Bugle 4131 - Hot PUSA

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers!

Yes, I'm fine, thanks.

You?

Oh.

Aha.

Right.

Sorry, I asked.

You probably run on those screens.

Right, it's business time.

This is Bugle issue 4131.

I am Andy Zoltzmann, Zoltzmann, Lord of All I Survey, which is my laptop mostly with cricket stats on it.

I'm here, obviously.

That could have gone without saying, but as I saw from the case, it didn't.

Specifically in London, where I'm joined, firstly, by Nish Kumar.

Welcome back, Nish.

Hello, Andrew.

Hello, Buglers.

How are you?

I'm uh

I'm okay.

What's wrong?

What's wrong, Zoltz?

Well, there's a real sense of ennui around you today.

Your hair is even slightly flatter than usual.

Really?

I've been, I think that's because I pulled my hat down particularly hard because it was quite cold on the way in.

Right, right.

It's it, well, I mean, we're we've still got almost four weeks of the election campaign.

You can't, you can't be this haggard.

Well, I was pretty much broken on day one,

and I've not got any less irritated ever since.

How are you dealing with it?

You're like a marathon runner who's called for a foil blanket at mile one.

Yes.

It's we got I feel okay about it.

Right.

I think

my expectations are so low that,

you know, if any of them stand up and speak in complete sentences, I'm now like, yes, we're getting there.

I still feel...

I've got stomach for the fight.

I'm ready.

That's good to hear.

I don't think I've ever seen you this sad.

I don't think I've ever seen you this sad whilst England are playing a test series.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, luckily, they're not currently playing through the record, so I'm fully focused and dialed in.

Joining us from the other side of the Atlantic, it's a bugle debut.

It's a great pleasure to welcome for the first time on this show the wonderful Jenna Friedman.

Hello, Jenna.

Hello.

Hello, guys.

How's it going?

Jeez.

Andy, you didn't tell me we were bugling with Dick Van Dijk.

That sounds like a horrible euphemism.

It's really nice to be here

or to in spirit.

Yes.

So I'm really glad that your suburb of doing shows at the Edinburgh Fridge has paid off with a flawless accent, Jenna.

Absolutely flawless.

The only thing I know how to say from is like, it's like, it's not my fault.

It's not my fault.

My British accent.

Well, I bet I could get you a very long way in this country.

Yeah, I mean, that's been our country's motto.

That's very much our attitude to our own history, Jenna.

you've absolutely nailed it.

It's not my fault.

Okay, I'm done.

I'm done.

Our national motto is Dieu à Mont d'Or, which is

in French and basically saying it's God's fault, not ours.

So, Jenna,

you're in LA.

How is

the home of show business?

The home of showbiz is wherever this bugle is, this podcast is being recorded, Nish, as you well know.

How's Los Angeles these days?

It's cool.

I mean, we had a couple fires.

They're gone now, which is cool.

They'll be back like tomorrow, but today, you know, you can run outside if you want.

It's super chill.

Right.

That's

good to hear.

As always, section of the bugle is going straight in the middle this week.

An art section.

And we review, well, it's a very exciting development in the art world.

Deep fakes have

not just existing in terms of fake videos, but now creating entire new pieces of artwork by great masters from the art past.

Deep fakes in a new exhibition include Edouard Manet's idiot primping himself before a night out on the lash, the haunting evocation of the hollowness of modern 21st century vanity.

A new Rembrandt, the 17th century Dutch no-makeup selfie pioneer and hidden easel bathroom snoop pound voyeur perv, as I believe he's officially known.

He's a new series of self-portraits, more pouty and smiley than his earlier stuff stuff for a 21st century audience.

Peter Paul Rubens' sensuously flesh-filled new piece entitled Hands-Off Zeus brackets, Those Days Are Over.

And Giotto's controversial new crucifixion fresco depicting Jesus looking a bit bored after 20 years on death row talking to a lawyer about trying to launch a new podcast.

And, of course, not forgetting 1600s Italian Baroque art star Artemisia Gentileschi's Salome recoils in horror after checking her social media.

We are recording on the 22nd of November.

On this day, in 1574, the Spanish navigator Juan Fernandez discovered islands off Chile called the Juan Fernandez Islands.

Imagine the look on his face

all that way.

On this day in 1963, John F.

Kennedy was assassinated and the Beatles released their second studio album.

So someone didn't want to get overshadowed.

Really feels like you're connecting the two there, Andy.

Are you alleging that with the Beatles is somehow responsible for the death of JFK?

Look,

we can't rule it out, can we?

I mean, have you heard a better explanation?

Well, I mean,

I honestly don't think I have.

I did see the I saw the Irishman this week, which is sort of three and a half hours of

white men suffering, which is obviously my ideal afternoon.

But there was a a sort of real

There is a real spicy theory about the Kennedy assassination that comes up in that film.

But unfortunately, my view of it was marred by a man who went to the toilet and then returned with a full glass of wine.

Really not learning the lessons of his own bladder.

Right.

Yeah.

It's just it's comforting that you guys are both saying that he's dead because

there's a whole movement in our country on the rise, QAnon, that

thinks he's still alive.

So thanks for setting the record straight.

I mean, that is American wishful thinking taken to its logical extreme, isn't it?

They're an active political segment of the population.

They might be a party soon.

JFK's not dead, and he's just announced he's running as Democratic candidate.

The hologram of JFK.

I hope so.

He would be so much safer for our country.

Well, he would be.

He'd be 102 now.

So a couple of years short of Biden.

Boom!

There we go.

Yeah.

And try pressing the nuclear codes when you don't have a finger.

25th of November, Monday, is blase day, apparently.

Oh, is it really?

It's World Blase Day.

Where the f have you found that out from?

It's like a days of the year website.

Apparently, it's well, I mean.

It's a day where you've got to be blasé about stuff.

There's not much detail about it online, which seems entirely proof.

So on Monday, please remember, everyone, to sit back, hook your smartphone up to the internet, bang in your Bluetooth headphones, watch the President of the USA behaving like a laboratory toddler that's had a few too many experiments done on it, and order a box of pickled eels to be delivered within 30 minutes to your house and think, yeah, it's not all that, is it?

On the 25th of November 1947, the Hollywood Ten were blacklisted.

as part of the Red Scare.

Wow.

And it may think, if McCarthyist communist witch hunts were happening today, which celebrities would be suspected of dangerously leftist leanings?

Well, I mean, this podcast wouldn't be happening, for one thing.

Well, I've

well, actually, this is essentially another section in the bin, but I've examined the red credentials of Justin Bieber.

I mean, his first name is basically Joseph Stalin, with some bits missed out and spelt wrong in the modern way.

Selena Gomez, whose most recent album had no songs entitled I Hate Brezhnev and Everything He Stood For.

And Robin Thick, who copied an idea and did it worse, which is classic communist behavior.

So, you know, no smoke without fire.

How do you know who Selena Gomez is?

I've got the internet,

search engine.

What's your favorite thing about Selena Gomez?

What's your favourite song?

Selena Gomez.

Oh,

well,

Raw Raw Rasputin.

That's a great one, actually.

It's like a part of your injury, like part of your head sustained an injury, and your popular culture and popular music capacity ended in about 1987.

Actually, I think it probably ended the moment I was born.

Probably 90% of the music I own was made by people who probably died before I entered the world.

And Boney M.

And Boney M.

Yeah, of course.

God rest there.

Still alive souls.

Top story this week.

A huge breakthrough for humanity.

Doctors have managed to put humans into a state of suspended animation in a groundbreaking trial.

Wait, really quickly, as and how what's the difference between suspended animation and just being British?

Well, I mean, this is a very complex.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this.

That is a big first question to come in on your beautiful debut, Jenna.

Well,

in this case,

it's your brain that's frozen, whereas obviously, in order to be British, it's your heart that has to be frozen, Jenny.

Your heart, economy, and sense of moral rectitude.

Looking at the state of the world,

if you were offered right now,

30 years of suspended animation,

would you take it and hope to wake up in a better world or would you say no i think it's going to get even worse i mean to be honest this whole news story is slightly blowing a hole in my whole sense of self because i had assumed that the entire world is just a dream i was having while i when i was put in suspended animation in about 2016 sort of january 2016 and uh my current theory is that i ate a metric f ton of cheese before i fell asleep uh now for jenna's benefit that is a 2204 f pounds.

Just, I don't want Americans to be left out of the units of measurement.

Yeah, still clinging onto that bit of empire.

Can't let it all go, can you?

Oh, it can't be pick and choose, Friedman.

I imagine that a lot of people in Los Angeles would have seen this story and thought, you know, I can live forever now.

Yeah, we definitely read.

So, I mean, would you like, yeah, suspended animation now to wake up on the morning of the election next year or to be on the safe side in January 2025 or 2029?

Would I rather wake up then?

Yes.

No,

I think we're like we're getting like the last gasp of like actual air that's breathable and I'm into it.

Like just you know

seize the day.

It's only going to get worse.

Yeah,

you don't want to come out of suspended animation into a post-climate change induced Mad Max apocalypse.

Like you don't want to wake up into that.

You want to ease yourself.

Or just like New Delhi right now, you know, they have like oxygen bars where they can't breathe except for in a bar.

Can you imagine like you just have to go to a bar and be social just to breathe?

Well, let's look more at the state of America as a nation.

Like so many epic series, the story of the USA started out in a really intriguing manner, but has cheapened itself with ridiculously outlandish plot lines and overdrawn characters and has become largely self-indulgent navel gazing.

And the whole franchise is in danger of going totally to shit.

At least go back to what made it worthwhile in the first place, which of course was being British, but a little bit different.

So

the impeachment proceedings clearly have gripped the world's attention.

Jenna, what have you made of it this week?

Look, Fiona Hill is awesome.

It's cool to just, it was such a breath of fresh air to hear someone just like talking about things in a way that isn't so convoluted.

I'm also inspired by the Republicans' ability to just like twist reality to the point where we're all just questioning it constantly.

I think in terms of like oratory skills, the Republicans are so slippery, it's actually cool to watch.

And Trump might get impeached, but it might not even matter.

People are saying that they think he'll be impeached by like Christmas.

Oh, what a, that would be a lovely presentation.

Christmas present for the whole world.

That's the

best version of It's a Wonderful Life, you could imagine, isn't it?

I know.

I know.

Interesting with Fiona Hill, she was born in Britain.

When I googled her in preparation for this podcast, I was like, I bet Zoltz was going to raise the fact she was born in Britain.

What's she born in Britain?

You say she talks

in a pleasingly unconvoluted way.

That's clearly why she had to leave the country.

There was this story about how, did you hear the story about how she was 11 or something and some kid lit her hair on fire and she just like patted her hair down and kept like working or something?

Did you hear that one?

I didn't hear that one.

Well, it's just it's so British.

It's like keep calm and carry on.

I saw a CNN report saying that she, Fiona Hill had,

obviously a very impressive testimony, but it said that she had demolished the Republican talking points on the impeachment.

But that is a demolition in the same way that you can demolish an igloo with a hairdryer.

Like, given the Republican talking points on impeachment are largely consist of, number one, he didn't do it, number two, but her emails, number three, come on, and number four, quick, look over there, a dog is driving a bus.

Seriously, everyone, stop investigating and look at that bus driving dog.

One thing that Fiona Hill said, this made me think of this.

If you had been put in suspended animation, say, you know,

even 10 years ago, and you woke up to see Fiona Hill

saying these words, I would ask, directing this to the American, the great and the good of american politics i would ask you please not to promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance russian interests how how does that has that sentence come into being

also if you'd been put into like suspended animation 20 years ago you'd be going

20 weeks ago yeah but you'd be like two months two years ago you'd sort of be going and the guy she's talking about who is the president is that bloke from home alone too

yeah are we living in a simulation?

Maybe.

Maybe we are.

Let's fing hope so.

Trump.

I really enjoyed this nihilistic phase of your career, actually.

I think that's just my career.

This progresses seamlessly towards nothingness.

Gordon Sondlin, the former US ambassador to the EU, had been a Trump ally, stated that the whole Ukraine shebang was at the express direction of the President.

And he said, we all follow the President's orders.

And Donald Trump seemed to take this as a full exoneration, which was quite

extraordinary.

I mean,

someone could publish 100 videos of Donald Trump slaying an endangered Arctic tiger cub with his bare hands and then violating its corpse.

And he would say, this proves that I did nothing wrong.

I love cats.

And he followed that up with, I mean, even again,

it's hard to, I feel like we all overused our hyperbole too early in his presidency, but another just in a string of extraordinary moments when off the back of the Sunderland testimony, he was sort of interviewed again in this kind of pattern of him being interviewed in a factory that just seemed to produce loud noise.

So you can't fully hear what he says.

And that definitely is starting to feel like a tactic by his advisors.

But he brandished a piece of paper that was a transcription he had made of a phone call with the Ukrainian president.

And a couple of the eagle-eyed photographers actually managed to get a picture of his notes.

Now, I know this is not the point, but his notes won Air Force One headed stationery.

And I really think if the American government is looking to cut back on its spending, they should maybe not start with things like healthcare and welfare and maybe focus on the headed stationery of the president's private plane.

The Democrats had another debate a couple of nights ago in which they, well, Kamala Harris said, we have a criminal living in the White House,

which does sound like a great tagline for a film.

Sadly, it is a tagline for a documentary.

Jenny, you're a Democrat supporter, a Democrat member, I believe.

What's your take on how

the process is going for selecting the person to be abused by Trump throughout next year?

Well, it wasn't just, we just should

qualify.

It wasn't just the Democratic debates because Tulsi was up there also.

But besides Tulsi,

who the only thing else I can say about her is that she wasn't on her period because she was dressed in all white.

You guys just got got so weirded out by that comment.

I mean, we are British at a range of about 8,000 miles.

No, I just admire that she's always in white.

So it's the only thing when a woman is, unless it's like Hillary, you know, unless it's like clearly post-menopausal, when a woman is just like all in white, it's the first thing I can think because she's not in our period.

I don't know if that's taking us back a, you know, century or whatever.

But

yeah, it's interesting.

I am worried for for us.

I think that we have too many people in the race right now, and it's hard for us to kind of coalesce around like one person.

And,

you know, I...

I'll vote for any of them.

Again, Tulsi's not a Democrat, but any of the other ones I'll vote for.

I just think we shouldn't even have debates.

We should all just have them run together like in like a Captain Planet cartoon or something.

I'm really pleased with Tulsi running.

America is also

being exposed, because in this country we've got Pretty Patel and Saja Javid, and America is also being exposed to every Asian kid's least favourite aunt or uncle.

Like, it's really good to know that the diaspora is representing our worst enemies.

It was,

the Biden gaffe was pretty spectacular stuff.

He claimed that he had the support of the only African-American woman elected to the United States Senate, referring to Carol Mosley Braun.

That was awesome.

Yeah, referring to Carol Mosley Braun and ignoring the fact that there is another one and she was standing next to him.

And so Kamala Harris sort of laughing through it was, you know, it was a pretty extraordinary moment.

And, you know, some people are saying, will this affect Joe Biden?

But if I'm being completely honest, in the current climate,

what Joe Biden did was be a bumbling old white man who said something racially insensitive.

And as such, he has never seemed more presidential.

yeah i think we should all really get behind biden it might be the for real it might be the only way that we'll end up with a female president in like uh 2023 um

just because of how time works uh but i'm not i would totally support biden or bernie um and then just uh like you know kamala warren or clobuchar as like their vp

people are really into buddha judge right now yeah it's like people have remembered that even though he's gay he's still a white man

It's like this week, everyone's like, oh no, hang on, he's still a white guy.

Yeah,

he wouldn't be the first gay president, just the first one who's out.

I mean, that's a fact that I think he's even said.

We are really reigning in the Bugle exclusives this week.

JFK is alive and he's gay as hell.

I thought you were talking about Franklin Pierce.

Lincoln?

I mean, Lincoln.

I mean, he was an absolute dream boat, wasn't he?

To be fair.

What a beard.

Have we reduced this episode to debating who's our presidential gay crush?

I mean.

Grover Cleveland was all man, wasn't he?

Teddy Roosevelt with that moustache.

Yes, please.

Taft.

Actually, Franklin Pierce was quite hot.

Chris is in the studio googling American presidents to rate their relative hotness.

I'm sure tafting is an arcane sexual practice.

It's not arcane, Andy.

We clearly are going through the election process ourselves, and our politics initially sort of descended into some kind of

human centipede of hypocritical, sadomasochistic, petard hoistings.

As

every party

that is a hell of a sentence

points out the lies and wrongdoings of the other parties only to have those exact same charges hurled back in their faces we had the Boris Johnson Jeremy Corbyn debate which was an absolute festival of pointlessness Britain responded by being stroppy and underwhelmed as

always and

it was I mean for democracy fans that debate for me was a bit like I mean you're a Bob Dylan fan aren't you?

Enormous

almost to a fault it was like seeing Dylan singing advertising jingles for a pickup artist website just

so far away from what it could be

I mean as an American watching it's just it's cool that to see men not being taken seriously by people

a breath of fresh air

yeah I mean there was open laugh there was open they were getting laughs proper derision yeah it was pro it was proper sort of open derision.

Yeah.

I mean, I've had worse hour-long shows.

I've got fewer laughs standing on stage for an hour than those two managed.

Yes, I've had similar laughs, certainly.

Scorn and disapproval and confusion.

Listen, this is Britain.

We should have got them pissed and had them fight each other.

Let's get them to embrace our true national character.

It's not high-minded debates over policy issues.

It's getting shit-faced and sort of vaguely waving our fists in each other's direction.

It's like Gladstone and Disraeli all over again.

And they caught the imagination of the public, Andy.

One of

the most notable things to emerge from this debate was the Conservative Party

transforming

the Twitter page of their campaign headquarters, CCHQ, Twitter page, branding it as Fact Check UK.

Yeah.

and changing the design of it, the colour of it.

It kept it at CCHQ in tiny little letters

and passing themselves off as a fact-checking service, but then just slammed everything Corbyn said and declared Boris Johnson the winner of

the debate.

Even more remarkable than this naked piece of deceit and mendaciousness was the way they responded afterwards.

Dominic Raab,

a one-man warning sign for future generations about the dangers of neglecting your political system,

did never, ever elect a man whose surname includes.

He announced no one gives a toss about social media.

So he didn't deny that they'd done this or that it was wrong.

He just said no one cares.

I mean, amidst all the...

depressing moments in our recent democratic past.

This was a...

I mean, because it was kind of irrelevant, but at the same time,

it symbolised

just how awful

the process has become.

I'm going to say of this incident, what my geography teacher said on my school report after I got 12% in a year 8 exam.

This is not the low point, but one in a series of low points.

Yeah, it was a really unedifying.

Dominic Rabbit is the foreign secretary of this country and also a man who once confused me for a different Asian man and afterwards refused to apologise.

So, you know, my expectations of Dominic Rabbit, he sort of looked at me like I, he just looked mildly confused, like I was Eddie Murphy and Norbit and I was just playing two separate characters some CGI and makeup.

Right.

But you've still got your immigration papers, haven't you?

Well, this is the thing.

I was at one point concerned because I've said some pretty appalling things about him on television.

And when he became foreign secretary, I was concerned that he might deport me.

And then I remembered that he still doesn't know which one I am.

So, you know, bad luck, Ramesh Ranganathan, you're getting deported.

Rob said that the reason they did this was because they wanted an instant rebuttal mechanism, which I'm pretty sure was a machine that a good few Tory MPs in the 1980s had in their sex dungeons.

And

he said an instant rebuttal mechanism to the nonsense directed of the Conservative Party.

That bastion of 1,000% truthicality that it is.

Now, the thing is, they had that instant rebuttal mechanism, which was the Twitter page itself,

but clearly they didn't feel confident enough to attempt to put anything claiming to be a fact on it because everyone would just assume it was bullshit.

On the plus side, self-knowledge is one of the eternal pursuits of life.

The ancient Greeks were on to that.

And the Conservatives clearly know that if they state something as themselves, everyone will just assume they are bullshitting.

So, in order to tell the truth, or they consider to be the truth, they have to construct a lie because if they try to tell the truth honestly, they will be lying

uh the cabinet minister nikki worgan has said that only people in the westminster bubble uh care about uh the rail which is just uh another in a long series of uh conservative politicians essentially treating people who don't live in the middle of london as being

pig

essentially they're not thinking about the truth they're too busy eating their own shit

they're too busy being real british people and having sex with blood relatives.

The Labour Party have announced their manifesto and it's led to a string of arguments yesterday and today about whether earning £80,000

is a lot of money or not because one of the Labour proposals would see a 45% tax levied on people who earn an income of £80,000 or above.

per year, a figure which various estimates put up

putting you you basically in the top five percent uh of earners in the country and there's been a lot of debate over whether 80 000 pounds uh is a lot of money and uh i can officially reveal the answer that it is i mean it depends on context obviously for jeff bezos uh 80 000 pounds is something that he makes at the start of the process of him laying a deuce but

in the grand scheme of things 80 000 pounds is quite a lot of money and I read some extraordinary writing about this.

Someone wrote today, if you're earning £80,000, not only do you get taxed on that, but you may get taxed on your second home.

Now, what I would say to that is I would quote the economist J.K.

Galbraith, who famously said, if you've got a f ⁇ ing second home, sell the or stop whinging, you twat.

Thought Galbraith was a foul-mouthed economist.

He was.

He was.

A good editor, though, to be fair.

I did some maths.

I love maths.

I love stats.

And just to put in context what we're talking about, the Labour Manifesto has been costed at around about somewhere between 80 billion and 120 billion, depending on who you read.

Now, the Times Rich List,

they list the richest people in Britain.

I don't know exactly quite how they calculate it, but the richest 50 are collectively, according to this list this year, worth £361.5 billion.

They average over £7 billion each.

So if you are a nurse listening to this, wondering how you could be worth £7 billion in your line of work, well, it would take you just over a quarter of a million years.

Although

that is assuming your salary didn't go up in that time,

but probably it would go up.

So it would only maybe take 170 million.

Blink of an eye.

In the time that Jeff Bezos takes to jerk off, which let's just say is about three minutes, he could actually, doing nothing, end global hunger.

He could end world, he could feed every child in the world world in the three minutes it takes for him to rub one out.

There's surely no way, Jennifer, that Bezos is doing that himself anymore.

He's got some sort of wanking drone.

He does, assuming that he does order this, you know, this device from, you know.

Yeah, the wanking robot.

Presumably he orders that from his own website and that gives him an extra, I'm not skipping an extra little, I reckon he could do it.

And he jerks off in the time it takes someone making no money working next to a machine making more than that person.

The thought of that is what gets him going.

Even if you just take the top 500.

By the time the jerk-off machine gets to his

sorry.

I don't mean that.

I think, I mean,

you do need to think through the logistics of jerk-off machines when it comes to the super-rich.

Otherwise, it's very hard to get into their mindset.

Understand how they tick.

Well, I mean, I'd love to ask Jeff onto the show

to maybe talk through these.

Put in a word for us, Jenna.

Yes, Chris.

I've got the Bezos wank maths in my hand.

Let's hear it.

The moment we've all been waiting for it.

Going on Jenna's theory, which is what it'll be called from now on, that it would take you three minutes.

The Friedman principle.

It's been calculated here.

It's $149,353 per minute.

So every Bezos wank is the equivalent of $448,059.

Right.

But if he's got...

I feel like that's lowball are you?

That's what he calls it.

Some more context on super wealth, some more stats.

Mukesh Ambani, the Indian multi-billionaire, estimated worth 60 billion US dollars.

His house in Mumbai called Antilla is 170 meters high.

I calculated an estimated volume of his house in terms of size and worked out out if he wanted to fill it with portions of tiramisu from the local cafe where I live in South London, which cost £4.50 each, he would need just over £530 million tiramisus.

This would cost him £2.4 billion,

which is about the same as his entire house cost in the first place.

Just goes to show don't build stuff with Italian desserts.

Now, assuming the building then became uninhabitable, as it was now full of rapidly festering tiramisus, Ambani could afford to build another six antillas, fill them all full of tiramisus,

and leave them to rot and still have enough money left over to buy a personal army of 16,000 British nurses to look after him for the next 50 years.

In other words, he's minted.

What have I done?

Never give a multi-billionaire crazy ideas about what he might like to spend his money on.

I mean, the environmental damage of the ingredients are those tiramisus.

That's 20-odd million litres of Mascaponi cheese.

We know how dairy impacts the environment.

A quarter of a billion eggs.

But he'd need every single egg laid in India on the day that they made these

desserts.

Have you calculated how many eggs are laid a day in India, Andy?

Well,

guesstimate.

Have you run out of cricket statistics?

Is that what's happening?

Royal family news now.

And

well,

as hard to know where to begin with this story, Nish, you're our Royal Family correspondent.

Hugely.

Close personal friend of all members of the Royal Family.

All of them, I believe.

Some of them.

I'd like to be quite specific.

Which ones in this case?

Just the one who killed Diana.

Well, listen, it's been an extraordinary week in Royal News.

Prince Andrew gave an interview to the BBC, to Emily Maitlis, who's a news journal, like journalist and news presenter here.

And

I mean, listen,

it was extraordinary.

He coined some absolutely fascinating new phrases.

Well, such as, for example, to let the side down.

Yes.

He coined that as a phrase.

Andy, I played football with you on Tuesday.

And I think it's fair to say I let the side down.

And more so than usual.

Yeah, well,

normally by which I mean, you know, I let in a few goals or I played quite poorly.

But in this occasion, I let the side down by at half-time flying to New York to stay with a convicted sex offender.

Yeah, I mean, that wasn't.

To tell him I didn't want to see him anymore.

To tell him that I didn't want to see him anymore.

Well, I mean, this is that

phrase did jump out, let the team.

Because that's kind of sporting phrase.

Yeah.

It must be particularly galling after they must have had a specific Royal Family team talk.

Right.

Charles, keep it tight, keep it simple.

Don't bang on too much about modern architecture.

Just be a bit avuncular and hope everyone forgets all the weird shit from years ago.

And turn up to rugby matches on time.

You're doing great.

Edward?

Edward?

Sorry.

Are you here?

Andrew, don't lark around in parks with convicted paedophiles.

Hands in.

One, two, three.

Go, Team Windsor.

Simple, simple thing.

His PR quit over the decision to give the interview, presumably knowing that what was about to happen was, I mean, an absolute pedo snafu.

Yeah, why did they actually let him do that?

Who let why?

There is no adequate explanation for that.

It was filmed in Buckingham Palace, wasn't it?

Home turf.

It was a home fixture for the lad.

They could have just been like, you know, what you shot was cool, but we're not going to let you take it out of the palace.

They could have done some defense after the interview.

They probably were there watching it happen.

Well, Jenny, he thinks it went so well that he's apparently contemplating doing a sequel.

He's getting a series.

The bit about claiming that he wasn't that close.

wasn't a close friend to Eckstein, albeit he had been to stay at his house, his private island, and flown on his private plane and been invited to his guess who's out of jail reveal party as guest of honour.

Yeah.

And then told this not very good friend that he was going to be, he was going to friend dump him by flying across an ocean and staying with him for several days.

It all stacks up in the same way that a house of cheap playing cards stacks up on a rickety old garden table with wonky legs during a simultaneous earthquake and hurricane.

This story has, you could strain pasta in this story.

Do you think he was turned on?

Like there was...

I didn't tweet this because I didn't think it was okay to say that on Twitter, but on your podcast, I'm going to go for it.

Do you think it was like the way he was sitting, it was like he was covering up an erect and he just had the weirdest.

I actually have a quote of his when she asked him if he had sex with a traffic minor.

And he, I mean, there's so much more to it, but he goes, without putting too fine a point on it, if you're a man, it is a positive act to have sex with somebody.

You have to take some sort of positive action.

So therefore, if you try to forget, it's very difficult.

That's his defense.

I mean,

that's, you can't make that up.

You can't write that if you try.

No, I mean,

you're absolutely right.

Some of the things that he said, he said that his visit to Epstein was the result of his tendency to be too honorable.

And that is, I mean, that is some heavy spin.

I am too much of a great guy to not hang out with Pedo's.

That is a...

Yeah.

The whole interview just felt like it was a pep talk to himself in the mirror after he's had too much to drink.

It's on camera and we're listening and watching.

I think I'd have had more respect for Prince Andrew if he'd just come out and said two points.

One, my family was chosen by God, so suck it up, pleb.

And two,

British identity is built on royal traditions.

Edward I married a 13-year-old in 1254 and I don't see anyone saying he should quit.

And Henry VIII married a 16-year-old and then chopped her head off and he's a f ⁇ ing hero.

You can't fight genetics.

Also, my mum had a dangerous thing.

Yeah, when you put it in context, you're absolutely right.

Quick bit of sports news.

Chris, you are a Spurs fan this week.

Oh, scroll.

Spurs dispensed with their manager, Maurizio Pochatino, after five years.

It's not funniness.

Five years broadly of success.

Chris, I have to take a shoot with you there.

It's absolutely fing hilarious.

And hired Jose Mourinho's basically a one-man campaign campaign against the concept of joy.

Five years of kind of Spurs-level success, tailed off a bit this year because it's sport and that happens.

Replaced with a manager who's tailed off a lot because he's a deranged egotist with neon Neanderthal tactics.

That's an accurate summary of I can't Andy, I can't even talk about it.

I don't even want to talk about it now.

Jose Mourinho is the manager

is the former manager of my team, Manchester United, and I feel very much looking at Chris the way someone who has recently beat herpes

looks at

a new customer.

If you don't beat herpes, it's a virus you have forever.

Oh, is it?

Is herpes a promo?

What do you mean I don't?

I got the

what's when you can get rid of craps.

I think Joe.

You can get rid of chlamydia.

Oh, yeah, that's well, chlamydia.

Chris, edit that into the joke.

Yes.

I think

there's talk about him going chlamydia going on a free transfer

in the Russian league, I think.

Young Brazilian.

Chlamydia was what Trump was going to call Ivanka originally.

Two, yeah.

Not going to go

to Chinatown.

Even that syllable, Jeddah, gestured exactly towards what that joke is going to be.

Well, you just can't make fun of it.

You know, so.

That brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

Nish, thank you, as always.

Any shows coming up?

No,

I've got nothing on.

All right.

I'm just going to...

That's new.

You didn't need to tell our listeners that.

Oh, yeah.

I'm just going on.

I'm doing some gigs in London and Brighton and Cambridge that are quite good Bills.

I can't remember fully who is on them,

but they're all pretty good Bills.

I think there's one on December the 4th in the Bloomsbury Theatre that I think is me and Bridget Christie.

And then there's another one in Cambridge with Rob Delaney.

And then there's another one in Brighton with some other great people.

Listen, it's just, you know what?

You're smart people.

Pop your computers open.

Whack my name into Google.

Ignore the weird suggestions that are like tour and wife.

And just, you know, go nuts on it.

Jenna, thanks very much for joining us on the bugle.

It's been a delight to have you on.

Keep away from the fires.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

It's been so fun.

And if you see the Queen, tell her thanks for murdering Jeffrey Epstein.

Oh, she's going to have to get another one of those teardrop brooches that she wore when Trump was going to...

Chris has had a bad week with his football team and he's about to have a worse week with lawyering this episode.

The redacted episode.

Jenna, have you got any stand-up shows coming up?

I do.

I'm at the Soho Theatre in London, I think, March 17th to 28th.

It's a great show.

I will endorse Jenna's show.

Right.

I will, in fact, you.

Oh, yeah, Nish, thanks.

You can come to my end of your show at the Soho Theatre, which runs December 16th to January the 4th, and then just hang around for two and a half months until Jenna arrives.

New Year's Sort of Andy's show, even though, by his own admission, he has yet to finish writing it.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

We will be back.

I might have a week off next week.

We'll be back in a couple of strokes of Jeff Bezos's dick.

We will be back

either next week or the week after.

Thank you for listening.

And we will now play you out in the time-honoured tradition with a barrage of bullshit about our premium voluntary subscribers.

Some of the lies today involve more than one Bugle voluntary subscriber because, well, they got a little bit over-elaborate and required more than one character for narrative reasons.

Also, this week's lies are a Sayings and Proverbs special.

Kieran Lee wrongly interpreted the phrase to look a million dollars as an insult, assuming that it meant that you should not be allowed out in public, but should be locked away somewhere safe, in case anyone asks exactly where you came from and why you're being flaunted around at a party.

Chaney and Ian Adams would like to see some of the world's most famous proverbs updated, starting with, give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day, teach a man a fish, and he will probably overenthusiastically go out and buy a fishing rod, then go fishing a couple of times before realising he doesn't really have time to take up fishing as a serious hobby because of all the other stuff he's got going on, and then just give up fishing and try to sell his rod on eBay.

Elwyn Ainsworth wonders if anyone's last words whilst being attacked by a crocodile and shouting to their colleagues on the riverbank have been, don't worry about the crocodile, he doesn't mean it, he's only pulling my leg.

Elwyn certainly hopes so, at least that person would have died in a very good mood.

Ergo Odgesu recently heard an animated dispute on the radio concerning the location of the annual formal evening dance for members of the British legal profession.

It was scheduled to be held in the Old Bailey in London.

When one of Britain's top judges who presided in the Bailey complained about this, he was told by the Justice Secretary, well that's your problem now, the ball's in your court.

Bart Mosley once got a holiday job marketing fast food at NBA games in Miami, for which he had to dress in a really garish over-the-top chicken outfit.

Fellow Bugle voluntary subscriber Andrea Scholler happened to be going to the game at the American Airlines Arena.

How's the job going, Bart?

asked Andrea, recognising him through the innate power of Bugle voluntary subscriber intuition, despite never having met him before.

Well, I'm not enjoying it, Andrea, to be honest, said Bart, waggling his shiny wings and half-heartedly clucking through his golden beak.

I just really hate the team.

They're one of my least favourite basketball franchises anywhere.

Andrea replied, well, you should quit then.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Carrying on, Aaron Golson heard about a fancy new restaurant that had recently opened near where he lived, which was supposed to have an excellent chef.

He said to another Bugle voluntary subscriber, Michael Burtwhistle, hey, we should go.

The chef is supposed to be amazing.

We can talk about the bugle and eat food.

But Michael was not so sure.

Why, I almost had lunch there the other day, he said, but was put off going in because the chef's sibling, who is the front of house Maitre D there, had a really angry, unwelcoming face and intimidating neck tattoos and wore an aggressively sloganed t-shirt.

So I didn't go.

Come on, Michael, said Aaron, we should try it.

You can't judge a a cook by looking at his brother.

Greg Massey and Eric Tullis went to that self-same restaurant and were so impressed by the food that they asked to meet the chef.

He was an overconfident young man who used to be a professional strongman.

Challenge me to do anything strength-related, said the strongman chef.

Okay, said Eric, a little confused.

Lift up that device you use for weighing out your ingredients.

And to make it more difficult, added Greg, use only the muscles in your lower forehead and cheeks as a kind of facial clamp and then hold the device there for two minutes.

Okay, said the chef, easy.

Well he did manage to get the device off the table it was on but he couldn't keep it up.

Crash!

Greg and Eric walked away unimpressed but sympathetic.

He looked so sad at the realization that he couldn't do it and he wasn't all he cracked himself up to be, said Eric.

Yes, said Greg.

You could see the scales fall from his eyes.

And finally, uh mercifully, Veronica Jong went to that restaurant also with Bugle Voluntary subscribers Peter and Matt Findlay.

They all ordered the mushroom risotto with extra truffles.

Mm, I'm really enjoying this delicious dish, said Veronica.

Us too, said Peter and Matt.

Then a waiter came to their table with a hairdryer, switched it on, and started tossing dried herbs into the jet of warm air and spraying them all over the place.

Hmm, said Veronica.

I I admire experimentalism in modern cuisine.

It certainly is an interesting interactive dining experience, said Peter a little uncertainly, and it adds to the aroma of the mushrooms.

but it is a bit irritating said Matt brushing the herbs off his jacket a little angrily can you stop now waiter he asked politely sorry said the waiter it's just that here time flies when you're having fun ghee

the end

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.