Bonus Bugle - Election Fatigue

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle issue 4131 sub-episode I.

Short of course for I need a week off from full immersion in the British election campaign to spiritually fumigate myself and come to think of it from all other news as well.

I am Andy Zaltzmann, and for your delectation this week, we are raiding the esteemed archives of the Bugle podcast, which has been chronicling the world for posterity since time immemorial, or 2007.

I forget one of the two.

There will also be some lies about our voluntary subscribers and a prime off-gut from a more recent show.

Plus, a plug for my Soho Theatre run.

This year's edition of Andy Zaltzman's The Certifiable History.

It begins on the 16th of December, running from the 16th to the 21st, then the 27th, 28th, and 30th of December, and the 2nd to the 4th of January.

Tickets are A.

Available on the internet and B the greatest Christmas present anyone could give and or receive.

That plug for that show will be coming right at the start of the show.

There it was.

Moving on to our raid of the Bugle archives.

Here we are in 2019 scuttling towards the end of yet another decade for humanity.

This of course is nothing new for the Bugle.

We've been seeing decades splutter to their end since before you were born, assuming you are under just under 10 years old.

the last episode of the previous decade was bugle 99 and this is what the world sounded like back then so this is the 99th full edition of the bugle the world's longest running audio newspaper of virtual world

so long running in fact that i can no longer say those words without slightly slurring like boris yeltsin who would have thought john 20 years ago that we'd be sitting here now recording the 99th bugle yeah it definitely wouldn't be because we wouldn't have been able to process having the capacity to do that technologically.

That's right.

Also, I was 12

at the time, Andy.

I didn't know you.

No, we never met, wouldn't meet for eight or ten years, I guess.

Also, at that point in my life, I was definitely considering a career as a footballer, not a comedian.

Right.

When I say considering, I mean fantasising about.

Sounds like you still are.

Okay, that is technically true.

You're just using the daily show as a stepping stone to become a football player.

Just whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes, Andy.

So this is a historic bugle for a number of reasons, of course.

It's the last ever two-digit bugle.

The last bugle to take place in a year containing consecutive zeros for at least the next 90 years and two weeks.

The only ever bugle that will be recorded in the week of the 218th anniversary of the Bill of Rights becoming part of US law

on the 45th birthday of wrestling legend Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Also the first ever bugle whose number sounds like a conversation in a Berlin cafe in which an English-speaking tourist tries to order a round of hot beverages for an Oxford boat race crew crew in their cocks, but is refused.

99!

Also, the first bugle.

Oh, that's no way to say goodbye to double digits.

Also, the first bugle to contain either the word Zamponga

or indeed any reference to any form of Italian bagpipe variant.

That's what the Zamponga is.

I like to think this is an educational podcast.

I keep thinking that.

Or to contain reference to the chemical element hafnium, the cheeky little tetravalent transition metal with an atomic number of 72, used in the production of control rods for nuclear reactors, which was of course named after the Cleveland Indians baseball player Travis Hafner.

Sorry, I've drifted away again.

As always, some sections of the bugle going straight in the bin.

This week, the first in a series of free Bugle Christmas threats.

Intimidate friend and foe alike with our seasonal provocation, scientifically proven to be 50% more disquieting than the average threat.

And here is number one threat.

I will summon the vengeful furies of the underworld to pursue you during your every waking moment until the prospect of death seems a blessed relief from the abominable strafing of those unconquerable beasts, who will stop at naught until they taste your warm blood on their cornflakes of hatred, whose very existence is concerned with nothing but your total destruction, who will not rest their vengeful limbs until you have been cast into a chasm of nothingness.

If you don't stop singing those carols, come on, shoe, clear off, and you're not getting a fing pie.

Also in the bin, does Britain have a future?

In the week in which London has ground to a halt two to two centimetres of f ⁇ ing snow, and in which 19 million people watch the final of the amateur karaoke competition, the X Factor, we ask, was the sacrifice our forefathers made in two world wars really worth the effort?

So I think it's fair to say this decade has not had a complete monopoly on ridiculous behaviour.

Another thing the Bugle is one of the most experienced podcasts in the universe at is covering British general elections.

Our run of three unbroken general elections covered is the envy of newer podcasts such as Alternative History Pod, What If Teddy Roosevelt Had Been Madonna, Don't Put That In There, that's a new kitchen safety show in case you were wondering, and the new show from the Audio Coma Network for deliberately boring podcasts that help their listeners get to sleep.

This show is one in which fans of the influential rock legends The Who describe their backup home power devices, a show entitled Talking Bout My Generator.

There's a niche for everything in this industry.

The first general election the bugle covered was in 2010, when 13 years of Labour government spluttered and fludged to an end.

Top story this week, Anarchy for the UK.

It's coming sometime and may be.

I give a wrong time, stop a traffic line.

Your future dream is a shopping scheme, cause I

wanna be

Anaki.

You've been waiting a long time to get that one out of you.

Oh, boy.

You're bad, John.

That felt better out than in.

That was your rescue club.

Well, Andy, you woke up in a different Britain than the one you fell asleep in.

You like Dorothy waking up and realizing that she's actually still in Kansas, it's just that Kansas has swung frighteningly far to the right.

That's not a scarecrow, Dorothy.

That's a homeless man who now has no welfare state to help him.

Now, click your heels together three times and say, I wish I'd voted yesterday.

So, what is the atmosphere over there Andy?

Well John just just total panic as I suggested at the top of the show we just you know we're just waiting for someone to take control of this country

as

I'm sure our bugle listeners know it's it was a hung parliament yesterday's elections we're recording on Friday at the moment it's still all up in the air as we're recording David Cameron is making a speech in which I believe he's declaring that he has the Queen hostage in the boot of his car and he's going to kill her unless we let let him be Prime Minister.

Well, Britain is currently without a government buglers and I actually think this is really a huge opportunity, a big chance for the Queen.

If she drives around today Andy firing a machine gun into the air, I think she could have the dictatorship that I know she's been dreaming about since she was 12.

Yep.

Interesting actually that this should have fallen on Bugle 114 because 114 is the number of times David Cameron has had practices off-the-cuff acceptance speech.

He's now having to hastily rewrite.

Also the number of times Gordon Gordon Brown has dreamt he was born a hundred years earlier and in Russia.

Ironically, interestingly, also the A114 in Germany is a road leading to central Berlin.

And with a hung parliament, the right-wing press have been telling us that we might as well have let Hitler win, take over and divert the British A114 in northeast London straight to the Reichstag.

So it's been kind of amazing because the Labour Party lost the election.

The Conservatives also lost the election.

And the Liberal Democrats, well, they lost the election really quite badly.

They really lost the election.

And the assorted Celts and nutcases, they've also lost the election.

So now with everyone having lost the election, we're now down to a squabble about who has lost it the least.

And the Conservatives had the most votes and seats, but they don't know this is the argument of who has the mandate.

The government clearly ended up with under 30% of the vote from a 65% turnout, 255 seats.

They need 326 for an overall majority.

The Tories

on 302 as we speak.

Cameron is now saying, this is breaking news on the bugle.

Cameron is now saying

he does subscribe to the bugle but hasn't listened to it for a few weeks because he's been busy.

That's come through from Reuters.

Wow.

He's saying he's going to try and form a minority government and talk to the other parties.

Now, I mean, this could be a momentous day for British politics, Sean.

This could be the day that British politics grows the f up.

It could be.

It could be.

I think, think, Andy, the problem there is that you're presupposing an engaged electorate and politicians with the capacity for shame.

And that's ludicrous.

But I mean, it was yesterday was an incredible day.

It was awesome going to vote.

I love the smell of democracy in the morning.

Surprisingly similar to a dairy farm, in fact, in the morning.

The smell of British democracy also sounds quite like one, too, and has a lot of people milking it for all they can.

And an unholy mess is inevitably left behind.

It's truly uncanny, John.

But there is, as you know, nothing better in this life than writing the letter X in a box next to the name of someone you've never heard of.

That is what democracy is all about, John.

So no government as it stands, but to be honest, Andy, I don't think this result has particularly surprised anyone.

Gordon Brown actually released a statement saying that he would take full responsibility for the election defeat a day before the polls even opened.

I'm not questioning his facts there, Andy, I'm just questioning his timing.

He is a regular Henry V Batman, isn't he?

Men, gather around.

I just want you troops to know that when Agincourt is a total catastrophe, I mean a complete massacre, that it is on me.

Okay, my bad.

I think that's it.

Once more into the breach, you're certain deaths, everybody.

Let's get this thing over with.

Well, it's like Churchill in the first draft of his famous We Will Fight Them on the Beaches.

We will fight them in the hills little skip.

Quite different, because he wasn't very confident.

And he said, we will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them in the hills.

But frankly, I don't really fancy our chances.

The Germans are looking pretty strong at the moment, and to be honest, they probably deserve to win.

They've certainly been the better team over the course of the war so far, and we can have no complaints, really.

So, best of luck to Adolph and his team, they've thoroughly merited this victory.

But luckily, someone got to him and said, Right, come on, come out, fighting, big win.

And he did.

But we've had a

touch of excitement in this democracy.

That's a number of postal votes have gone missing.

And we've ended up with hundreds of people being locked out

as the polls closed at 10 o'clock last night because there were huge huge queues, because I think people had committed the mistake of living in a massively incompetently run area.

And

so

there was genuine sort of it almost looked like it was about to break down into violence.

We had a real touch of the sort of Afghan election experience.

So we're kind of sharing democracy around the world, and it's showed that it's give and take, really.

But the people of Britain have spoken, John.

They spoke with one voice, and what they said was,

oh,

oh.

Now all three parties start jockeying for alliances like they're on a jungle reality show all about to eat a jar of cockroaches.

And in fact, that process might have even more dignity than the one they're about to embark on.

It's also three people competing for a job that if any one of them stopped to think about it for a second, would realise they might not actually want.

Britain's budget deficit is set to be even bigger than Greece's this year, and they are on the verge of a bankrupt anarchy.

This might actually turn into an argument of a, you have it.

No, no, no, no, you have it.

Oh, well, come on, you won most seats.

It's yours.

I won't hear it, Prime Minister.

Ah, please don't call me that.

You know, because usually at elections you get people coming out and claiming victory, but I think they'd looked at the economy and basically everyone was saying, no, it's not looking good and just desperately trying to claim defeat.

And I think Cameron's failure to win this election outright must go down as one of the most spectacular electoral bloopers in our history.

As Labour, John, were staring down the barrel, but more than that, they had pointed the barrel at their own face and written a note saying sorry to everyone they've let down and then placed the Conservatives' finger on the trigger.

So quite how it went wrong is frankly baffling, particularly when they had a huge support from the press, the Conservatives.

And this sort of fed into the anti-Lib Dem swing, I think, in the last few days, the worries about the hung parliaments, a lot of the newspapers have said,

these concerns that are vomited out by the Tory press onto the nation's cornflakes about how basically looking at Greece now, it's basically a computer simulation of what Britain will be like if there's a hung parliament just flames riots 100,000 years of British civilization conflagrated in one fell swoop of electoral indecision and about how if there's a hung parliament it would probably vote to ban all medical advances made since 1785 and make all women wear concrete burkhas so I mean that that was that was a level of scaremongering going on and the Conservatives if they do form a government which now seems likely a minority government they will be the least popular incoming government since the 1920s but I think that these low expectations could really help, John, because

people have had enough of being let down by their politicians.

They're sick to death of it, quite literally in some cases due to NHS underfunding.

But you can only let people down if they expect you to be any good in the first place.

And the way this election has gone shows that people don't expect anyone to be any good anymore.

And expectations will be so low that all the Conservatives will need to do is stop the Queen being kidnapped by the Chinese and everyone will think they've done better than expected.

So this could actually

Work for them.

There were also, of course, the traditional voting irregularities to add a bit of spice to the day.

You mentioned the long lines and people being shut out.

Apparently, also this time, a 15-month-old baby was sent a polling card, giving him the option to vote.

His name is Alexander McConnell from Southwold.

And he received the card in the post along with the cards for his parents.

And everyone seems to have had a bit of a laugh about this, Sandy, about how funny it is that this baby was given the opportunity to vote.

But that baby should have got off his ill-formed arse and actually voted.

Does he know how many people died so that he could be mistakenly sent that card?

I bet he doesn't, because he hasn't even bothered to develop his brain to the point where he can even process that as a potential piece of information.

And is that not typical of the apathy endemic in the young voter at the moment?

They should have carried him into the voting booth.

and left him there until he'd made up his mind or at least eaten the ballot paper.

2010, there, an election that, as we look back at it now, has a fuck of a lot to answer for.

Hey, Chris, have we got anything off the cutting room floor from recent episodes we can pad this out with?

Not now, Andy.

Great.

Who's in it?

I said no.

I'm trying to watch Master the Day.

Super, crank it up.

Oh, fuck's sake.

Here's something.

I mean, the British establishment has been rocked to its core multiple ways this week.

Strictly Come Dancing,

which I believe has a royal charter as a TV show,

had its first ever same-sex routine, and it sparked almost 200 complaints to the BBC.

Some viewers apparently said they would no longer watch the show if same-sex pairings became a regular feature.

Now, I no longer watch the show because I never watched the show in the first place.

But that's a strange tipping point.

Very strange.

Isn't it?

Rather than the fact that it's tediously repetitive and formulated garbage.

The fact that

a same-sex dance could affect your enjoyment of a show.

Yeah.

It seems...

It's almost as if it's not really about the dancing act.

Oh, right, okay.

It's almost as if that...

And I mean, it's resulted in, I think, a couple of hundred complaints coming into the BBC from, let's face it, arseholes.

And what I would say to these people is...

Getting arseholes to complain to the BBC is my job.

Back off, gay dancers.

This is my turf.

Also, I I mean complaints to the BBC is basically the only effective way of getting anything done in this country.

One complaint to the BBC basically causes the whole organisation to go into lockdown.

Whereas a million people complaining on the streets of London recently barely got 20 seconds on the, I guess it's Stalin who said one complaint can stop the BBC.

A million complaints is just a statistic.

I mean I thought it was quite a nice moment.

Just,

you know, it's a bastard of the British establishment and having same-sex parents dancing feels like a measure of

social progress.

But then

I am, as my mother described me, a leftist subversive.

So

those are strange middle names.

General elections, of course, are not the only elections in town, not in this town anyway, because back in Bugle 27 we reported on the election for London Mayor, featuring a man with whom we have all become harrowingly more familiar.

British politics now and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been hammered and mauled at the ballot box like a teenage binge drinker on a bad night out.

On the minus side, less than 10% of potential voters voted for the Labour Party.

On the plus side, he could say that with a 35% turnout in the local elections, 75% of potential voters in all didn't vote against him.

So once again, those key floating voters are going to be crucial, John.

Hold on a second.

What was that 110% turnout?

No, I'm including the 10% that actually voted for Labour plus

the 65%

who love democracy so much they don't want to risk getting it wrong by writing an act in the wrong box.

That's the thing.

I mean, is there not the big story from the night that yet again the landslide winner was the concept of people not giving a shit about things?

It's always going to be the way, John, though.

That's what we fought the wars for.

We fought wars

so that we had the right not to give a shit about stuff.

Yep, true, true.

So the floating vote of Argon McKinney and by floating, of course, I do mean bobbing face down on a reservoir of disillusionment.

Gordon Brown seems to be in some trouble, Andy, as his unpopularity rises like a sunflower of doom.

Asked whether he had a presentational problem and was less able to give a human answer to a question than his predecessor, Tony Blair, he said, My job is to work every day on behalf of the people of this country.

So yes, then

a simple yes.

Blair did have that uncanny quality of giving you bad news in a way that a friend would, or be it a friend who was directly responsible for the bad news in question.

In the same interview, Gordon Brown was asked by the journalist what the first thing he thought of in the morning was when he woke up that day.

And he said it was a housing crisis and how to get first-time buyers onto the ladder.

The first thing?

Before thinking, where am I?

Or I don't want to be awake yet.

Or if someone doesn't get me a cup of coffee the next two minutes, I'm going to kill the first thing that moves.

No, not that.

The housing crisis.

And the horrendous thing is, that could even be true.

I wouldn't put it past him thinking that.

I'm sure his wife during a romantic dinner has found herself saying, what are you thinking, Gordon?

Only for him to reply, oh, whether low interest rates are genuinely in the long-term fiscal interest of this country.

He's a serious man, Andy.

And for some inexplicable reason, we don't want that.

We certainly don't.

He's also been slightly left in the position of the guy who would have had to take charge on the Titanic had Captain Smith said, my God, you were right.

It is an iceberg.

I could have sworn it was only a chocolate wrapper.

My mistake.

Is that the time?

Oh dear, I must be off now.

Well, you've always been an ambitious lad.

You take the reins.

Right, get my chopper.

I'm out of here.

The result of the London mayoral election is not quite out as we record, but it does seem that Ken Livingston, the incumbent mayor, could well lose to joke candidate Boris Johnson, raising the possibility that he will do a Mugabe

and refuse to announce the result for weeks before eventually saying, yeah, we're going to have to have a recount.

Who knows if that will happen?

All I can say for sure, John, is that at this very moment, there's a big Chinese ship moored on the Thames outside City Hall in London, and there's a courier waiting in reception saying, No, it's a special delivery.

Mr.

Livingston has to sign for it himself.

It does seem that London, a major international city, is about to vote for comedy rather than competence and have what.

I mean, the rest of the world really do have something to look forward to in Johnson.

That's the worst thing.

I'm not sure I can entirely disagree with this.

I mean, it's going to be awful.

It's going to be absolutely awful, awful, but it's going to be funny.

The whole thing is a bit like the plot of a low-budget comedy film, though.

It's like the greatest ever example of a drunken dare going much better than expected.

Basically, the plot is: man bets friends he can't become mayor of London.

Friend takes bets whilst hammered.

Man says, There's no way you'll win.

You're an obvious tit.

Friend says, Good point, but let's have a laugh anyway.

Friend ends up winning by default.

Asks man, what do I do now?

Man says, Dunno, mate, just wing it.

Friend says, Yeah, good call.

How badly could it possibly go?

Leaving it open for a hilarious sequel.

And finally, sport now.

And the Bugle has, of course, always been at the forefront of reporting, if you will, resporting on the events that other media outlets fear to cover.

Over 10 years ago in Bugle 61, we were proud to be exclusive media rights holders for the World Overreaction Championships, an event that now simply happens every day, everywhere, all the time.

Sports news now, and there's been violence at a tennis match.

Hooliganism is back, John.

Novak Djokovic fans clashed with Ama Delich fans at the Australian Open.

I think it's time to segregate tennis fans.

You know, if the Djokovic's and the Delices can't live in harmony, they should be at opposite ends of the court.

I'm just relieved that the Dokic Ultras and the Wozniaki crew didn't flare up during the women's third round match this morning.

I mean, over tennis, John, what could possibly possess these people to get violent over tennis?

Well, perhaps it's because Djokovic, the world number three, and a big fan of the bugle, or at least he would be if he could be bothered to listen to it.

Djokovic is Serbian, and Delic, although now American, was born Bosnian.

So I guess it's starting to fit together a bit with a little bit of historical context.

I guess it shows how far Serbia and Bosnia have come, though, over the last 15 years.

That now that they're just throwing chairs at each other at a tennis tournament and not committing human rights atrocities against each other.

So it shows how far we've come.

Well, that's it from the archives for this week's sub-episode.

We'll be back with a full pre-election bugle next week.

And finally, here are some lies about our voluntary subscribers, thanks to everyone who has contributed to the continuing independence and advert freeness of the bugle.

Book your Soho Theatre tickets now.

Lies!

Let's have some lies!

Music, please!

Melanie Cohen thinks ice hockey pucks should be made of licorice, and that every time a player scores a goal they should be allowed to eat it.

She acknowledges this may give an unfair advantage to the licorice obsessed Sweden but she sticks by it as a plan nonetheless.

Gwynne Morrissey simply cannot understand why in slalom skiing the participants don't simply have curved skis, the left one curving in the opposite direction to the right one, so all you would have to do to manoeuvre your way down the course would be to lift up one leg then the other at the appropriate moments.

Peter W believes it is one of the great disappointments of modern life that we don't have weird rituals like people used to make up for fun in the olden days.

He has started to try to revive this great tradition by hurling grandfather clocks off a cliff at midnight on the first day of each month in symbolic defiance of the passage of time.

Martin Schmeying heard tell of this and jumped aboard that ritualo-symbolistic bandwagon.

Every morning, Martin now burns a page of newspaper and a bit of an encyclopedia, then wafts the smoke around with a fan to earn the goodwill of whatever malevolent cosmic force controls the quality of Wi-Fi signals in public places.

Scott Manson did an unauthorised home PhD dissertation in which he discovered that the vast majority of frogs, up to 96% of them, don't actually know whether they are frogs or toads and, more to the point, simply don't really care one way or the other.

They don't live their amphibious lives by labels, says Scott, and I respect that.

Tomasz Morazzewski has a couple of friends who are strong believers in nominative determinism, understandably so because they're called Leaf Brewer and Nora Bone and are respectively a professional tea taster and a cannibal.

Michael and Nicole Kelly think we might all be a little bit more tolerant of immigrants if every 10 years everyone in the world was forced to migrate to somewhere else for the next 10 years just to see what it's like.

They admit they have not got as far as the logistics or the costings, but they also reckon that it would give international sport a long overdue shake-up.

Austin Ewell, Joseph Hickey and Harry Sims all separately entered entered a competition to come up with new theories covering the mysterious disappearance of everyone on board the ship the Mary Celeste in 1872.

Austin Yule's theory is that a game of dolphin polo between the people on board descended into a fight between the two teams, the polo dolphins and a school of nearby sharks who'd been betting on the outcome.

Joseph Hickey's theory was that the 10 people on board were pecked off by giant space pterodactyls before the creatures flew back to the planet Saurus, whence came all the dinosaurs of course.

In In fact, the supposed asteroid that wiped them out was in fact a spaceship taking them home, but that is a different story.

Harry Sims' Marry Celeste theory was that the crew discovered a magical undersea kingdom, spent a bit of time there, fell in love with the locals and just settled in really.

They really liked the way of life there once they'd got used to it being a little bit soggy.

Great welfare systems and terrific sushi.

All three of those people received highly commended certificates in that competition.

Well done them.

And finally, a volunteer subscriber known only as Lord Horny Spitvalve claims that on an archaeology course in Crete, he discovered evidence that Pacify, the mythological queen who famously allegedly forniculated with a bull to produce the Minotaur, also had a bit of a pachyderm thing going on and had carnalitis enfranglements with the largest land mammal available.

Again, Passify became pregnant with a hybrid humanimal embryonid, but unlike the Minotaur, it was never ever mentioned in the myths or indeed anywhere else.

It was very much the elephant in the womb.

I'm done.

Back next week.

Bye.

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.