Bugle 4128 - Official Brexit Freedom Day Special

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello viewers and welcome to issue 4128 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World, the publication which uncovers the truth and then covers it up again in a comforting layer of bullshit.

It's just better that way for everyone.

I am Andy Zaltzman once again in our London bunker underground hermetically sealed from the outside world well it's a recording studio it's fairly basic uh last night i went to see an old friend do his first ever stand-up comedy gig at the end of a comedy course with a load of other people also doing their first ever gig today

Very much the other end of the experience seesaw with my guests.

Two stalwarts of the British comedy world.

Al Murray, who I think supported George Fornby on his

1947 Banjo Megadick tour.

Yeah, yeah.

I did open for George, yeah.

yeah and uh mark steele who played the opening night of hadrian's war um yeah

died actually

tough crowd yeah luckily there was uh

luckily there was no one there to record it to leg it all the way to carlisle

so not often i get to enjoy being the youth policy on the beautiful

this is uh george forby in 1947 was um very much an activist he was an anti-apartheid activist he got thrown out of south africa for insisting black people were his gig yeah

and his wife was his manager once she

she was really like really front foot with yeah yeah yeah she was with it with it yeah yeah she was also a militant atheist and they used to go to church every sunday and they used to have great big squabbles about that as well this is what happens when you get two human encyclopedias onto a show

i spent i spent over a decade building up the bugle to be somewhere where fact was not allowed played no part in this and you guys come on and the south african mini i can't remember, remember I suppose it'd be the foreign minister, but the person responsible for all this said to Mr.

and Mrs.

Fornby one night,

You are not to have any more black people in the audience, causing great embarrassment.

And in front of a big crowd, she said, It is recorded, Piss off, you're a horrible little man.

Yeah, and that's the point at which they were escorted out of the country.

Yeah, there we go.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the sound of it when it's being escorted out of the country.

Also, Gracie Fields, militant Trotskyist, yeah,

fought in the Red Army.

So this is issue 4128 of the Bugle coincidence.

Are you sure?

Like, yes.

Okay.

Coincidentally, that's the up-to-date number of reasons to impeach Donald Trump.

We're recording on the 1st of November, which is World Vegan Day.

And to mark this, this issue of the bugle has been written on meat-free paper made from trees rather than the normal vellum parchment made from calf skin.

I'm writing this down with an octopus slave.

No animals will be drowned during this recording, so it's lucky John Oliver's not on this show anymore.

He loves to submerge a ferret in a large bucket whilst performing.

Why do you think he's always behind a desk?

Join the dots, people.

It's also today is Love Your Lawyer Day, apparently, 1st of November.

That's every day for me, in case my lawyer wife is listening.

That's my one wife who is a lawyer.

I don't have a lawyer wife and other wives covering all the other major professions.

On this day in 1503, Pope Julius II was elected Pope.

His nicknames were the Warrior Pope and the Fearsome Pope, which are not traditional Popeye qualities these days, being a warrior and being

back then you had to be a badass if you were Pope, didn't you?

I guess, I mean, it's when you're Pope, you've just got to pope what you see in front of you at the time.

You can't stick rigidly to a set poping tactic.

You've got to pope on instagram.

Who was his manager?

Was he a Borgia?

That's that kind of that type of,

isn't it?

But he did commission the Sistine Chapel ceiling

from

Mickey Paintbrush himself.

And that was exhibited to the public for the first time on this day in 1512.

And this is also the first anniversary of me telling you that last year as well.

He fell out with Leonardo, didn't he?

Yeah.

Yeah, they had a terrible fight.

I mean, that just sounds...

How has that never been made into a sitcom?

Or you with your ceiling off?

Flick, flick.

That woman, she is miserable.

Why you paint her?

And of course, today was supposed to be the

one 365th year anniversary of Brexit happening.

This was supposed to be the beginning of freedom.

Yep.

Well, we're 12 hours into our robbed freedom, 12 hours and 15 minutes.

I don't know how you feel about it, but I shouldn't have bought those Independence Day.

October 31st pins.

My dad was still alive.

He'd have bought them.

I remember him buying a plate to commemorate Colin Cowdry's 100th century, saying that's going to be worth a fortune in years to come, son.

Well, to be honest, if you stick that on eBay, I'll probably bid quite a lot for it.

For our American listeners, that may be, that is quite a niche cricket reference.

Must be the first Colin Cowdery reference we've had

on the bugle.

This was supposed to be Freedom Day, the day after Freedom Day.

We were supposed to have Brexblasted ourselves to a glorious new future.

Mark Francois

had predicted that Britain would explode if Brexit did not happen on the 31st of October.

The evidence suggests that that has not entirely happened yet.

I think he exploded.

Yes.

I'm told.

And the police have sealed off the area around his house and have been warned, public have been warned not to approach any of the bits.

Francois fallout would be awful, wouldn't it you've got Francois all over you

I'd be like crack a tower people do you know it covered one sixth of the club

sheep with Francois all over them can't eat those bitches can't eat the lamp people in the Ukraine what is this daddy's landed here

well we are headed for an extended winter I think um uh as always our section of the bugle is going straight in the bin uh this week uh the charity month of November is upon us once again uh Movember, where men grow moustaches for charity, but there are more options this year.

There's

Fovember, where you are sponsored per enemy made, which can be quite lucrative in this day and age.

Nosevember, now it doesn't take much commitment to wear a moustache for a month in this age of trendy facial hair.

But November is encouraging people to wear a large prosthetic nose for a month.

That shows real commitment to your charity.

Flovember, where you only accept medical care that would have been available to Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War.

Quovember is also available when you only listen to status quo for the entire month.

Do get psychiatric assistance if you do

that.

Also coming up next year, Imaginary January, where you divorce yourself from all reality for a month.

I don't see how that is different from any other month of the year.

Grape Pril, which is a wine awareness month, and

Coptober, where you take policing into your own hands for a month by forming your own vigilante force and performing citizens' arrests on anyone you think might have done something wrong.

At that charity section, in the bin.

Top story this week.

Well, we didn't get Brexit, but we are getting an election

which is going to be about Brexit, but also leave potentially a government in place for five years.

We're going to vote our way out of this, man.

We are going to vote, vote, vote, vote, vote until it goes away.

But by not actually voting

on it.

Yeah, exactly.

It's the world's most oblique election.

Exactly.

You know,

I mean, I'm actually sort of a little bit in love with what's happening at the moment.

I love it.

It's sort of dazzling.

I would dare the more when I get the paper in the morning, I sort of dazzled.

I daren't look

away.

There's a soap opera that has long since gone past the point where you go, oh, no, the equivalent of a plane crashing in the middle of the street that the soap opera's in and stuff.

And you know, one of the main characters turns out to be in ISIS or something.

We've gone way past.

We've gone way past that now.

We think, oh, no, who's written this?

Yeah.

Now, I wish I could read the history book about this from from 150 years time you know yes and and and go oh well that's really what that's really what was causing it all because it's it's we're in the thicket of it's a i mean i'm like i say i'm sort of in love with it i'm in love with how ridiculous it is i love that they shut parliament in order to defend parliament democracy i just love it i love it yeah what yeah do that why not i love it yeah nothing would surprise you yeah exactly

feline plus we're only allowed to europe through a flap and we all have to shoot on x plane that's the result of it it.

Nothing.

Oh, Emily Thornbury campaigned naked today in a canoe.

Really?

But it's that is that thing, but I mean, and all the time backing this up has been, you know, the country's going to explode.

There will be riots if we don't leave.

And that has not happened.

No.

So they've really got, they're going to have to stow that, aren't they?

Yes.

As an argument.

We're going to have to organise some riots.

Or organise some riots.

Yes.

Reese Mog.

Yeah.

I wanted my 50p to be worth something.

Also, behind this, we had the Conservative government, when it came in under Cameron, passed the Fixed Term Parliament Act,

one of the least necessary pieces of legislation in the glorious British history of unnecessary legislation that was supposed to fix the term of parliament, hence the name, and thus reduce the number of times we were inconvenienced by the democracy we keep erroneously being told we're obsessed with in this country.

And under the Fixed Term Parliament Acts, this would be now the third election in four years, just what the British public has been been aching for, six weeks of concentrated bullshit, bullshattered into their haggard, resigned faces.

These are curious democratic times.

Indeed.

And as is the Conservative slogan, which is Britain deserves better, which is a perfectly reasonable if Anadine slogan, if you are the opposition.

But when you have been in power for we deserve better than this utter rubbish, stupid, useless, hideous, monstrous government that has been ruining the country for nine years.

Oh, we've been in that.

Oh, is it?

We've printed the leaflets now.

Yeah, of all the slogans, look, admittedly, we were in, we've been in, and we've been shit, but vote for us again.

Yes, in case it gets worse.

In case it gets worse.

And each time the slogan is, oh, there'll be labor getting, there'll be a terrible, terrible mess.

People may recall there will be, it is either stability with us or chaos with Ed Milliband.

And luckily, we didn't have any chaos at all.

And then strong and stable.

Also, you've had Boris Johnson, the Archduke of Absolute Drivel, who's been warning people that Brexit would be delayed under Jeremy Corbyn.

Now, this is a man who delayed Brexit himself by voting repeatedly against Theresa May's so-called deal, and then delayed Brexit again by chickening out of putting his own so-called deal through Parliament.

Now, warning people that Corbyn will yeah, but that's this is how this is how this whole thing works.

That is simply characteristic of what's happening.

You know, it's this, we lost control of our borders in a country on an island we haven't got any.

And we're going to lose control of taking back of the borders we haven't got because of another island with a border that we've forgotten about.

It's like, it's sort of perfect.

I'm 51 now and I'm starting to wonder whether this isn't all a simulation.

Oh, like the matrix.

Yeah, I'm a brain in a jar and none of this is actually happening.

You know, because the other day I met, I ran into someone who knew someone from school, you know, from my old school.

And that's impossible.

There's more than 150 people in the world, surely.

And what's happening now just feels like it feels, it does, like, you, I mean, you're joking about being like a soap property.

It feels written.

It feels like we're living in a parable about the limits of the limits of wisdom or something, you know.

And one day they'll tell this story as an amazing, as an amazing fable i do wonder it might was it like this during the corn laws and stuff but then it that was relatively short wasn't it compared to yeah yeah yeah well that's it that's what you know if you look at if you look at historic crises they tend to they tend to sort of um end yeah well even the civil war was only sort of 18 years from beginning to end wasn't it yeah

sort of thing so

uh this is gonna way way go past that there's gonna be people as yet not born who when they're 40 are going to go, I wonder if it'll ever end.

Yeah, well, people keep joking about it.

People keep joking about it.

There'll be a ceremonial thing every year where the EU grants the UK an extension, and no one will know what, you know, like, like, like, why do get guardsmen wear bearskins?

You know, like, no one really, no one really knows anymore.

And they'll go through this ritual.

And I assume that was like a lunch thing, wasn't it?

Yeah, I think it's a lunch thing, yeah.

And it's just so many people full of.

I was sort of um came across a tactical well somebody showed it me a tactical voting website and uh because I thought well I suppose the argument here is that if you're against Brexit or if you particularly don't like Boris Johnson or whatever because it seems to be in two blocks doesn't it there's on the one hand Farage and Boris Johnson support Brexit and they are of a certain political persuasion and then you've got everybody else yeah really the dis disillusioned conservatives liberals the nationalists in Wales and Scotland, Liberals and

Labour.

But

they're all scrambling for the votes between them, almost as if they don't care if they lose as long as they get so the Liberal Democrats sort of seem their position seems to be we don't care if a sociopath runs the country as long as we go up to twenty-three percent in Reading West.

And

I saw one of these websites, a tactical voting one, where it says, oh, who's got the best chance of beating Boris Johnson?

And the Liberal one, it said, it was North East Somerset.

38% is a graph, 38% Conservative, 32% Liberal, 8% Labour.

All right.

And then at the bottom, it said, this is from a poll where people were asked, who would you vote for if the contest was only between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats?

and no other party stood a chance.

So that's, oh, you might as well say, who would you go for assuming the Labour candidate was Hitler?

This is one of the great problems that we have with our electoral system.

That basically means for the vast majority of voters, that's what I meant.

That basically means for a huge proportion of the voters in this country, there is absolutely no point in voting for what you actually believe in.

So therefore, we have no way of knowing what the country actually thinks.

Now, clearly, as a nation, we don't...

Well, I believe in Father Christmas, and he's not on the balance sheet, is he?

Yeah, as a nation, we don't like to say what we actually feel.

We've developed an entire way of communicating that relies on obfuscation and a hinting.

And, you know, many marriages have survived decades longer than they would otherwise have done, thanks to that.

There are huge social structures for the avoidance of genuine expressions of emotion.

And none is more impressive than our voting system, which kind of forces people not to vote in line with what they think.

And this is illustrated by this party election broadcast, which came out today.

Do you care about the environment?

Do you think the economy should be run sustainably at local, national, and global levels and with the goal of social justice fundamental to policymaking?

Do you believe in electoral reform and an informed participatory democracy and a nation that demands social responsibility from its business?

Then why not vote for the Green Party?

Because it's f ⁇ ing pointless.

That's right.

After first pass the post, you might as well smear a dead ferret's blood on your ballot paper and post it to NASA marks plan for an intergalactic rocket made of ferret's blood as vote green.

You idealistic hippie.

Hold your nose and vote Labour or Conservative like a good boy and/or girl.

We've got it fing sewn up.

It's what we fought the wars for.

May not apply if you live in Brighton.

Paid for by the British Association of Vested Interests.

So it's...

I mean, even, you know, all this, the public must have their say, and then we have to speak in tongues.

That'd be beautiful, Andy.

You've actually reached a poetic moment there.

That's got to be a first.

I mean, you're issuing 4,128.

There's never been actual poetry on this show.

I don't know.

Sometimes I sort of hit a

plateau of weary resignation, and I'm happier then.

And then occasionally, and I know there's going to be one opinion poll that's going to show that the lead has shrunk and Labour are only 34 behind.

And I'm going to go, oh, there's a bit of hope.

But the thing that, you know, obviously everything becomes personal in the end.

Right?

This election's happening on my youngest daughter's birthday.

Wow.

That.

It's ruined.

It's ruined.

I want to spend a day with a toddler, you know, having fun, not going, oh, Christ, what's going to happen?

You know what I mean?

It's like they f ⁇ ing,

this government have ruined everything, my daughter's birthday

included.

And I'm not, I'm really at.

You're taking a cake down to the polling station.

Well, I suppose, yeah, but that means the nursery's shut.

Oh.

So I've got to look after her.

That's the actual.

That's the last thing you want to do.

That's the actual ballache here.

Proper British parenting.

It's just, it has actually ruined the day.

Gonna have to think about, worry about this shit on her birthday.

Anyway.

But

I do like it.

I feel I never feel so grown up as when I'm voting.

I just sort of...

I still have that thrill of like, oh, I'm trusted with this.

Hiring a car is the thing that makes me feel really gross.

Oh, yeah, you've got.

Are you mad?

You keys?

Give me the keys.

You've never seen me drive.

I mean, it may be.

These are pretty similar, actually.

You know, no, you're allowed to vote.

And yet.

Are you suggesting voting licenses?

I think I probably am.

You have to do a test, maybe a license.

And should there then be like a phase where you have a provisional voting license so you don't get all these kids who suddenly qualify to vote and just go out and

run around the truth?

I think we're definitely onto something here.

Breathalyzers.

This is what they did in Zimbabwe.

The number of sitting MPs who are not standing in this coming election, a number of

decades-long,

a number of experienced Conservatives have been basically kicked out of the party for having a different opinion to their crazed leader.

And a number of female politicians are quitting politics due to the horrific abuse they receive on social media for the crime of having a womb.

And

I'm not sure we're entirely using freedom of speech that we fought all those world wars for quite the way we should be in terms of the interaction between politics.

It's my unalienable right to call a female AP a fucking cow.

Back off.

Back off.

It's like inheriting a Stradivarius violin and using it as a practice urinal.

I mean, you can do it, but you shouldn't do it.

A friend of mine actually tweeted about this this morning and her replies are a sewer of, oh, you know, and

not just of, well, they should shut up then or get it.

You know, they brought it on themselves.

You think, oh, Christ.

Think that through just for a moment.

And then, like, the men get abused as well,

just refusing to address it.

I mean, it's really, I mean, it is grim, and the sort of

state of discourse at the moment is horrible, isn't it?

It's really horrible.

Well, I've said something for some time.

I think it is actually impossible to come up with any collection of words that you could put on Twitter that wouldn't get a load of abuse.

True.

So you could put I'm enjoying a delightful sunset across Dorset this evening and someone would be like not so delightful if you suffer from sunset of urgent Dorset syndrome actually.

Have a thought for sad sufferers in future, you strat.

And it it so I put a thing, I can't remember exactly what it was, but I put some inane stupid thought on Twitter when the election was called that basically the choice is between people who have fed up the country because they're sociopathic, embittered, privileged sadists, and people who are finging up everything up because they mean well, but just can't get their shit together.

And that's sort of, and I thought I was sort of being quite partisan in a way, but of course, then the abuse from the sort of Corbyn dialogue.

I dare you!

No, it isn't actually.

We have a finger.

Son of

twats, just stop it.

Don't take everything literally and just oh, that's gonna work on the doors.

Hello, are you gonna vote Labour?

Well, I might do, but I'm not sure about Mr.

Corbyn.

You blare-eyed scum!

Yeah, well, scum!

Well, f off and join the Tories.

No, don't do that!

You know,

when you see that, f off and join the Tories, you think, you know, that's really, it's an election, so really, that is really bad advice.

Yeah, we did really well.

I opened up to 40 doors and I persuaded all 40 people to do as I said.

They're all going to vote for you.

No, they've all fed off and joined the Tory.

A whole street.

Oh, God.

But, I mean, it's five weeks, is it?

Six weeks?

It's not six weeks, but it will seem like a f of a lot longer.

Yeah.

Yeah, and, you know, Christmas as well.

Yes, and also, I mean...

Fighting for survival.

They've not thought of Chris.

Christmas has been under attack now for a really long time.

Well, I mean, which is why it's swollen up like a puffer fish into August.

But Christmas is under attack and this is going to get in the way of defending Christmas.

Well this is the problems of the logistics of a winter election, because generally our elections are are in April or May.

Christmas has had to be delayed by four days because of the 12th of December election, meaning that Advent can only start on the 13th of December, so that it is not politically biased.

Even then by speeding up the time of Advent, that means Christmas, the earliest Christmas can fall to the 29th of December.

And Santa may just been Britain off this year.

Well, Santa wears a red outfit.

I mean, come on.

Yeah, yeah.

How political is that?

He's going to have to wear like a red outfit with the half red, half blue.

He'll come round twice with different

well, he's not, he's not

going to come around with electoral broadcast.

He's not going to come around on the night of the 28th or the 29th.

And I'll quote from his official press release: I don't get out of bed until January the 10th, as per.

So

the Bugle will be the official podcast of the British election for the next six weeks.

World news now and, well, assassination news.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader and renowned deranged mega k

has,

in well, the words.

When I come on this, I was, what's the language policy?

I can never remember.

There it is.

There it is.

As I've been, I think it was John.

John, you might remember this, Chris.

John Sanya, the wrestler, talking about Osama bin Laden when we cover that.

He's compromised to a permanent end.

He was killed

in an operation.

Baghdadi was tracked down using his own underpants.

This was a delightful detail of this.

He had his underpants stolen by a local Syrian undercover spy, then analyzed to prove that they were, that it was definitely him.

They were analysed by underpant specialists who proved that they were the kind of pants that only a really awful terrorist warlord would wear.

His

al-Baghdadi's gimp gimp mask and bondage kit also returned positive samples, and the karaoke machine hacked into in his lair had

an absolutely appalling playlist that proved he must have been an irretrievable shithead.

So they knew who it was.

He was then killed in an American operation, buried like his predecessor as World Shit of the Year, Osama bin Laden, at sea.

Which again raises the horrifying prospect that next time you go swimming in the sea or surfing or whatever, you might accidentally swallow a molecule that used to be part of

Albago.

If there's a Francois fallout shower as well, I mean

double whammy.

Keep your mouth shut when you're in the sea.

Donald Trump described

the operation.

They did a lot of shooting and they did a lot of blasting, which

is good to have that level of insight into the intricacies of the music.

Listening to Eisenhower.

Military strategies.

I mean, this whole thing, he went and blew himself up, didn't he?

So basically, the Americans turn up, he runs away and kills himself.

And they're saying they killed him.

Right.

Well, I mean,

a goal is still a goal.

Even if you don't actually know it.

It doesn't really matter how you get the goal.

There's a lot of pressure.

Trump praised.

This is more detail on the operation.

They even didn't go through the front door, he said.

Now, you would think to go through the door.

If you're a normal person, you say, knock, knock, may I come in?

But they blasted their way into the house through a very heavy wall.

I mean, it's just lucky they don't get normal people to do these operations.

Well, this is why they're special forces.

They're not normal forces, are they?

First thing you learn in the essay is

don't ever use a door.

Even at home, don't even look at that doorbell, son.

That's what that's left to be paid a fortune.

You have to rebuild the house three times a day.

Trump added, they were like, digger, digger, digger, digger, digger, kaboom, digger, digger,

and then it was like and it was so cool um he praised the uh a dog that was using the operation that sadly uh got injured and even tweeted a picture that a sort of mocked up picture of him putting a medal around his that picture dog's neck is amazing yeah have you seen that picture yeah it was a guy who'd fought in Vietnam yeah rescued 10 people and injured in a firefight blah blah blah blah blah get rid of it but round the

it's such a bad photoshop that the

and also the dogs classified one minute and then not classified the next and trumps or whatever.

It's

amazing.

This is the world we're in now though, yeah.

And that medal has a paw on it as well.

It's a medal of a paw, which is really, really funny.

But it's the world, yeah, they say it's the world we're in, isn't it?

It doesn't matter.

Used to sort of all the people now who are sort of trying to go, look, he's told a lie.

Well, don't waste your time trying to bring him down by exposing he's told a lie.

He'll just go, yeah, yeah, whatever.

And I went, I was an astronaut astronaut this morning.

My dad invented zebras.

There's no point to expose it.

He doesn't care.

I do feel sorry for this dog.

A very badly timed take your pet to work day.

Almost as badly timed as when I was working in that lion sanctuary and I had to look after Uncle Shmooli's pet baby wildebeest.

But also Trump said not only did he pay tribute to the Special Forces dog, but he also said that al-Baghdadi died like a dog.

So what is the dog community thinking now about Trump's attitude?

I mean, that's presumably left in the same state of confusion over exactly what Trump thinks of them as the human community.

Must be very confusing for the poor animals.

Al-Baghdadi was four-time World Baddy of the Year.

That's a hotly contested title.

So much competition these days, and it's so hard to quantify all the different skills on display from the leading contenders.

But his death will no doubt bring an end to all the violence in the entire region and the war on terror in general, ushering in a new era of worldwide peace and tolerance, just like the death of bin Laden Laden did.

Have there been any politicians who've done the more classic old-fashioned politician route and gone, although we had many differences,

Baghdadi was a colourful character.

Well, there was the whole thing, wasn't there, with the New York Times or the Washington Post, where their

obituary headline to start with was, promising footballer.

That's an angle.

Promising footballer and devout cleric, Baghdadi dies.

And

like, well, yeah, okay,

we can go that way if you want, but that's not

the thing really that

we know him for exactly.

It was really, really funny, and they changed it quite quickly because they were funny.

They were caught with their trousers down, but I mean, you know,

that thing of killing

the leader,

it's purely symbolic, isn't it?

You're not

achieving anything, do you?

It's not even like killing the leader.

I mean, if you could have assassinated Hitler in 1942, that would have been worthwhile, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it would have definitely changed things.

1932 even more so.

I mean, 1922, you might have just got away with it, frankly.

Yes, maybe that, maybe that'll be the Trump's next thing is just to assassinate random people on the off chance they become dictators 11 years later.

I could see into the future and he was going to turn out to be a really bad man.

But what?

Trump also said that al-Baghdadi died like a coward and a transcript from the operation just released exclusively to the bugle does confirm that al-Baghdadi's last audible words were, you can't shoot me, I have bone spurs in my heel.

Ow!

Ow!

Sorry, guys, love your work.

Well, they have named his replacement.

It's not Jose Mourinho.

They've gone with Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi.

So they've disappointed fans of 1980s British wrestling by not replacing Al-Baghdadi with Al-Jarant Haystaxi.

Was that worth it?

I don't think so.

But that's funny.

I was wondering, earlier on, I was wondering.

There's not a Big Daddy.

There's not a Big Daddy pun in this.

No, you're quite right.

It's impossible.

Promising wrestler as about...

Nah,

that's probably what it really was when he was dying like a coward.

The new leader, Al-Hashimi Al-Qareshi, has yet to do his unveiling press conference like football managers do.

It'll be interesting to see what fresh ideas he brings to the ISIS franchise because

it's been struggling for a while, really not getting the neutral fans on its side with this rather unattractive style of play.

Did he kiss the badge?

I hope so.

Quiz time now.

I've got a quiz question for you, gentlemen.

Fill in the blank.

A scientific report has shown that blanks have grandiose delusions about themselves and a complete absence of shame, empathy or guilt.

Blanks infuriate other people but are less likely to be stressed themselves and have a tendency to trample over others and leave a trail of damage around them while seeming to be insulated against feeling bad about themselves.

Blanks are also prone to high self-confidence and a sense of self-importance.

So are blanks A narcissists B Tories C

D all high-level politicians E especially some current presidents and prime ministers F movie moguls G primary school teachers H nuns I all men J not all men K hamsters or L celebrity chefs

I thought it was lollipop ladies as you were reading it right that's one of the most more lukewarm introductions I've had

it's is it narcissists Andy it is yes they've done a scientific report I mean that is the correct answer A and also B to L

some of B to L.

Maybe not the nuns and the primary school teachers.

Queen's University in Belfast conducted a scientific study into narcissism and then typically published the results to try and make everyone say, well done, you aren't, you fing special.

When I do pieces of scientific research, I do the humble thing and keep them to myself, like my groundbreaking study on the impact on the human body and mind of going to 31 World Cup cricket matches in six weeks.

Turns out, it works.

And also my study on the effectiveness of sacrificing 100 head of oxen to Zeus in order to get England to win a Rugby World Cup.

We will find out how effective that is tomorrow.

Anyone want an ox carcass?

I've still got 80.

If it wasn't for Halloween last night, I'd still have 99.

Trickle-treating has never been so much fun or so logistically challenging.

Anyway, what were we talking about before I went on that self-indulgent digression?

Narcissism.

The report found that narcissism is on the rise.

Hard to see why that would be, other than social media encouraging us to show ourselves off all the time and political economic systems that keep telling us how special we are.

But, I mean, is this the fear?

Are we going to just keep getting, I mean, the graph, the narcissism graph, is it going to just carry on until we are all just eternally self-obsessed and sit by mirrors in darkened sheds?

And would that actually be a step forward for humanity?

I'm on social media all the time, and I absolutely love it.

And so this, it feels like you've brought me on to talk about myself.

Yeah, I mean, you know, know is there any is it is it necessarily bad narcissism this is the well and this is what this is what the report's saying that it's it it's it's not necessarily bad for you personally as as a narcissist but

um yeah it does uh well as we're seeing I guess it depends how what you use your narcissism for yes I wonder whether one sort of possibility because it strikes me that there's sort of it's it's still a minority of people that are really arseholes aren't they?

But

so much of what we have to do in life is clearing up after this minority of like really, I don't know, 3% of our souls.

And I wonder whether one possible way out of this is to have an arsouls island and you just put all of them.

I reckon the Isle of Wight, right, could probably accommodate some of them a lot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Isle of Wight could accommodate it.

I'd be fair.

I'd go 5 million quid to anyone on the Isle of Wight.

You relocate anywhere anywhere in the world, but based on where you want to go.

And then

all these arseholes are just going around, shouting each other, you know, shit, you

writing horrible things about each other on Twitter and Facebook and calling each other wankers and not doing the washing up until all of Ventna is just washing up.

And

you know, we surround it with barbed wire and snipers and that so they can't get out because they'll be going, why should I have to go?

All these naked freedom and moving people.

Oh, I don't want to be free to go anywhere.

I don't want anywhere to come here or go anywhere.

I don't even want to go to the co-op.

And you can just stand there so let no one get in, no one can get out.

They'll be perfectly happy.

They'll have a cracking cricket team, though, won't they?

That's where it's going to end up.

You know, we've tried this before with Australia.

Right.

And and and

now look, now look where we are.

Sport Sport now, and it's the Rugby World Cup final tomorrow morning.

This is very exciting.

By the time you listen to it, it will probably have happened.

Buglers.

The bugle began its existence with an England-South Africa Rugby World Cup final in 2007.

Will it end its existence with an England-South Africa Rugby World Cup final?

That depends on who makes the final in the year 2207.

But in the meantime,

there is another England-South Africa Rugby World Cup final tomorrow morning as we record the novel.

I heard the radio presenters this morning talking with an appalling complacency and I thought, oh no.

Where's the victory parade going to be?

No.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

Stop.

No.

Well, we should say that, you know, there's still work to be done here, but oh, yeah, okay.

Yeah, that is not, that is no good.

No, I'm sure Eddie Jones won't be giving it anything.

No, he won't be interested in any of that, will he?

But

they're up against South Africa who generally play rugby with all the joy of a 1970s Soviet missile parade and

basically just attempt to grind their opponents with their sheer force of inescapable physical tedium so that they end up questioning the purpose of existence and fall to their knees in a scrum conceding a penalty.

That's largely the way South Africa

goes about their maximum.

So, how do England counter that then?

Why is it?

Does that help?

Well, I don't know.

Why can you go?

You don't let them do the stalemate that they'll try and do.

They basically attrited Wales, didn't they?

They ground them down.

If both sides try to avoid a stalemate, then that becomes a stalemate of its own.

Oh, God.

So

it's a lot of negative stalemates.

South Africa captained by Sia Khalesi, the first black captain of the South African rugby team.

So if they win, it will be a hugely symbolic moment for a sport which in South Africa was for so long a symbol of apartheid.

But England have it within their power to crush crush that potential iconic landmark for human equality.

You know what?

That's the same spirit.

And when you go on a thing like, I did the celebrity chase last year, and I got 80 grand out of the opening stage, and then we lost the money.

And Paul Sinner afterwards is going, well, you know, I'm competitive.

What can you do?

And like, I was going to build a fing orphanage with that money.

I said, well, no,

I was going to build a school in rural Cambodia with that money, and now we can't build a school.

Like, fucking, knock it off, you wankers.

Whenever you've watched that, because you've got the year that Sunset Boulevard was made one year out.

Yeah, exactly.

And you could see him relishing defeating us.

And you're like, you absolute.

Anyway.

Shouldn't be allowed.

Well, to be honest, when we started this podcast, I was not expecting Paul Tinhard to be called an absolute.

He's a lovely bloke and everything.

But

in the particular clinch, would he go on island?

Shanklin welcomes Paul Singer.

Oh, even the c were going, he knows everything, he knows everything.

I asked him who won the Tempin Bowling Champion United when he knew it.

I'll have to get him on the show to have a write of reply to this.

Quick other bit of sports news.

The World Series was completed this week

in baseball.

The Washington Nationals were

during game five, in the process of going 3-2 down to the Houston Astros, at which point Donald Trump appeared on the big screen in the stadium and was booed by the entire crowd in Washington, who started up a chant of Lock Him Up, Lock Him Up, as he was hoisted by his own twattishly infantile batard.

The Nationals are then blessed by some higher being and rewarded for their fans chanting Truth to Power and won the final two games of a bizarre series in which the home team lost all seven matches.

So that just shows the power of sport.

That brings this week's bugle to a close.

Mark, Al,

thanks very much for always a pleasure.

Don't forget to book your tickets to my Andy Dolton's 2019 The Certifiable History at the Soho Theatre from the 16th of December to the 4th of January.

Until next time, goodbye.

We will now play you out with more lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

If Rob Abram were to become trapped in a Groundhog Day type situation, he would like it to be on a slow news day globally, ideally on a weekend when he had not much on, so he could just kick back, relax, absolutely nail the cryptic crossword, and occasionally make consequence-free prank phone calls to local radio stations.

Simon Brooke thinks the 1995 hit song One of Us by Joan Osborne should not have asked What If God was One of us, but should have asked a more interesting question such as what if ducks could speak Russian?

Or what if Stalin had become a ballet dancer instead of a despot?

Or more pertinently, what if God had a head like an orange?

Niha Sami is pleased that we cannot hear the internal monologue of domestic cats and dogs.

Niha does not think we would enjoy what we heard and that if we knew what they really thought of us, it could do irreparable damage to the relationship between our great species.

On a similar theme, Jasek Sharaski suspects that most emotional support animals don't really give a shit about the inner lives of their owners.

Even if they're 20% as anthropomorphic as we like to kid ourselves they are, says Jasek, they're probably thinking about food, sleep and sex at least 99% of the time.

Nick Rosansky uses an internet radio to listen to travel bulletins from notoriously vehicle-clogged cities such as Dhaka in Bangladesh.

It makes Nick feel like he's driving really fast wherever he lives.

Matt Robinson wonders what terms were used for officious types before the term pen-pusher came into being.

Perhaps chisel chasers or stylus sticklers, maybe even quill quibblers.

We just don't know.

Ben Alford wonders if there will ever be an unethical veganism movement for people who only want to eat vegetables purely for reasons of taste but are absolutely fine with humanity exploiting the natural world.

Could aubergines be battery farmed?

asks Ben.

Well, why not?

Imogen Cassidy likes to think that if she ever becomes a ghost, she would be a positive encouraging one, trying to support loved ones in the living realm with motivational hauntings rather than the hackneyed old pseudo-spooky negativity that so many ghosts seem to go in for these days.

Philip Hand thinks there should be a compulsory period of meditation before anyone votes in any election or referendum anywhere, and that this period of meditation should last for a minimum of 10 minutes and a maximum of five years.

If Rudy Millard ever becomes a member of the English nobility, whether by marriage, raffle or surprise discovery of an antecedent, he would like to title himself Barren Wilderness of the Soul.

Samuel Price is not looking forward to Judgment Day if it ever happens.

Not because he has anything to hide particularly, but it just sounds like there would be a hell of a lot of hanging around waiting.

There would, notes Samuel, be quotes, shitloads of admin to do for whoever ends up running the gig.

And Rachel Scott Halls wonders, given that riding a bike is called bicycling, if former 1950s First Lady of the USA Mamie Eisenhower ever climbed on her husband's back while he was on all fours looking for something he dropped on the floor and shouted, look everyone, I'm icicling.

Here endeth this week's lies.

The t-shirts and some added goodies will be sent out imminently.

Apologies for the delay.

My fault entirely.

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.