean, that is all the latest happening there down at the edge of the central line.

I hate to interrupt you, but Milo Yannanopoulos and Tommy Robinson have just arrived and declared the picked people to be the greatest threat to ever face Britain ever since the invention of alcohol and train delays.

It's very, oh, Gary Barlow has arrived and just announced that he's forming a Take That spin-off group called Take Picked.

Lord knows their benefit concert will be formed soon.

Let's all hope earplugs reach us quickly.

Thank you so much for that.

Latest on the scene, John Hastings.

You'll be there all week.

I hope you're all right.

I know you have not been sleeping because you've been giving us coverage 24 hours a day.

But we will see as this news news emerges and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.

I look forward to it, Alice.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have what's known as an open-eye sleep, which is where I stare forward into a bare light bulb and try not to soil myself.

There's no time for your letters to the editor today, or rather, they were so full of bigotry and fear about the Under Londoners that none of them are worth speaking.

But we'll have more letters tomorrow when we come back.

Thank you for listening to the last post today.

You can listen again tomorrow.

If you have not done so before, please tune in to our previous editions they go back for about 10 years.

Your guest today was Mr.

Andrew Zaltzmann Andy have you got anything to plug?

Well it depends how my first ever underground gig in London goes.

You're doing an underground gig?

Is this with the jazz or well it's it's well a mixture of you know comedy music and cabaret for the for the pics it's a kind of bridge building exercise and uh if it goes well we'll put out a recording uh for public sale bridge building

tunnel building just don't know what their sense of humour is because i mean obviously British sense of humour is a

core British value, and it hasn't changed since the dawn of time.

But you do think, you know, has

living underground for 2,000 years as a civilisation changed what you find funny?

I imagine it probably must have done.

Probably must have done.

Well, we have to wait for them to send a delegation out.

So far, the delegations have all been one way.

But I'm looking forward to seeing you coming out the other side.

I still haven't seen a picture of a pict.

Well, ironically.

Ironically.

I mean, they just draw themselves, right?

I think so.

Draw on themselves.

You can find me on Twitter or Instagram at alliterative A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E, and my tickets are on sale for Kronos, Alice Fraser, Kronos at Melbourne Sydney and Perth Comedy Festival in the upcoming months.

The last post is a something else, Alice Fraser and Bugle Podcast Production.

I'm Alice Fraser, the executive producer is Christopher D.

Skinner, and assuming the picts don't eat us in the night, I will talk to you again tomorrow.

And if you enjoyed that, do subscribe in Apple Podcasts Now.

And as an added bonus, here is some vintage bugle from exactly 10 years ago.

Near enough.

We actually took this week off 10 years ago as well.

So this is from just over 10 years ago.

It's Bugle issue 104.

We'll be back next week.

Until then, goodbye.

Top story this week.

And well, the 11th of February 2010, it was a very special 20th anniversary this year, commemorating an event that shook the world, an event people couldn't really believe was actually happening, a shock whose aftermath reverberates to this day mike tyson was knocked out by buster douglas

and on the undercard that day nelson mandela was let out of jail

he must have thought what power i have in these fists i knocked mike tyson out next thing we know nelson mandela's walking down the street so what what were you doing on the 11th of february 1990 that isn't it it's interesting isn't it nelson mandela's release became one of those where were you moments so everyone remembers where what they were doing when uh he took those first steps for freedom Personally, I remember watching it on my parents' black and white TV in our kitchen.

And I was at that age where not only did I realise that this was a major moment of history for the world, but I also knew this was probably going to delay lunch.

I was old enough to understand the gravitas of the moment, not quite old enough to handle that gravitas in an appropriate manner.

How long is this sandwich going to be delayed, do you think?

Are we talking 30 minutes or up?

Because if so, I'm going to try and eat a biscuit on the sly.

Well, I'll tell you what I was doing.

I was being born.

Oh, no, sorry.

I'm mixing myself up with Princess Aya Bint Alfaisal of Jordan.

No, what I was actually doing, John.

Of course, it was a special day for me as well.

It's my ninth birthday.

And I was very excited.

I was wondering why everyone was making such a fuss about an old man on the telly when it was my special day.

And I vowed that I would compensate by forming a...

All-girl supergroup and winning five Grammy Awards.

Oh, hang on, I'm mixing myself up with Kelly Rowland.

No, no, what I was doing, John, I was a 15-year-old boy, John, with a South African father, some of whose family had strong links to the ANC and knew Nelson Mandela personally.

And I was a buzz with anticipation, John, at that time.

It was, I mean, not really at Mandela's release, but the fact that the West Indies v.

England test series was about to begin about a week later.

And it's really the first time in my young life that England were going to be taking on the Caribbean Giants with an outside chance of not being whipped like a naughty egg white.

So I was excited.

I was very excited.

I was excited.

Obviously it was exciting to see Mandela released as well.

I remember as I watched the momentum unfolding momentously on the telly, although I of course had a colour television because I'm from a much better family than you.

One of the iconic moments of the 20th century, a potent symbol of human progress, a beacon of hope to the disenfranchised people of the world.

I remember asking my father, does this mean that England can play South Africa at cricket again?

Big friend of the family, of course, Big Nelson.

Welcome round Shays Altsman anytime he wants.

Doesn't even have to book a table, like most visitors to our house.

Wow, that is

very nice, Andy.

That's a big offer.

It was great news for South Africa 20 years ago.

Even better news for all of humanity.

Slightly less good news, I would argue, for cricket, Andy.

The best news of all being for Big Nell himself, who managed to deliver a speech of superhuman restraint after being released after 27 years, in that it somehow incredibly didn't start with the words, What the f

was that about

seriously what the f ⁇ was the last 27 years about I'm gonna need some answers because I'm pissed off now pissed off holy shit that was a long time I mean that was a really long time as part of the celebrations this week they reenacted in South Africa Mandela's walk to freedom and when I first read that headline Andy, I had a horrible split-second thought that they might have jailed him again just so they could re-release him because that would have been a very nervy moment for Nelson.

Sure, I'm going to get in the cell, but let's just be clear.

This is a re-enaction, right?

It's definitely a re-enaction.

It's just, the last time you got me in here, you left me here for nearly three decades.

Well, I don't think I am thumping on about it.

I don't think I'm actually doing that.

Mandela, who's now 91 or 64, if you don't count the years that were stolen from him, attended a special session of Parliament where he heard President Zuma deliver a tribute.

And President Zuma said in the two decades since the release of Madiba, which is Mandela's clan name, our country has changed fundamentally.

President Mandela united this country behind the goal of a non-sexist, non-racial, democratic and prosperous South Africa.

Those are very noble thoughts, Andy, beautifully expressed, but they do ring a little hollow coming from a man who's been charged with rape, racketeering and corruption, who's been married five times and who's just had his 20th child.

20 children, Andy.

He's also said that gay marriage was a disgrace to God and that when growing up a homosexual would not have stood in front of me.

I'd have knocked him out.

What I'm saying is President Zuma actually achieves the impossible.

He manages to make you appreciate Nelson Mandela even more.

Let's be fair, he did do the whole speech without marrying or impregnating anyone.

So

that's true.

You know, he's learning, clearly.

It does prove what an incredible man Mandela is, the dignity and grace he's shown as a symbol of hope for our stroppy species.

And I think looking back, we can now all agree that apartheid was definitely a bad thing.

Yeah,

I think we're at that point.

Rude.

Very, very rude.

It was impolite.

It was a time of amazing change for the world 20 years ago.

In the space of a year, we had the end of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela freed, and Canada rediscovered after lying dormant and undetected for 35 years.

It was all happening.

This week also marks the 31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution.

Although had the events following the election of June the 12th last year gone a slightly different way, they might have been marking the seven-month anniversary of a different Iranian revolution instead.

In response to the anniversary, the government in Iran rallied hundreds of thousands of their supporters onto the streets to dissuade opposition groups from doing anything stupid like saying anything out loud or gathering in groups larger than one.

Apparently security forces in Iran were armed with tear gas, live rounds which they were firing into the air and apparently paintballs to mark the protesters.

That system, Andy, is solely designed to make riot control more fun for the security forces involved.

First they let them ride around on motorbikes hitting people with sticks and now they give them paintball guns.

I don't know Andy, paintball guns on a motorbike, that is a tempting job to apply for.

Let me make this clear.

I do not agree with what they're doing over there, but even I have my limits.

All I'm saying is if I'm not here next week, you will know where to find me.

I guess it is, once again, blurring that increasingly fine line between systematic oppression of political opposition and stag weekend.

In Tehran, a huge crowd hit the streets to listen to Bugle favourite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It was the latest stop on his crazy tour and he used this opportunity to, you've guessed it, attack America and the West.

And who can blame him, Andy?

You don't go in front of a crowd that big and not play your greatest hits.

It's like the Rolling Stones not playing brown sugar.

It is not the time to try out your new stuff.

Know what they came there for.

In fact, he could have just started railing against the West and then held his microphone out towards the crowd and let them finish it off themselves.

Join in if you know the words.

Wave your lighters in the air.

Now wave the American flag into those lighters.

Now wave those flags in the air again.

Teran, you've been great.

I'm out of here.

You're talking like a man who now has bigger crowds at his gigs than he did when he lived in England.

He celebrated by cranking up his nuclear grandstanding.

You know, why not?

It was his country's birthday.

Why not treat himself?

And the world have responded by giving Iran as a present in return the threat of sanctions.

So it's been a happy day for everyone.

Other news now, and Tom is leaving the country on Sunday.

Yeah,

it's a petulant...

Petulant walkout from Tom and his family.

Bloody emigrant.

Bloody emigrant.

He's putting his bat under his elbow and he's walking.

He's not waiting for a decision.

I'm resigning.

Well you're not though.

You're not.

You're resigning for one week.

For one week.

It's a protest that I think will carry a lot of message.

You're resigning from Britain.

I'm resigning from Britain.

It's time to go.

It's just too wet and cold here.

The long and the short of it is that Tom is emigrating to Australia where he will continue to do the bugle for two weeks, meaning the amount of space the bugle is about to cover is just spectacular.

We're going to be doing this in three different continents.

We are truly intercontinental, that's right.

In fact, we're going to be doing it on different days.

Tom is going to be doing it on Saturday in Australia.

That's right.

And you'll be doing it on Friday morning in New York.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

It's a great sign of how far technology has come that you can do something this stupid.

Or emigrates to Australia.

Let me assure you, technology has had no help at all in us emigrating.

Beagle is a very stressful process, don't you?

Yeah, that's the thing you can.

But I tell you what, you sound like me in Hawaii, Tom.

There's that bass to your voice of, oh God, give me strength.

Well, John, you've emigrated before.

What do you miss most about Britain?

That's a good question, Andy.

Do you know what?

Mince pies.

Right.

Yeah, they don't have mince pies here at Christmas, which seems to me

ridiculous.

So some mince pies.

Yeah.

Not me, then.

Yeah, well, thanks a lot.

Thanks for watching.

You giving you with a mince pie in your hand, Andy.

But what about the times we used to play computer football together instead of working when we had a deadline coming up?

Does that mean nothing?

No, I do miss that, Andy.

I do miss that.

I do miss you deliberately trying to get players sent off.

God, you loved that, didn't you?

Living.

You loved it.

You loved the two-footed challenge.

What is it about people I work with moving to another continent?

I think that's a massive challenge.

that's heartbreaking.

Me?

You just must be driving people away.

The trouble is, Andy, you need to start using some deodorant, to be honest.

Yeah.

I think both Tom and I just cannot bear to be in the same time zone as you anymore.

Yeah, we didn't go, you know, you could have got done that by going to France, John.

Let's not go mad.

The six months of the year.

So Tommy's leaving this country at its lowest ebb.

Maybe not its lowest.

I guess being dick done by the Normans wasn't great.

Or when the Vikings were giving us the old wham-bam, thank you, wham, only without without the thank you bit.

Or when the Black Death was wiping out half the population in the 14th century, that can't have been much fun.

We got to.

Kicked in the balls by the Romans as well, Andy.

Don't forget that.

And the old civil war that ripped this country apart ended up with King Charles being forced to do his version of the old one-head, no-heads trick.

Or when it looked like Germany might

sneak the Second World War, that was probably a lower ebb.

No, we have had lower ebbs.

But the point is, he's off.

He's off.

He's taken his Australian wife and his English daughter with him.

Don't say that.

And he's off.

Zoom.

I will be back very soon on the end of a phone, tired, out of my mind.

Yes.

Speaking to you.

I'll probably be on the same level as you guys.

I just hope your little girl keeps her English accent.

You think we can annoy you from here, Tom?

Just wait till you get to Australia.

It's going to seem even more frustrating.

Well, you've robbed me of my Friday night, destroyed my social life, and my friends have moved on without me.

Yes.

I'm just not waiting to see what you're going to do to me in Australia.

Well, there's so much more to this mission, Tom.

So much more.

Going to completely break you.

Love Goo too.

That's what'll do it.

Bugle feature section now, and it's Valentine's Day on Sunday.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah,

Valentine's Day on Sunday, the 14th of February.

And it's been marked by a very controversial story here, John, that has yet again torn Britain apart at its very scenes, in which a primary school in Somerset has banned pupils from sending Valentine's cards to each other to save them the quotes emotional trauma of being rejected.

Oh dear.

I think it's a very bad move Andy because it is important that children at the earliest possible age have their hearts trampled to the ground and their souls crushed.

Yeah.

Character building Andy sets them up for the real world they're about to enter.

They need to learn how to deal with the rejection because rejection, John, to me, is the beef mince in the bolognese of life.

Without it, it lacks depth and texture.

And I think, as a nation, we are bad at dealing with rejection.

Ever since the Empire said, that's it, it's over, Britain, I've had enough.

And Britain replied, I can change, just give me another chance.

I promise I won't exploit you again.

You

ungrateful bitch.

I think the best Valentine's Day card I ever had, Andy, I think I was like around

nine years old, and there was a girl who gave me a card which wasn't so much affectionate as it just had a 10-point breakdown.

Why do you not like me?

And there was then 10-point argument, which is pretty advanced for a nine-year-old, to which my only response would be, I just don't see the point of you yet.

I didn't even know yet at that point.

I just don't get the point.

Where is she now?

I don't know.

I actually can't even remember her name, Andy.

Isn't that sad?

Well, if you're listening,

I tell you, I did like email us.

Yeah, I'll tell you who I would like to know, Andy.

The first girl I ever loved was I was five years old.

Yeah.

Sarah Constable.

And I loved her because she had blue glasses, I remember, and very shiny black sandal shoes.

I thought both of those things were very cool.

You shallow bastard.

I was ahead of my time in terms of how vapid I was.

Now, personally, Andy, I'm not a big fan of Valentine's Day, but even I wouldn't take it as far as Saudi Arabia, who on Thursday launched a nationwide crackdown on stores selling items that are either red or heart-shaped or in any other way allude to Valentine's Day, which is banned there.

They've officially banned it.

Red-coloured or heart-shaped items are legal apparently at other times of years, but as February 14th nears, they become completely contraband in Saudi Arabia.

Boy, they never cease to surprise with just how intolerant they are.

Listen, I don't particularly like the day either, but easy.

I think

this thing about rejection, learning to accept rejection is is is very important john and uh because you know i i've learnt to deal with rejection i got rejected a number of times i got rejected when i applied for a job to be a sub-editor for potato processing international magazine uh-huh back in 1997 yeah i wasn't even good enough for that but it made me think how much how how differently my life could have turned out turned out if i'd got that job you'd have been great at it you'd have been the best potato processing writer of all time i firmly believe that i just think by now you know i might have been able to move sideways and work on its sister publication, Potato Storage International, that was launched in 2004.

Clearly,

please tell me that isn't true.

These guys are going places, John.

Maybe then I'd have been looking at one of the publishing houses' other marquee titles, such as Asia-Pacific Baker or European Baker.

Who knows?

But by now,

you've cried wolf too many times, Andy.

I don't believe these exist.

It's all true.

By now, I could be the Randolph Hurst of Business to Business Trade magazine specializing in the starchy foods industry.

But instead, I had to settle for Showbiz.

Amongst my other rejections, John, an offer to do a free encore at the Comedy Store in Manchester, December 2002.

That was rejected pretty volumably.

Yeah, and unanimously.

Yeah,

polite request to join the England cricket team, rejected.

Fully costed plan to get my school to launch a nuclear weapons programme, rejected.

Apparently the last chemistry teacher tried it, ended up blowing half a Kent.

And a demand for state immunity from prosecution in return for information about who killed the Queen Mother.

rejected

so I'm just all I'm saying kids is learn to live with it

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.