Bugle 4129 - Mukbang

I've got a bit, but I don't even know whether it's worth keeping.

Do you want it?

Are you going to keep it?

Well, I might as well do it.

Might as well.

Put a little bit together.

I mean, I'm not editing this week's episode.

I'm putting it out of the basement.

Right, okay.

Frack you, Chris.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4192 of the Bugle, the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world.

I'm Andy Zaltzmann.

I'm here in London.

What was going on here a billion minutes ago?

Not a lot.

It was the year 107 AD.

People just kind of chilly.

According to the internet, only three or four things happened in the entire world that year.

How times change and to illustrate how times change to look back on another busy week for this planet.

I'm John here in London.

Returned from the USA for a brief flying visit back to London, Tiffany Stevenson.

Hello, triumphant.

I wanted to say triumphant even though I'm not really.

But I do have pink hair so I feel like I am giving something new to the pod today.

Right.

I think that's the first time we've had a guest with pink hair.

Although I mean that said,

you know, the years that I was...

conversing with John Oliver down a phone line.

I'd no idea what he'd done what he'd done to his hair.

Yeah.

Also joining us from the other side of the world in Melbourne, Australia.

It's Tom Ballard.

Kooee.

Hello, friends.

Hello, buglers.

I've shaved all my hair off, and I have pink pubic hair.

That's what I'm going with.

Family show.

Beautiful.

Howdy, Australians.

Why the pink hair?

What was the decision, Tiff?

Were you just going crazy?

Are you going mental?

I was just about to ask: Does your pube, do your pubes look like a flaming gala?

Oh,

guys, come on.

Racism, really?

This early in the show?

What precisely is a flaming gala?

I think it's someone making a lot of noise, is it?

A gala is a bird,

a beloved Australian bird.

And a flamin', I guess, is just a

adjective, or it puts a little spice, a little bit of storm on the ball.

It's on fire due to global warming, potentially.

Due to Australia's coal industry, yes.

All our galas are now flaming, I'm afraid.

Are the galas pink, or am I thinking of another bird?

Galas are pink, yes.

Okay, right.

So I was, yeah, I knew I was going somewhere.

I was like, it would be the colour of anyway.

Right.

Let's get off your pubes.

I mean, really.

It's so early for such heavy pube chat.

Again, the first time in the over 4,000 episodes now that that phrase has been uttered.

We are recording on Friday, the 8th of November.

It is World Cappuccino Day.

Of course it is.

It is.

For this was the day in the year 842 in which St.

Joe of the Order of the Cappuccin monks prayed unto God for some milk to go in his coffee.

And the Lord did flob into St.

Joe's coffee cup.

And St.

Joe was not pleased until he got some chocolate sprinkles on top.

Bit of history.

Monday, the 11th of November, is World Origami Day.

So,

which is, I mean, that's lovely for everyone.

If you audio fold this episode of the bugle correctly on Monday, it will sound like a swan.

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

Today, the 8th of November is also Guinness World Records Day.

So, in the bin is a World Records section.

We look at some of the impressive new world bests set in the past record-breaking year.

Itself, 2019 has just set a new record as the most recent year in history, as well as the year longest after Columbus sailed to the Americas.

Previously, that record held by 2018, of course.

Other world records we're looking at this year.

The most believable thing, described as unbelievable in a sports commentary, that is hotly contested.

Least interesting space rocket.

Most animals unnecessarily harassed for a wildlife documentary.

It's getting bigger and bigger every year.

Most product placements in a single movie shop.

That's gone up to 43.

Least effective prayer as well.

A new record set by the Archbishop of Snutterbridge in June of this year who prayed for his diocese to be blessed with a new water park with slides and everything.

The local council

instead built a multi-story car park and a recycling facility and shut down the existing swimming pool on health and safety grounds.

That world record section in the bin.

Top story this week, we're all gonna die

and we're all gonna suffer and then die.

That's the latest update on the environment um 11,000 scientists have ganged up on humanity and told us we are set for untold suffering untold suffering 11,000 scientists the latest uh the latest report I don't know how many of these that seems to be basically a report involving thousands of scientists telling us terrible things are gonna happen almost every day now it's quite biblical isn't it untold suffering yes because I found a a flyer in the back of one of my ubers that felt like it had been left there on purpose.

And it said on the front, where are you going?

It seemed quite bright.

And then when I opened it, it said, to hell!

Unless you accept Christ now.

Right.

So

this feels very similar.

I think it's quite nice.

I mean, we have so much told suffering in the world right now.

I think it's nice to mix it up with some untold stuff myself.

I don't know.

I don't know what 11,000 scientists would know.

You know, like lots of science.

Please.

I watched a video on YouTube and it was this guy who was sitting in his car and he was wearing a cowboy hat and he thinks that actually actually it's all going to be fine and even if it's not it's China's fault so the point is there's a diversity of views and I think we we shouldn't do anything for another three to six years so that everyone has a chance to vlog their opinions and then we can take some action did he mention Gaia theory by any chance

he mentioned it all baby

isn't that the theory that the earth self-corrects was originally put forth by a scientist uh back in the 70s yeah let's assume that the earth's just going to deal with its own mess yeah exactly Why is it always humans that this

Mother Earth

who always tidies up after everyone?

We discussed this before.

Mother Earth is a terrible parent.

Absolutely appalling.

I was in LA and the Santa Ana winds came in.

So there was all the wild fires and there's earthquakes and you're like, oh, yeah, this is literally the hell mouth.

Like, it's like Buffy.

I think Greta Thunberg is the new Buffy.

We have to give her some weapons, fully tool her up for any more upcoming conventions but they'd have to be weapons that didn't release any carbon so you couldn't have things that like oh yeah oh do you know what the carbon that comes off vampires when you dust them right that's quite carbony you know with mr stabby that's what she called her her um her stick her stake mr stabby was it made from sustainable wood that's the key it was made from rosewood and it no uh which is very rare 11 000 scientists that's i mean it's sounds a lot but it's actually way fewer than for example in in the past believed in other now disproved theories, such as that the earth was centre of the universe, or that everything in the universe was simply made of earth, wind and fire.

That princesses can feel a pee under 50 mattresses.

Scientists now believe it's a maximum of 12.

That the sun has a hat or that fish reproduce by belching through their gills.

All now disproved.

So perhaps these 11,000 scientists are wrong.

They could be.

They could be wrong.

I mean, they've made some suggestions.

Urgent changes needed include ending population growth leaving fossil fuels in the ground halting forest destructions and slashing meat eating so the morning after peel really needs to stop calling itself plan b and start seeing itself as plan a

and it just needs a little bit more self-esteem plan b

that's interesting seeing it from a purely environmental perspective yeah the morning after pill yeah yeah it's actually it's come in plastic because i mean that just negates everything doesn't it oh it does but there must be a way of just taking a vial or a a shot of something.

I don't know.

Putting it in glass.

I used to, I think in one of my shows, I had an advert at the beginning for Levenelle because there's enough arseholes already.

So it's like an advert for the morning after pill.

The other profoundly troubling signs from human activities include

booming.

I don't know if that's a reference to boomers.

Booming air passenger numbers and world GDP growth.

The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle.

I mean, my carbon footprint is probably making diamonds at this point.

I feel like I can't really say anything here because I've been on so I've literally done planes, trains, and automobiles in the last two days alone.

Well, I mean, it's the I mean, I like to think

my stagnating career is balancing out the success of many of my peers environmentally, which makes me a hero.

You're green.

That's how you should start

branding your tours now.

America has uh formally this week begun its withdrawal from the environment.

Donald Trump is activating his uh his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord.

Um, and if he wins the election in 2020, America could be, on course, become the first country with no environment by the year 2036, which is what the disenfranchised Rust Belt voter has been crying out for.

Canada has just put in a bid to buy any spare environment from Montana, North Dakota, and Washington state.

And

it's funny, this withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord.

It's not the most eye-catching or maybe eye-gouging thing that Donald Trump has done in his time in office as president.

And there are little speech marks around all four of those words in office as a president.

In terms of the things Trump has done, it doesn't quite leap off the page in the same way that bribing other countries to hack into his political opponents or betraying military allies to their enemies or supporting white supremacists or as confirmed this week, stealing money from his own charity to pay for his election campaign.

Plus, none of that is not quite as striking as that or even digging up the courts of Abraham Lincoln and grinding his nutsack into its face.

Now,

we don't know whether Trump has or hasn't done that.

On the balance of probabilities, he has done that.

And if it turns out that he has, no one would bat an eyelid.

So he basically has.

But pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord could be viewed by history as being right up there with his most impressive acts of complete f ⁇ ishness.

Now,

history is a self-serving, shape-shifting bullshit merchant that insists on lecturing us about all the stuff we're probably going to f up just because everyone else has the same stuff up before.

Butt out history whinging has been.

But it is.

I mean, in terms of Trump's legacy as it sprawls out in front of us, perhaps this will be one of the most defining parts of it.

Because the withdrawal process takes about a year, the U.S.

will come out of the Paris Agreement the day after the 2020 election.

So it's still a year away.

Of course, the world will be very different by then.

Prime Minister Corbyn will have fixed the climate crisis by harnessing the power of recycled Brexit referenda.

The American people will have staged revolution calling for an end to all Marvel movies.

And Andy Zoltzman will have realized that he's wasted years and years of his life watching the offensively dull and bourgeois pursuit that is cricket.

So it's going to be a very different kind of world, but who knows what it's going to be like.

This, I mean, that sentence would have been fine had you stopped it after the bit about wasting years and years of his life.

But it was the end that I did.

That is sacrilegious.

So that means if Trump is in, if Trump gets in.

That's the one bit of my life I haven't wasted, Tom.

Shout out to the kids.

Great.

You're stamping all over the great summer that Andy had.

Yes.

The memories of this beautiful, beautiful summer just gone, Tom.

Yeah.

In fact, I've just this week I put up

my framed handwritten scorecards of the Cricket World Cup final and out up on our stairs.

Happy times.

Don't want to leave it behind.

Is that why you're opposed to any climate action, Andy?

Do you want it to be perpetually summer and so it'll be cricket year-round?

Well, psycho, you sick man.

Yes, yeah, I mean, you've um

cards on the table.

That is absolutely what I'm in for.

Um,

I mean, to me, this is just classic US toxic masculinity.

Fing the world and then trying the pull-out method.

You know, this is classic US.

And I and I think, let's be honest, America never really belonged in the environment.

You know, it was never a good friend.

It was never a good fit.

The environment was always like, oh, don't kill me.

And America was like, shut up, faggot.

They were the original odd couple, I think.

And this now means that America will be the only country of the world not in the Paris Agreement, which is just insane.

Like, surely if chaotic, devastated, conflict-riven, failed states like Syria or the United Kingdom can manage to commit to this kind of stuff, surely America can too, Andy.

That's your shit country that I'm referencing there.

Cut to the very quick.

Well

of course the environment is it exists in Australia as well for now.

Your Prime Minister Scott Morrison

is well he's trying to clamp down on boycotts of carbon emitting industries, which he's

described as indulgent.

Indulgent, selfish.

He thinks these boycotts deny the liberties of Australians.

So in order to stop people denying the liberties of Australians, Scott Morrison is going to deny the liberties of Australians.

It's genius.

He's going to get ahead of the curve.

He's going to cut off the liberty right at the source so it can't be denied later down the track.

Cop that, hippies.

He looks like an angry toe, doesn't he?

And

he sounds like a whinging uncle at a municipal meeting.

I watched a couple of clips with him talking about it.

He keeps saying progressivism as if that's like a dirty word, like progress.

It's so disgusting.

It's only got us to where we are now.

A quick quiz question for you, Tom.

What exactly was Scott Morrison talking about when he used these words?

Apocalyptic in tone, it brooks no compromise, it's all or nothing, alternative views are not permitted.

Was it A, science, B, the Bible, C, the bugle, D, Tom Ballard, E, Scott Morrison himself on his dating profile, or was it F,

a new brand of radical activism?

Well, I'm sure Scott Morrison does refer to me as it,

but I would say I would have to go with D, progressivism, I think, Eddie.

Well, yeah, he said

it's a new breed of radical activism, he described it as that.

Now, I mean, trying to sort of shut Australians up.

Australians are not traditionally known for shutting up when they have an opinion to express, or even when they have no opinion to express.

So he's sort of taking on his own country at one of its most cherished activities.

Well, the government you, Eddie.

The government's full of fossils so I guess it makes sense they're obsessed with fossil fuels

but it feels like it feels like that just feels like it's rich old white men in power going don't give a shit about climate change mate Ozone's already gone here coral's more bleached than a house full of Playboy playmate f ⁇ it let's burn the coal and go full Mad Max Well it is possible it's just it's it's tapping into Australia's naturally competitive streak as a sport-obsessed nation that seems to be driving its government to try to make sure it is the first country in the world to become fully uninhabitable due to global warming.

I think this is the problem with having such a naturally competitive national psyche.

Scott Morrison is tackling the climate crisis very much like a homeowner in a horror movie tackling a masked chainsaw-wielding maniac stalking around in the garden by opening the front door and saying, hey, I can invite some of the kids' school friends around if you need some people to chainsaw to pieces.

I've got a spare chain in the shed in case you need it too.

Do you want to borrow some old clothes?

It looks like you're planning it to get messy.

I think it does come back to our conveyed nature.

We are going to win the ashes for real, motherfuckers.

Morrison said that the boycotts at these climate protests and businesses, people have like stopped major coal projects going ahead because they've lobbied the banks and said, don't fund this project because it's killing the planet and stuff.

He said that these kind of boycotts posed an insidious threat to the economy and jobs and living standards of Australians, which is true.

Whereas climate change, of course, is going to be a job creator.

There's going to be so many employment opportunities after our planet is grilled like a cheese sandwich.

You can be a swimming coach.

You could work as a soldier in the water wars.

You could intern at the tribal council that chooses a sacrifice every month.

I mean, the choice is yours and the opportunities are out there, people.

Well, in Britain, the government has halted fracking, the process by which miniature earthquakes are created in the Earth's crust to release gas.

As we've said on this podcast before, what could possibly go wrong with that?

A scientific study revealed that fracking had multiple benefits, including being inefficient, expensive, unproductive, unpopular, and unnecessary, which you think is absolutely a multiple bullseye for a Conservative government.

But they've actually

gone against,

they basically shut down fracking.

Now, Boris Johnson, for all his faults, which coincidentally, in this episode 4129 of the bugle, that is exactly the current estimate of his character flaws.

He knows that voters have become quite keen to have a planet to live on in future.

And there's been eight years of protests against fracking.

And it's, well, this protest has borne fruit, or more accurately, has stopped fracking companies extracting poisonous, gaseous fruit from the Earth's crust and feeding it into our faces.

Fracking is so bad.

It's so bad it's not even recognized by Microsoft Word.

Like, I'm looking at it right now on my screen, and it's got a bumpy red line underneath it, which no doubt represents the fact that fracking makes the planet Earth bleed.

In 2017, the Conservative Manifesto called for a fracking revolution.

Unsurprisingly, they really fracked it up there.

The Tory Party became such a fracking shit show that fracker Palooza went the way of the Fire Festival, which is ironic because if companies are fracking in your era, chances are you have a little fire festival every time you turn on the tap.

Police news now and a white supremacist policeman has been investigated in Australia.

And

this is, I mean, is this surprisingly rare, Tom, for Australia's policeman to be white supremacists or is this standard procedure?

Well, because they're probably listening to me,

not even on this podcast, I mean privately, I'd say no.

I love the police force and I think they do fantastic work.

This is a guy called Travis Gray.

He was photographed making the notorious white supremacist okay hand gesture.

It was the same one displayed by Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant when he was in court and by me whenever I greet Andy Zaltzman.

But Gray insists

on secret crap.

It was during a protest.

Climate protesters were trying to stop mining executives from getting into this mining conference.

A lot of clashes between police and protesters.

And yeah, this guy was photographed making that little symbol.

He insisted that he was simply making the R-U-O-K sign to two protesters who looked distressed, which is some Olympics-level bullshit that I am very impressed by.

Particularly when it was subsequently revealed that the same officer had posted multiple alt-right memes on his personal Facebook account, no doubt because he saw some sad protesters online and wanted to cheer them up with the lovable cartoon character of Pepe the Frog.

Pepe the Frog had had passed me by it somewhat because I don't spend that much of my time these days on out-right websites.

But he's a cartoon frog, nephew, of course, of the former Muppet and environmental activist Kermit the Frog.

And he was

adopted by the out-right for reasons that I couldn't quite...

Are frogs naturally right-wing?

Yeah, I think they're quite racist.

Ironically, they're actually quite gender-fluid.

I think there are quite a few frogs that can change their gender in certain temperatures.

So I don't know whether the Ottrad have thought this through.

I think, doesn't what's his face, Alex, who's the Alex Jones, think that the Pentagon have a gay bomb and it's going in the water and it's turning the frogs gay.

So maybe that's where it started.

Right.

I mean, have you got any evidence that isn't happening, Tiff, before you start?

Well, Kermit the Frog did split up with Miss Piggy.

Yes.

Joined it.

Pepe the Frog has also become a symbol for the Hong Kong protests.

So I'm starting to think he doesn't actually have political views of his own.

Pepe the Frog can just hook up to any group he thinks will get him publicity.

Typical frog.

Another officer in Australia is facing disciplinary action after an image emerged of him wearing a sticker with the phrase EAD hippie on it, which apparently is slang for eat a dick.

EAD.

Of course, EAD Hippie did play a couple of seasons for Nottinghamshire

County Championship in the 1950s.

Never quite adequately replaced the great Bill Vos as a left-arm seam option, of course.

for me, being told to eat a dick isn't so much an insult to my character as it is a reminder of how my dating life is going at the moment.

It's like, I'm trying, officer.

I'm trying.

Well, also, I mean, most

you think a lot of hippies are vegetarian, aren't they?

So, you know, it seems

crass to suggest meat eating to them.

Um, I don't like the defense of, like, I was asking, are you okay with the hands?

That's kind of like doing a Heil Hitler and then going, no, I was doing the paper from Paper Scissors Stone.

Really high.

But he's managed to get away with it, hasn't he?

And nothing's sort of come of it.

Oh, no.

Victoria Police have responded to the incident by saying, this is not the type of behavior we expect from our officers.

We're extremely disappointed by the situation, which seems very tepid.

It's the kind of milquetoast you might say if your puppy had urinated on your couch or if a police officer had urinated on your couch.

You know, it doesn't seem like it's quite enough.

And they called the the the meme, the right-wing meme um posts inappropriate and said they'd spoken to Travis Gay and he was aware of their extreme disappointment.

So much disappointment going on for Victoria Police.

I think it is disappointing when people are Nazis.

I think anyone who's a Nazi not only has let us down, they've also let themselves down.

That's a real tragic.

In other police news, in America, a woman had to drive herself to the police station with a shattered windscreen in her car after being shot at because the police were watching Netflix at the time.

This is amazing.

This is the

911 supervisor was streaming Netflix at work and then she went, it's on, but I'm not watching it.

The same defense used by everyone whenever a bit of telly was on in the background.

The great thing was is she was watching,

so she mishandled the call because she was streaming the Netflix film I Am Mother, starring Hilary Swank on her computer.

So she was streaming it for about two hours.

And the irony of that is that film is about a woman being replaced by a robot.

So

I imagine that's what's going to happen here to Julie Vidal,

was the

person who was on shift at the time.

I can't be too judgmental here.

There have been episodes of The Bugle in which I may have been slightly distracted by sport on the telly.

That's not happening today.

I'm absolutely zoned in today.

But, you know, I just, you know, I can't be too critical.

I know if I was working on an emergency phone line, there would be major catastrophes every day caused by me watching grainy 1920s black and white sports footage online.

I'm not going to judge people.

When people are asking you how to respond in a situation, what are you going to say?

Walk.

Walk.

No, not from that.

I mean, like, no, he should have walked.

I'll call the police after this over, yeah.

I just think,

how jaded is this woman?

I would have thought that answering emergency phone calls would be one of the most interesting jobs in the world.

How jaded are you that you're answering a call from somebody who's being shot at and you're just streaming season three of Friends in the background?

Come on.

Surely police should be watching these series because police on television are so much more efficient than police in reality.

Yes, that's true.

Over and over again throughout the day.

That's true, especially in things like Brooklyn 99, which is actually a comedy.

They're all doing their jobs.

They're doing their jobs way better.

Yeah, they get you done in like 22 minutes, those guys.

It's amazing.

I think she was suspended from work for two days, which is quite a lot of binging.

She would have managed to get up

Bugle Careers section now.

And I mean, yep, that is a little bit rich coming from me.

Tiff, you are the Bugle Careers Careers correspondent.

You have some exciting news for us from here.

I do.

I do.

Woman quits her job to eat McDonald's and Chinese takeaway on YouTube.

Yes, it's the story we've all been waiting for.

Chana Rowley has quit her job as an admin worker in the hopes of becoming a mukbang star on YouTube, making videos of herself eating thousands of calories at a time.

There's a picture of her sat eating a Chinese takeaway for four people whilst wearing a Nike t-shirt.

So I like that.

That's added some kind of competitive element to it.

Can you just explain what is is mukbang?

What is mukbang?

I know, it's such a horrible word, isn't it?

Isn't it gross?

It sounds like, you know, fucking in a you know, yeah, anyway.

But yes, mukbang is apparently a Korean

guys.

What do you mean you don't know what it is?

It's a trend that originated in South Korea where people talk to their audience while binging on food.

It's the most, probably the most privileged thing that you could do.

It's just about eating as much as you can whilst an audience watch, but also there's a hint of the old ASMR involved in it as well.

So,

yeah.

Is this art form essentially the logical end point of human civilization?

Because

where can we go from here?

What we're doing as a species here is we are using the most incredible technology ever developed for people to use it to watch each other stuffing their faces, boosting the profits of a multinational behemoth while endangering their own health and indirectly damaging the environment.

I think we're done as a species, aren't we?

We're done.

There's nothing left to do.

This is what we've won.

I mean, mean, do you not like ASMR, Andy?

ASMR.

Yeah,

auto-sensory.

Oh, what's the other something response?

It's where

it sounds like this, really, like, kind of

like, and you get people like

this, right?

They do videos online where they whisper into a microphone.

And I can only imagine that men are like tugging into this.

I don't know why this sounds.

I don't think this is sexy, guys.

Guys, Guys, wait.

I'm close.

I'm close.

Yeah, that's it.

That's it.

So there's two elements to it.

One is the videos.

I'm going to muck bang.

Oh, no.

I only know what the title

this episode is.

I'm now regretting every single career choice I've ever made.

So she says,

I enjoy it and it gives me confidence.

And now that I can monetize my channel and respond to people's requests, it can become a full-time career move.

Look, if it exists, there's an audience for it, I guess, is what she's saying.

I mean, I'm not in a position to tell anyone how to conduct their careers.

I mean, it's difficult for me as a parent with, you know, my...

trying to, you know, my children are now, what, 12 and 10, and you're trying to tell them, you know, you need to get yourself ready for the competitive jobs market and i spend my life writing lies and watching cricket prove so

but but the mukbang uh that's i mean that's an entirely different i mean had i known that was an option maybe i'd have taken it can you do a degree in it yet uh well i imagine that there's some institute set up yeah i don't know what what the levels would be like this because this the top achievement for this mukbang star her biggest hit was a video of her eating a chinese takeaway complete with chicken balls special fried rice, special chow mein chips, prawn crackers, vegetable spring rolls, and curry sauce.

The video has been viewed over 48,000 times so far.

Right.

This just proves to me that cricket is getting everything wrong with its

obsession with the 100 ball companies making cricket shorter and shorter, more and more full of action.

That's not what people want to watch.

Mealtime, built into the fabric of cricket,

people clearly will watch, just watch meal times.

Maybe this is why cricket's been going wrong.

They've been showing the sport, not the tea.

Not the tea.

I would watch sandwiches.

I would watch Alistair Cook chow down on some cucumber sandwiches.

I don't doubt that for a second.

But yeah, I think maybe the sound of, I bet that's one of the ASMR sounds.

The ball, you know, the rubbing the ball on the.

Is it the inside seam?

I don't know.

I'm just throwing words around that.

We'll go with that.

I mean, I do...

wonder what Tim Berners-Lee must think when he comes across videos like that and think, what have I done?

What have I unleashed upon the world?

I don't know.

I mean, she's only just getting into it.

I'm sure there's people, sometimes their partner joins her and they eat together.

Is there something satisfying about watching?

I mean, there were videos of like models eating burgers, but that's more just because people are like, don't believe it.

But people, I mean, it is extraordinary these little niche genres that have come up on YouTube.

There's others, including the evap genre, in which influencers watch small puddles of rain evaporate before their eyes and speculate on the ephemeral nature of life.

The top-rated videos for that get half a billion views an hour.

Creators such as Dampy Patch and Plitplop earn

$100 million a video for wearing branded welly boots.

Fascinate Chan, in which these YouTube stars absent-mindedly fiddle with the fastenings on their clothing, everything from buttons to zips.

Zippity Doodle, one of the top zip-waggling YouTubers, yesterday posted a video in which he ruminated for 25 minutes about whether or not to have a glass of milk whilst putting the zip on his tracksuit up and down.

That's had 750 billion views already.

And Zippity Doodar has been valued at $8 trillion and it's set for a big money bare-knuckle boxing showdown with fellow social media megastar Whiddles, whose latest video in which he explains how awesome windows are because you can look in them and out of them, unlike mirrors, which are shit, has been watched now by 40 billion people.

Why is everything, why does everything have to end with like a boxing match?

Because like, I know, I know that this is, you know, but it like genuinely, do you not remember, okay, I'm

people listening to this, this may trigger their memories, but do you not remember when Doug Stanhope had a boxing match with Tonya Harding?

It's like the logical end point of like mad, weird celebrity slash

yeah, I think it was for the man show.

Right.

And he was set up so that him and tonya harding were like boxing and they started boxing each other and it's all a really sad phase in tonya harding's career and life it's like billie jean king and bobby riggs all over again but different

but punchy

i i gotta say guys i found it hard to write jokes about this okay sharnation like as you said some of the videos have got 48 000 views now

Last year, I had my own TV show in the Australian National Public Broadcaster.

Me and a team of about 40 people put our hearts and souls into making an hour of informed and scathing satirical comedy five days a week.

And we did lots of research and thinking and hard work, and we were exhausted.

We would have

killed to be getting those kind of numbers.

Little did I know, I should have been writing jokes.

I should have just sat in front of a camera and shoved some fing lunch down my fing gob for 12 minutes.

I mean, I'd want to see it.

Yep, live and lunch.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I think it depends on the food stuff.

You know, it either has to be a huge quantity or, like, maybe something weird or rare, I guess.

Because I suppose there's that fascination with stuff like I'm a Celebrity, where we want to watch someone eat kangaroo nuts.

Yes.

Where's that coming from?

Well, do you need a biology lesson on kangaroos?

No, no, no.

I just mean.

I just mean where's the desire to see that?

Sorry, I misunderstood.

They're on their chin, right?

She's not even doing that.

She literally just goes to the takeaway and gets the food and comes back and eats that.

Yep.

Well, I mean, it all ties in with another YouTube genre, VIM.

Have you come across this?

VIM?

Oh, no.

Vapid eye movement, in which top YouTubers give their fans tips on how to camouflage the aching hollowness inside with a veneer of happiness.

Now that I'd watch.

I think we're not far off someone having surgery to fit a mirror to their own face so they can look at themselves at all times.

Or maybe a camera, like a cranial attachment that just comes out of their own face so they can see themselves.

But then they also need another one so they can see how the world sees them

as well.

So, like multiple cameras that have been screwed into your actual skull.

Are you workshopping your new sci-fi TV series on this shelf?

How are we doing for time, Chris?

Sorry, I'm not paying full attention.

I'm reading a Cambridge University article called Eating Together Multimodally Collaborative Eating in Mukbang, a Korean live stream of eating.

In Korea, is there anything different about the way they do it, or is it just the same thing?

It's South Korea, and you've got to think about the stuff they do there.

They've gone fully, what have they done with their freedom?

Gone absolutely batshit, really.

Like, there's a game show for everything.

There's one on South Korean TV where a guy has to answer questions on a quiz whilst a woman in a box underneath sucks him off and he has to try not to climax.

That is

a South Korean show that exists.

So I really think we're at the thin end of the wedge here.

Even with my history of bugle Google searches, I'm not going there.

Dungeon.

I'm pretty sure that's how Boris Johnson does his party conference speeches as well.

Well, Britain news now, and well, we've held it off as long as possible this week.

The election is now in full horrific swing here in Britain, a general election on the 12th of December, just four days before the start of my Soho Theatre run, 16th of December to the 4th of January.

Roll up, roll up, roll up.

Quite an annoyingly timed election.

And the parties have been

laying down some initial policies.

Basically, the Conservatives have said they will spend, spend, spend, which has been greeted by the Conservative press as an investment boom.

Labour have said they will spend, spend, spend, greeted by the Conservative press as typical commies bankrupting the nation.

So take your pick.

Boris Johnson has wasted no time before comparing Jeremy Corbyn to Joseph Stalin, a dance as old as Boris Johnson himself.

He wrote, he wrote, this wasn't an off-the-cuff thing, he wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph, the renowned former newspaper, accusing Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters of hating wealth and aspirations so much that they quote, point their fingers at individuals with a relish and vindictiveness not seen since Stalin persecuted the Kulaks.

Now, for a start, I think Stalin did slightly more than point his fingers.

And it is a little bit rich to compare an opponent to Stalin from a leader who purged his own party of descending moderate voices just a couple of months ago, and a party whose assessments for benefit disability payments are basically pointing fingers at individuals with relish and vindictiveness to the point where many of them have ended up dead.

And also a party that seems obsessed with building unnecessary train lines.

I mean, the Stalin comparisons flow both ways.

And also, he's a leader who insists that his acolytes call him Uncle Bo.

I mean does he?

It's too late to bring truth into his life.

Well that's basically saying if you want people to pay a bit more in taxes you may as well be a murderous dictator.

Yes.

Same same.

Well also there's another another Stalinist thing the Tories have done.

They doctored footage of their political opponents.

Oh yeah, of Kier Starmer.

Keir Starmer to make him appear to be doing something that he wasn't.

So don't throw those Stalin accusations around around in that particular Stalin-y greenhouse.

Stalin-y.

Stalins who live in greenhouses.

It's an absolute

top gear of government, isn't it?

Because I've just been thinking he's like kind of edging more into Clarkson by the day.

Because he also said in that Telegraph article that Brexit is like a supercar stuck in traffic, which I agree with in that it's loud, expensive, annoying, and there's a twat steering it.

uh jacob reese mog uh tiff now you are the bugle's official jacob rees mog correspondent

has oh come on

has been uh sticking his uh oar into the nation's eye yet again yeah i describe him as an absolute clue piece um

but uh scottish boyfriend has a slightly different take on it because uh he's got himself into a bit of bother uh uh this week the old reese mog um so i've got uh scottish boyfriend to explain a hint.

Jacob Reese Moggs was just a normal wee boy, but tragically, at a young age, he got possessed by the ghost of Jack the Ripper.

Devastated to have possessed a body that barely had the strength to keep itself upright, let alone do a murder, Jack had to come up with other ways to ruin people's lives.

Mogg recently said he wouldn't have died in the Grenfell fire because he's too clever.

That is a statement which immediately disproves himself.

Only a fing idiot would say something that monumentally stupid.

I can that he wouldn't be listening to the fire brigade because he only listens to his nanny.

I want to see Morg out smirting fire.

Let's give the Grenfell victims' families flamethrowers and put them in a field with Morg and see if he can outsmart them all.

In fact, let's make it Wembley, sell some tickets, televise it and give the money to the NHS.

Even by his standards, it was fairly extraordinary.

He was on a radio interview and said, If either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building.

It just seems the common sense thing to do.

Now, I mean, you thought it would be common sense not to make crassly insensitive, ill-informed comments on one of the greatest tragedies in recent British history.

That would seem to be on the blindingly obvious side of the common sense fence.

But that did not apply for Jacob Rees-Mogg.

And also, he was coming at this from a classic Moggin position of wild and willful ignorance.

Because the stay put policy that

this was referring to was specifically for high-rise tower blocks.

And the only time Jacob Rees-Mogg could possibly find himself living in a high-rise tower is if that tower is made entirely of 100% pure ivory.

So it's

unlikely to be a factor.

I mean, they all doubled down on it at one point, didn't they?

They were just sort of all piling in, defending it, agreeing with it, until eventually they went, oh, just think, God, we look like a pile of rotters.

Like, it's one of those things where it's not about them genuinely regretting or feeling bad about these comments.

It's like, well, everyone's making a fuss.

What I've realised is everyone's making a jolly fuss about this, and that's annoying.

And there's no real kind of, you know, regret or thought about.

I mean, also, it's that kind of, there was a bit, was it at the front of the telegraph as well?

At the beginning of the week, sort of blaming the firefighters for what happened at Grenfell.

So, kind of doubling down on that angle.

You know, I knew people that were there fighting that.

I mean, it's just

disgusting.

Thank you for joining us, Tiff.

And Tom, any shows to alert our listeners to?

Oh, I'd just love people to check out my little podcast.

Like I'm a six-year-old.

I interview people from across the political spectrum about their politics.

I chatted to Michael Walker from Navarra Media a couple of weeks back.

That might be be an interesting listen for folks who are interested in UK politics.

That was a good chat.

And

I'll be touring in 2020 with my new set-up show, Grandiloquent.

Oh, that's a good name for a show.

I like it.

I will be doing Mother.

Oh, that sounds wrong.

Anyway, yeah, I'll be performing my show, Mother, at the Union Hall in Brooklyn on the 10th of January.

I don't know if I've got any more LA dates coming up this side of the year,

but at Old Rope.

and also if you get a chance listen to tiny revolutions my podcast with lush um i just recorded a great one with lauren duca about uh uh the youth of america starting a revolution um so give those a listen to because it looks like we're we had a second series and now we don't so so what i might do is is do them myself or do them on patreon or do something like that but it'd be great to have people listen to them in the meantime and then we'll we'll make some decisions guys i don't want to commit to anything at this point.

Thank you for listening buglers.

Next week we will have Hari Konda Bolu to look at the excitements in America with the impeachment and Trump's wall being cut to pieces with a cheap saw and the latest from the election.

We'll now play you out with some more lies from our premium voluntary subscribers.

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

Simon Heap is a little embarrassed to remember that he was once on the verge of releasing a hip-hop album themed around the work of Albert Einstein entitled E, which he performed in his guise as a Scottish rapper called McToo.

Mark Dolby is surprised and disappointed by politicians because when discussing public healthcare and bleating on about the amount of money wasted on admin rather than medicine and surgical procedures, they never say we need less bureaucracy and more curecracy.

Wendell Shepard worries about Pokemon being vulnerable to contagious diseases following the release of the first live-action Pokemon movie Detective Pikachu this year.

Wendell explains, we've seen through history how human contact can devastate communities which do not have immunity to the kind of diseases we carry.

I give Pokemon 10 years max.

Crawford Brysland obviously escaped from a 1920s novel in which he was a somewhat debonair young architect in New York trying to realize his dream of building a new skyscraper whilst obviously falling in love with the beautiful daughter of the property tycoon who was trying to scupper his plans in order to build his own skyscraper.

Andrew Strurlein always thought that toucans, the big beaked natty-necked tropical birds, were vindictive and vengeful after overhearing a squabbling couple on on a train.

The man said, I'm going to ruin your life, and the woman replied, you are?

Well, toucans play that game.

Dawn Halloways is envious of people with a greater variety of vowels in their names.

Whilst Dawn appreciates the purity of having nothing but A's in her names, she does wonder how different her life might have been if she'd been called Sequoia Tambourine.

Phil Haynes claims to have credible evidence that Father Christmas has been masterminding a performance-enhancing drugs program on his reindeer and elves elves that makes the whole Lance Armstrong thing look like a doctor giving an old codger a throat lozenge.

It is huge, claims Phil.

Louise Hooper is unsurprised by this, but thinks that it does not invalidate the considerable logistical achievements of Father Christmas and his team of delivering gifts to children around the world in such a short space of time.

So what if he's pumping animals full of EPO, steroids and on occasion cocaine, says Louise.

Big deal, he's got a job to do and the reindeers look amazing.

Jack Bennett concurs with Louise.

Yes, it might be against the rules, says Jack, but who's losing out here?

It's not like he's undermining the whole credibility of a competition by fiddling the salary cap so he can employ more and better reindeer than his competitors.

Tom Gates reckons that he is probably doing that as well, however.

Almost certainly, says Tom.

You think the likes of Prancer, Blitzen, and Donna go through all that just for the glory and the public adulation?

Wake up, people.

But Sarah Sense says, I don't care as long as I get my presents.

Here endeth the lies.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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

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

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