Bugle 4125 - Your Biggest Fears

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4125 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

This week's show was recorded live at the Stand Comedy Club in Newcastle on Tuesday the 8th of October in the rather ridiculous year of 2019, with the decade careering towards its end, wondering what on earth it's done with itself and hopefully why.

So if some parts of the show seem already a little out of date, do not blame me.

Blame the unstoppable march of time and above all blame this planet and the people who live there, of whom I am admittedly one.

Hands up, no complaints, live and learn.

There will also, after this, be a plug for a new show Chris is producing.

So Chris, crank up the Buglatron.

So welcome to the Bugle Live.

Thank you very much for coming.

And what I particularly enjoyed so far in the show was the the surprised silence when the announcement was made earlier on that this show was a full house.

And

apologies to any long-term Zoltzmann fans or indeed people who've come to see me at this venue before

who were expecting to have a couple of tables to themselves or maybe stretch out along a row of seats at the back behind the curtain they usually use to cordon off the back.

So

uh, welcome to uh to the bugle.

This is uh the bugle uh live doubling up as uh issue four thousand one hundred and twenty five of the bugle.

Who listens to the bugle regularly?

Yes,

thank you very much for coming.

Uh, who has never listened to the bugle?

Well, I do hope you enjoy it.

There may be certain parts of the show that are um slightly confusing.

Uh, for example, when people shout this to Chris,

buglers.

Anyway, I'm sure there's details of that on the internet.

It's now time to introduce your co-host for tonight, and we are going to democratise this.

I'm going to let you, the people of Newcastle, choose your bugle co-host

for tonight from the following shortlist.

Option A, Home Secretary Dominic Raab,

three-time winner of Floundering Idiot of the Year from Unsuitable for Office Monthly magazine.

Option B, the former Scottish World snooker champion, Graham Dott, but in full match mode, recreating his 2004 World Snooker Final loss to Ronnie O'Sullivan, so he'd just be sitting quietly in a chair in a corner, shaking his head and occasionally sipping water.

Option C, the disinterred corpse of St.

Sigismund of Burgundy.

A few fans of Sixth Century Saints in.

Option D, Mike Ashley.

The owner of Newcastle United Football Club, a man who tried to rename your stadium to, I think it was suspiciously f ⁇ ing cheap footwear stadium or something.

Or option E, Alice Fraser.

There we go.

We have a democratic mandate.

Here she is.

Hello.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Hello, Chris.

I'm so flattered that you voted for me, but I don't trust you.

You can't be trusted with a vote.

So we are recording on the 8th of October 2019.

Yesterday the 7th of October was a historic day in history.

Does anyone know what it was the anniversary of?

Your birthday.

No, that was the 6th of October but thank you very much.

Thanks for all the presents guys.

Well I mean you have bought tickets to this show.

I guess that counts.

Anyway so we'll give him a crowd.

He won't be expecting it.

Come take a look at his face guys.

You know you've made it in showbiz when you just end up heckling yourself.

So

the 7th of October, of course, famous anniversary, was in fact the anniversary of the first day in history.

Don't take it from me, take it from the Hebrew calendar.

The first day of the Hebrew calendar has been calculated to be the 7th of October 3761 BC.

Now I am a lapsed Jew,

but I'll stick with the calendar.

If not entirely the diet, as the half-eaten hot dog in the dressing room would testify.

But yeah, that was the beginning of time.

The 7th of October 3761 BC.

Apparently creation began about a year after that, which does slightly raise the question: what the f was he doing in that year?

Gap year.

Might explain why things went so fing mental when he actually got around to it.

Perhaps if he'd spent that year creating rather than trying to cram it all in.

Look, I'm not one to criticise people for leaving everything to the last minute and then hacking something together desperately.

But anyway,

fair play to the lad.

Also, today, 8th of October, is Face Your Fears Day.

You!

This is...

Well,

no.

So we're...

What are your fears, Andy?

My fears are...

Well, I have a number of fears.

The shortening of cricket matches.

I mean, seriously, what the f is going on with that?

That's the whole point of cricket, is it gives you essentially a week off.

I don't want two and a half hours off from the horrors of reality.

I want a full five fing days.

Or Or if it's seeming around on day one, three fing days.

I also have a fear of

seeing Father Christmas eating from a long, narrow open container.

Claus trophobia.

Way,

way too early.

They needed...

Well, you open the floodgates with your fing fact, fact, Alice.

Just saying they usually need about 95 minutes of foreplay before you can get into the puns.

I'm afraid of clowns, but not clowns qua clowns, specifically their inability to measure things properly.

Like, that's not how big your mouth is.

Do you make up properly?

That's not how big your feet are.

That is certainly not how big a car is meant to be.

And can like the modern millennial clowns stop pretending to be real comedians, please?

Just because you've been to clown school in France doesn't make you a comedian.

You're a mutant mash-up of improvisational jazz mime, combining all the bleak cynicism of interpretive dance and all the sociopathic self-absorption of a baby.

It's all the worst forms of art.

I'm sorry.

Some of my best friends are clowns, but

I'm also afraid of aeroplanes, not flying in aeroplanes.

I'm afraid of their creepy faces and their stupid flat arms and the way they sneak up behind you at bus stops and ask you to take selfies with them.

See, I told you that wasn't going to work.

And you just giggled and said, do it.

Yeah, but I knew it would get this reaction, which would then get a laugh.

Chris, what are your fears?

The scariest thing for me is overly dry old towels.

Are you listening, Syria?

You just touch them, and we've all got problems.

Anything?

Seriously,

that's a f ⁇ ing horror show to me.

Why?

feel them.

Feel one.

Right.

Is this why you took up a sport that involves cycling for 25 miles to get dry?

Any other fears, Chris?

Other than the obvious sort of like dying young in a burning fire, drowning, falling over, pants down in front of people, and having a goatee that I can't remove?

No?

If all those happen at once, that's going to be one hell of a show.

My biggest fear is that this will be the pinnacle of my career.

That's not generally the case for people who work with me.

Also, today.

Yes, Happy World Octopus Day, Andy.

Thank you, yes.

And it's not just a day, it is one day as a part of Cephalopod Week, which is very exciting to me.

I, for one, am looking forward to the process of celebrating the long-standing relationship we have with our sub-aquatic eight-legged allies.

Since the mutual non-aggression pact of 1874, the noble octopus has lived in peace alongside the human race, offering technology and farming equipment in our times of strife.

I love an octopus, Andy.

I think they're smart, they're pretty, and they're sneaky, and they're cooler than a high school dropout in a leather jacket.

Now, I know whenever we have World Octopus Day, we have a lot of angry people on Twitter asking when it's going to be National Dolphin Day, to which I say April 14th.

But isn't everyday dolphin day?

It's about time we acknowledge that despite dominating a lot of aquatic press and oceanic history, dolphins aren't as good as they're cracked up to be.

And hashtag not all dolphins, but a lot of them are rapists.

Well, for World Octopus Day, you were entitled legally to take a cephalopod to work, so I do hope you took advantage of that.

And we have some octopus now, octopus facts.

Now, courtesy of the Conservative Party,

which has provided us government octopus facts.

Many people believe that the name octopus means eight feet, but in fact it means get Brexit done.

Octopuses have three hearts, which is approximately three more than the average human being.

Octopuses also have large tentacles that keep growing and can worm their way into pretty much anything and then squeeze it to death.

Remind you of anything, Bruffles!

Octopuses are able to change the colour of their skin.

Don't even go there.

We're already confused enough.

You being a Tory is probably my favourite version of you.

Really?

Some sections of the Bugle are going, where, Newcastle?

I said they're going, where?

Congratulations, that is the correct answer.

Also in the bin this week is the new Bugle audio comic strip section where I will read out from an imaginary audio newspaper the comic strips section.

In the Wizard of Id this week, the Wizard is in his workshop and the king walks in.

The Wizard's busy, the king says, I need your help.

Then the Wizard says, I'm sorry, I identify as someone who can't help you.

You see, it's funny because the running joke of The Wizard of Iz is that everyone isn't very nice.

In this week's Hagar the Horrible, Hagar's with his wife and she's wearing a flower in her hair.

She says, Hagar, I was thinking we could have a date night and you could sweep me off my feet.

And then he goes, I need to get back into shape.

And she says, so you can impress me.

And he goes, no, so I don't put my back out trying to sweep you off your feet.

Get it?

Because the long-running joke of Hagar is that he hates his fat wife.

Which is either a commentary on the double standards of attractiveness that men hold about women or a perpetuation of those same double standards.

Then we have this week Prince Valiant, which I didn't read.

Something happened.

I didn't read last week's and I won't read this week's.

And really, installments in a serial ought to be modular and at least relatively self-contained on a narrative level.

So I'm replacing Prince Valiant with a bugle special comic in which we have the first panel, there's a giant squid in a shoe shop and the shoe shop attendant who's a slightly smaller giant squid in a shoe shop uniform

and then the giant squid says do you do half sizes?

Because that's the thing about comic strips.

They're always like the first half of a bad joke being told badly by a taxi driver.

There's also a bugle special bugle comic strip in which in the first panel Andy walks in and goes cricket, cricket, cricket like a Pokemon whose name is Cricket because Pokemon can only say their own names.

In the second panel, Andy turns on the television and you see John Oliver on the screen and then Andy presses the remote control and the channel changes to cricket and Andy sighs and goes, ah, cricket.

So that's the inaugural Bugle audio comic strip section in the bin.

That was

not just the Bugle comic strip, also the storyboard for my forthcoming biopic.

Right, it's time for top story this week.

And uh

well we have to we have to talk about this however reluctantly.

Brexit uh the Brexit talks are on the brink of collapse.

Pretty much like Hadrian Two is on the brink of collapse.

In that it's basically collapsed a f ⁇ of a long time ago.

A no-deal Brexit was, according to no lesser source than Boris Johnson himself, a million-to-one shot just weeks ago and is now charging up to the elbow at Aintree with the jockey standing on the saddle, spraying a machine gun at all the other horses still in the race.

In case you've missed the negotiations, this week essentially involved the UK saying to the EU, here's an obviously unworkable non-solution.

The EU saying, well, it's obviously unworkable.

UK saying, what is your f ⁇ ing problem with obviously unworkable solutions?

And the EU saying, well, they're obviously unworkable.

And the UK saying, you're letting down the people of Britain who voted for a fing unworkable solution.

And the EU saying it's not what they voted for, and the UK saying, f you!

So I hope I've filled in the gaps.

For

any of you who missed it, Boris Johnson's plan for the Irish border seemed to feature, I think it was two borders for four years, essentially, near the actual border.

Or was it one border for eight years?

I don't know if that was the compromise, or maybe it's half a border for 16 years, or a chap in a Portaloo shouting, halt, who goes there for the next hundred years.

It kind of works out roughly the same mathematically, and it's um

it's all.

I mean, I guess the Irish border Alexis is one of those kind of Brexit-related matters that no one could possibly have foreseen might be slightly problematic.

Because it's easy to say with the benefit of hindsight, or

indeed foresight,

or as I think Boris Johnson now calls it, pre-emptive hindsight.

I mean, say what you like about Brexit.

Well I do.

I think essentially the basic proposal was for some kind of homeopathic border which has

some traces of the original border but only utter lunatics insist it still works the same.

The other government plan is to just appeal to

British smugglers' sense of fair play

which is basically how corporate taxation works.

Brexit.

Never has so much hot air lifted so few balloons.

The Scottish Secretary Alastair Jack.

Sorry, sorry, Alice.

That is just a beautiful phrase.

At the Conservative Party conference, Scottish Secretary Alastair Jack called fears of no-deal Brexit leading to severe delays at cross-channel ports absolute nonsense, saying

business will find a way through,

which is simultaneously admitting the government doesn't have a solution to the problem it's creating, a beautiful expression of his faith in market forces to work their way around the government's failures, and also a worrying paraphrase of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park

saying

life will find a way.

Look, I'm not saying that dinosaurs are going to eat European imports at the British border, but I'm also not saying they won't.

We all know raptors can open doors that customs laws try to close.

And are you also saying they'll still be pumping out sequels in decades from now?

Boris Johnson said that this was a genuine attempt to bridge the chasm

while still standing with a massive spade with which he's dug the chasm.

But also I think many people would say when you're on one side of a chasm, before you start building a bridge, maybe think what might be on the other side before you just build a bridge into a chasm.

Boris Johnson told Laura Kunzberger of the BBC, if only we could all come together, fevers would cool.

Which was reminiscent of the English soldier who helpfully suggested to Joan of Arc that she take a layer off

if she was getting a little bit toasty

whilst pouring petrol all over her already overdone steak and blasting her with a flamethrower.

Now, there are certain historical details that are are inaccurate in that but it's 2019 it's Britain history is what the f you want it to be so

never has the phrase if we all come together sounded less sexy

but also these appeals to bring the country

very stressful.

I'm quite sceptical of these these appeals to bring Britain together.

Who'd like Britain to be brought together?

No, no.

No, no, no.

But I mean also it's kind of meaningless.

You You know, as I've probably said on this podcast, well, there's only one thing that has ever brought Britain together as a nation, and that is the Luftwaffe.

And

I don't want to be digging that out of its well-deserved retirement.

But essentially, what they're hoping seems to be that eventually Britain will gradually fall in love with itself in a kind of national Stockholm syndrome.

Kind of auto-erot.

Can you have an auto-erotic Stockholm?

Anyway, let's not go into that.

And also, I mean, the Conservatives sticking with Boris Johnson as a leader through all this.

To me, it is like keeping a pet crocodile that has eaten six of your children because you like the fact that your neighbours are always peering into your garden to see what's going on.

Just like the attention.

Michael Gove.

Why does he just add that noise to the end of his name?

Michael Gove.

God rest his soul.

If it's ever located.

He said this, we in this government have compromised.

We in this government are showing flexibility.

Which is, you know, the kind of compromise is the kind of compromise in hostage negotiations when you've offered to slightly turn up the radiator that you've changed your hostage to.

And the flexibility is that of a glutton who's ordered 20 portions of nine chicken nuggets instead of thirty portions of six chicken nuggets.

I mean,

you have to look to the people for the arguments for Brexit.

For example, Doreen Smith from Leicestershire gave a moving speech about how she's waiting for the EU to get out of her way so she can broker an exclusive trade deal with China for her homemade weapons-grade uranium.

That's the future.

We'll all make our own trade deals.

Gove continued, faced with the delaying, disruptive and denying taxes of the opposition.

We say, this is in Parliament, we say on behalf of the 17.4 million, enough, enough, enough.

We need to leave.

And it is important to remember where we stand as a nation.

We are just, we, the United England, we are just a tiny, humble nation of 17.4 million people, roughly the size of Zambia or Guatemala, but so much higher up the Olympic medal table, which shows what an amazing nation this 17.4 million people are.

Although I'm not sure how many of them actually won a medal,

given that they're mostly post-athletic age.

I do not believe that you have not done that, Max.

Get Brexit done, of course.

I mean, that's the mantra of this nation at the moment.

Also, the official slogan at the Conservative Party conference recently, Get Brexit Done.

It narrowly defeated the other contenders for Tory Party slogan conference, including one nation, one ditch to die in.

And alone, naked, and afraid.

Let's do this this way.

Are you enjoying Brexit?

Are you enjoying the Hong Kong-China crisis?

Are you enjoying environmental Armageddon?

Well, in which case you were probably sitting at home thinking, you know what?

What would really make my world is a real flare-up in the Syrian crisis?

Well, all your Christmases came at once this week.

As Donald Trump announced that he would be pulling US troops out from the border area of Syria, thus essentially paving the way for Turkey to launch its long-threatened invasion of the largely Kurdish region.

Although it's fine, don't worry, because Donald Trump himself tweeted: if Turkey does anything that I,

these are his exact words,

in my great and unmatched wisdom,

he has fully turned into an Old Testament god.

In everything other than the fact that sadly he actually exists.

Although,

anyway, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off-limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey.

Brackets, I've done before, exclamation mark.

So, there it is.

There it is.

What are you talking about at Thanksgiving?

Oh God, I mean

in my

great and unmatched wisdom, I mean

I mean out of all the crazy things that he's said in his Twittering career

It's it's hard to be optimistic about this.

A spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Council predicted there will be chaos once again.

And just look at the broad situation.

You've got involved in this Erdogan, Trump and Bashar al-Assad.

The prospect of finding a peaceful solution

not great.

I mean, it's like going on a three-week camping holiday with Giotto, Michelangelo, and Raphael, and expecting the conversation at no point to touch on interior decorating.

That's a little joke for any Fresco fans in tonight.

Or it's like getting Hulk Hogan, Big Bird from Sesame Street, and 1960s One-Hit Wonder and self-styled God of Hellfire, Arthur Brown, together for a two-day workshop and expecting them to develop commercially viable teleportation.

It is very unlikely to work and it's probably going to end up getting very messy indeed.

Yeah, I for one am very much enjoying the next installment of this long-running Will They, Won't They American Imperialism soap opera

Trump is playing.

He's ordered a withdrawal of US troops from the border of Syria because we all know the one thing better than using your military might to interfere with international human rights abuses is to play with committing your forces like a 53-year-old cocaine addict plays with committing to his promise of finally leaving his wife to be with his one true secretary.

Should we move on to the writing section?

Yes, in writing news now.

Let's give it a jingle.

Chris?

There we go.

It's just a shame to have that facility and not use use it.

Sorry.

Writing news, Alice.

In Writing News now, Taiwan and China have gone to war on Wikipedia.

Much as my Wikipedia page regularly has to be locked to prevent people engaging in bugle-based bullshittery,

Taiwan's location on Wikipedia has been regularly switching between a state in East Asia and a province in the People's Republic of China.

Look, Andy, they say that history is written by the victors, but also why not short-circuit the whole winning process and just change your Wikipedia page?

You can say you are, for example, the most beloved Australian comedian or the best, most successful, and attractive president in the history of America, for example.

I'm sure that would work, slash has already worked for someone.

He is an inverse Russian doll of

every time you think he's reached his limits, out pops an even bigger cat.

I think he's doing very well for Papier Maché figurine of a human being inhabited by the farts of a thousand dreams.

You've got to stop eating cheese at bedtime.

The Wikipedia page on the Hong Kong riots has apparently been was edited 65 times in a single day.

The Dalai Lama on Wikipedia, his description keeps changing from Tibetan refugee to Chinese exile to spiritual leader to total knob end,

depending on whether or not the Chinese government has edited it last.

Xi Jinping, similarly,

described as oppressive authoritarian throwback with a natty line in parades, or absolute dream boat.

The Chinese Warren Beatty, the Communist Party General Secretary of our Hearts, the Wayne Gretzky of Paramount Leaders.

Oh God, yeah, I would.

Here's an interesting Wikipedia fact.

It's a fact.

I have a friend whose hobby is going on Wikipedia, and when there's a picture of a thing, he replaces it with his picture of that thing.

So the picture on Wikipedia of a fridge is his fridge.

That's just a fact.

What a great hobby.

Well, you say it's a great hobby, but Alice, without wishing to be too indelicate.

How far does he take this hobby?

Wikipedia and find out.

I know that rash.

Which coincidentally is the title of Alice's new podcast.

Oh dear.

In other writing news, scientists are using light that is ten billion times...

10 billion times

scientists using light 10 billion times brighter than the the Sun to decipher scrolls that were buried when Vesuvius erupted in the year 79 AD.

Herculaneum, of course not as big or as famous as Pompey, but actually better.

It's like Magritte and Dali all over again.

Quite a lot of art jokes there, haven't they?

Now

they're using a device to get to the...

because it's a rolled-up scroll, so to to work out what was written on it.

Oh, is that what it is?

Yes.

Family show, Alice.

Now,

Alice's friends.

They're using a device called a synchrotron, which is clearly made up, but apparently it accelerates electrons to nearly the speed of light.

Yeah, right.

So it can then emit light that's 10 billion times brighter than the sun.

Of course it f ⁇ ing can.

10 billion times.

What bullshit is it?

Anyway, why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

It's obviously going to destroy you.

This is scene one in a disaster movie that ends up with a hunky man in a tight-fitting t-shirt and a distractingly pretty woman not saying very much running away from an erupting dinosaur.

We know how this ends.

The aim apparently is to reveal what's hidden in the scroll and uncover the secrets hidden ever since the celebrity volcano Vesuvius quite literally blew its top in 79 AD and prove once again that volcanoes are sticklers for paperwork if nothing else.

So the machine can then be trained so it can decide it can work out the difference between papyrus and ink and then gradually decipher what was written.

The chances are, as with most grants, this is kind of mundane everyday stuff, like how much wine Quintus drank on the average Tuesday, how many amphora of grain Floccius has eaten since he supposedly went on his diet after the Saturnalia,

how many Carthaginians it takes to change an oil lamp.

The old ones are the best.

What I'm hoping, as someone who studied Latin, is unpublished unpublished poems by the racy poetry megastar Catullus.

Now Catullus,

personal hero of mine, and of Alice's, I would assume,

lived in the first century BC and he wrote a poem that was so incredibly filthy, so grandmother-dissolvingly rude, that no English translation of it was published until the 1990s.

That is over 2,000 years of filth

in one poem.

Here it is in the original Latin, pedicarbo voset irumabo,

aureli pethike et quinide furi.

Translation, I will

you in the

and

Aurelius you

in

and furious you absolute

who likes to

his

in the

so it's pretty strong stuff.

It's like Donald Trump's internal monologue, but more so.

Catullus also very famously wrote the poem beginning, they see me scrolling, they hate him.

He was also capable of amazingly beautiful poetry, Catullus, such as this line he wrote to a girl he fell in love with.

Culus tibi purio salelo est neptoco dechies uh neptoto dechies cacasinano.

Wonderful rhythms, sumptuous language, an expression of the greatest human emotion that rings true to this very day.

Translated, it means, Your arse is purer than a salt cellar.

You probably only take a shit ten times a year.

Those crazy Romans,

they conquered the world.

It'd work on me.

Transport news now, and well we all love transport.

And

this week, Elon Musk has unveiled his

star.

Is he the what the half-brother of Michael Gove?

He just has the face of a man in a police sketch of a man.

What was your description of Musk that that you did last year?

I said

he's a baby's idea of a grown-up.

He's got all the money and ambition and talent in the world and he's using it to send cast a space like the wank fantasy of nerds that wish they were brave enough to be assholes.

I mean.

Can't remember anything I learned at school.

Remember weird jokes I told a year ago.

Why not?

Musk has unveiled his starship, which he plans to use to blast massive crews into deep space because why not?

Other than all the reasons, why not?

Starship, as you can see, is a rocket based on what people thought rockets should look like in 1950s sci-fi movies.

It looks like a child's drawing of a rocket

or a dildo.

I like Elon Musk.

He's got all the ambition and innovation of a latter-day Copernicus without the leavening influence of being accused of heresy by the ruling church.

I'm constantly torn between admiration of his incredible achievements and wanting to give him a wedgie for being so smug about them.

I think Copernicus was, he was,

he had a choice.

He had a choice between.

He had a choice in excommunication and a big wedgie.

I forget the wedges of it.

Anyway, Musk's other rival, the sci-fi premier Pilau Snork, this week,

he's muscled in on the same territory.

He's launched his new moon javelin

or javeloon.

It's a one kilometer.

It's a one kilometer.

It's a one kilometer long, three meter high space spear that will wang people to the moon from a launch facility in the Atacama Desert, modelled on the arm of the Czech three-time Olympic javelin champion, Jan Zelezny.

Snork's also placed to develop a new supersonic hot air balloon powered by an onboard e-volcano and a mega giant hand taxi, which is a 300-metre-high robot giant called Errol with extendable 10-kilometer arms that will pick commuters up in his giant paw and then gently drop them off at their chosen destination.

That's a fact.

Right, have we got time for the dating session?

No.

No?

I'm not the baddie.

It's time.

Time is a

f you, time!

If you weren't the baddie, why would there be the saying, f ⁇ you, Chris?

Oh, God.

I'm the baddie!

No time!

Dating news now.

I'm slightly out of the loop on dating.

I've been with my

wife for 23 years,

which was something of a relief because when I was younger, I was

had trouble finding love, and in particular, finding people to perform love on me.

I can go blue when I need to, which is never.

In dating news now, Tinder has launched a post-apocalyptic choose your own adventure game.

It's called Swipe Night and it is being marketed as an in-app interactive digital experience.

I am impressed that they've managed to spin this as a game on Tinder rather than admitting that Tinder itself is a post-apocalyptic choose your own adventure game.

After each release of a chapter in the game, Tinder members can display three of the choices they made in their profile on the app, and that's presumably to act as a conversation starter.

And I can think of only a few ways in which that would function as a

conversation starter.

One is, oh, hey, you have no critical faculties either.

You can't recognize a cynical PR move on the part of a company who commodifies the process of human interaction.

Me too, what a f ⁇ .

Or, hey, do you ever feel like this whole swiping people on superficial cues process is a way to deeply embed a damaging subliminal message that people are disposable and cultivate the creeping suspicion that you too are disposable?

Nope.

Cool.

Let's fuck.

I missed out on all the dating apps.

Obviously, you are not Tinder.

I just love the fact that you, of all the comedians in this industry, cite the fact that you've been been married for like 20 plus years as a reason that you haven't been dating.

That is

so sweet.

Anyway.

I had started writing puns about Premier League football teams.

And to be honest, some of them were absolute fing gold.

Do the gold ones go on, Andy.

If you support the independent podcast, The Bugle, financially, Andy will have more time to perpetrate abominations on the English language.

Hang on.

Oh, well, what did I yes?

So

I'm in the...

Anyway, I had a friend.

I had a friend.

He was obsessed with Premier League football teams.

And I heard him talking to his old miss.

They were quite old.

And I heard him talk to his miss.

They were reminiscing about the 1960s.

And he recalled the brinkmanship of the Cold War, meeting his wife, and the assassination of the younger Kennedy brother.

So the subjects were Newcastle, you and I, Ted.

He used to relax at the end of the day by curling up on the sofa, having a nip of whiskey and a couple of knuckles of pork.

Then he would admit a contented noise like a stroked cat, a real Tottenham hawk's purr.

And you doubted yourself.

We had this bizarre, slightly bizarre thing about tennis players from the 1970s, and he used to make Plasticine models of their facial features.

He had a Billie Jean King nose, a Martina Navratilova ear, and a Chris Evert tongue.

Evert tongue.

Right, but he always he always ate all his his food, particularly when he had pork-based products.

So he used to,

he didn't want to waste ham.

Waste ham, waste ham?

Right.

That's all right.

But he was a bit picky about some of the things he ate.

Sausage rolls, for example.

He wasn't a fan of the cheap meat, said, I'm not going to eat anything made of animals, asses, and facial features.

I will not eat anything with an ass-tongue filler.

Right.

we're done, we're done.

That's it, that's it, Chris.

That is it, that's it.

The full

thank you,

right?

Thanks.

We're done, no more puns.

No, look at this, look at the smile on his face now.

I finished the puns, he's really brightening up.

I don't even know what's happened.

Oh, fishing.

Right, so thank you very much for coming and paying for the tickets.

I know some of you

don't have a huge amount of money to spare.

You're Norwich.

It's never over.

Sorry.

That's it.

You can hear the full version of that at some point in the future.

Anyway, thank you, Newcastle.

It's been an absolute delight coming here to the stand.

As always, do they've got some great tour shows coming up here, so do support them as well.

And please show your appreciation for producer Chris

and the magnificent Alice Fraser.

I've been Andy, good night.

There you go.

That was the Bugle live for the first time from Newcastle.

There will be more Bugle live shows in 2020.

Details to come over the next few weeks, assuming this planet has not fully snapped in half by then.

Tickets are already on sale for my end of year review show 2019, the Certifiable History, at the Soho Theatre.

Details and tickets on the Soho Theatre's website.

The show will be on at 7:30 p.m.

from the 16th to the 21st of December, then also on the 27th, 28th, and 30th before wrapping up in a whole new decade on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of January.

To conclude this week's Bugle festivities, here are some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

To join them, go to the Bugle website and click the Donate button.

Music, please.

Brendan Gage is unconvinced by the theory that UFOs are in fact generally occupied by former deities from defunct ancient religions popping back to see what's going on in the world these days.

It is Brendan's own theory and he simply isn't buying it.

Many years ago, a relative of Chris Grace, we will not specify which one, made a scarecrow with the brain of Spelton Oates as a private experiment.

It was stolen by some men in a van with darkened windows, and 30 years later Donald Trump became president.

Trump has never denied that the scarecrow is in fact him.

Draw your own conclusions.

On which subject anonymous donor initials CW is puzzled that no moderate Republicans have suggested that a compromise could be reached regarding Trump's border wall in which a large trellis 3,000 kilometers long is erected instead, festooned with simply the prettiest flowers.

It might just take the edge off things.

Failing that, a hedge.

Owen Alexander had read about the BBC children's TV series The Wombles, but having never actually heard the title of the show said out loud, had assumed it was pronounced The Wombles and was a radical feminist puppet show about giant wombs marauding around London, righting the wrongs of thousands of years of patriarchy.

Monica Mielke heard about Owen's mistake and has begun crowdfunding money to make that very show.

Monica reckons $15 million should be enough to get it off the ground and it would be the greatest show ever made.

And after all, the clangers were clearly based on, as the French would say, a gentleman's plancoulement et grandadine, so it would just be balancing things out.

Christopher Gantner thinks he is on the verge of developing a new recipe for mashed potatoes that does not require violence.

Instead, gentle persuasion, a warming rug by the fire, and a bit more butter will work just as well and be way more ethical than boiling the bastards alive and crushing them like a vengeful hippopotamus.

Kay Verdi has been thinking about what Britain could manufacture to boost its post-Brexit economy and thinks there are gaps in the global market for vegan taxidermy kits, rocket-propelled unicycles and retro-artisan handmade 19th-century style mahogany encased nuclear weapons.

Matt Bierman is a bit of a stickler for linguistic accuracy and having heard that fridge was short for refrigerator will only use his fridge for things that have been previously cold.

To cool things down that have never been cold before, he would like to buy a frigerator or as he abbreviates it, an Idge.

Tara Nash pities British volcanologists who have to go overseas to get any decent quality work.

She considers that it must be like being a Venezuelan cricket star or a Mauritanian penguin breeder or a Liechtensteinian evil military genius.

And finally, Deborah Swain has a couple of linguistic suggestions to make.

If a significant personal resentment often played out in the public domain is called a beef, then a small petty secret grievance should be called a veal.

She also thinks that the person at the bottom centre of a motorcycle pyramid should be called a pharaoh.

Here endeth the lies.

And now, a plug for Chris's new show.

Hello, buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I have a new show out.

Please, please listen.

It's like taken me a year to make.

I've made it with my friend Richie Firth.

He is a funny man.

And essentially this show is me and him,

principally him really,

going places

because he thinks he can do it better than you.

It's f ⁇ ing stupid.

It's so stupid.

Here's a little clip of it.

Could you please please listen it's in apple podcasts it's in spotify it's in all those other places um and it's probably if you're if you're on the entail app right now then you'll see a link uh thanks bye

love you we are three miles now from clackett lane one of the oldest services on the uh m25 and certainly the one with the funniest name

What's so funny about Clacket?

I always thought Clacket sounds like the old 1970s

Charles toy, Clackers, which was obviously back in the old playground,

obviously

code for something, wasn't it?

Code for what?

Ball bags.

Didn't you have that?

Ballbacks, yes.

No, the old clackers.

You get that?

The old clacker balls, clack, clack, clack.

Yeah.

That was bollocks, wasn't it?

Was that my school anyway?

So whenever I pass Clacket Lane services, I just

see a couple of pullbacks.

And now so will everyone.

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.