Smelly Death Birds - Bugle 4118

Speaker 1 I will be in Australia for the next few weeks, hoping that the cricket can provide the distraction for everyone that it has so successfully provided for me since I was six years old.

Speaker 1 If you want to come to my shows, there is a Bugle Live in Melbourne on the 22nd of December, where I'll be joined by Sammy Shar and Lloyd Langford.

Speaker 1 I'm doing the Zoltgeist, my stand-up show in Melbourne on the 23rd of December.

Speaker 1 And we've just added a possibly optimistic extra show in Sydney on the 3rd of January. The 2nd of January show is sold out, but please, please, please come on the 3rd.

Speaker 1 My UK tour extension begins begins at the end of january all details and ticket links at andy'sultsman.co.uk

Speaker 3 there it is

Speaker 3 the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world welcome to the live bugle in edinburgh please welcome to the stage andy's altsman

Speaker 3 hello

Speaker 3 Very much! Hello, buglers!

Speaker 3 Welcome, welcome to,

Speaker 3 welcome to the bugle here in the Newtown Theatre in Edinburgh. This is issue 4118 of the bugle, the most significant creation in the history of human culture.
Arguably.

Speaker 3 I mean, admittedly, that is an argument you would instantly lose, obviously, as Test Match cricket. But, you know, it's just an honor to be mentioned in the conversation.

Speaker 3 We are recording on Monday, the 19th of August, 2019. For those of you listening at home, it's not being published, though, until Friday of this week.

Speaker 3 So, frankly, f ⁇ k knows what the world will be like by the time you listen.

Speaker 3 Are you optimistic for this week?

Speaker 3 No, I mean it's very hard to know, you know, who will be Prime Minister.

Speaker 3 Will the Iranian Navy have pulled a fast one and be steaming up the Thames ready to throw fire kebab sticks into Windsor Castle? we just don't know.

Speaker 3 This is the 19th of August, some some momentous well one momentous anniversary on this day in the year 1960, the launch of the Korabal Sputnik II, a satellite with the dogs which had two dogs on it, Belke and Strelke, forty mice, two rats and a variety of plants.

Speaker 3 There are Belke and Strelka, the Cosmodogs.

Speaker 3 And they returned to Earth the next day. And amazingly, all the animals survived, both dogs, the 40 and the 42 rodents.

Speaker 3 And although on their return, Belka and Strelke were reported to find that a standard walkies was, quote, no longer quite what it used to be.

Speaker 3 And on the return of the dogs and the rodents to the Soviet base in Kazakhstan, the Sputnik cat, Tabina Tidilsova, was reported to have said, Well, this is mixed news.

Speaker 3 Incidentally, 40 mice, two rats, and a variety of plants is is the exact current makeup of the Parliamentary Conservative Party.

Speaker 3 That's a little coincidence, historical coincidence. Amazing how history throws these things up.
So

Speaker 3 today is World Humanitarian Day.

Speaker 3 Yep, you're big fans of humanitarians?

Speaker 3 Not all of you.

Speaker 3 You really got to vocalise that. It's United Nations Day to recognise aid workers who risk their lives in humanitarian service.
Who thinks these people are heroes?

Speaker 3 And who thinks they are traitors to our efforts to win the global race?

Speaker 3 Because we're still one of the top nations in the world, and

Speaker 3 we need to keep these other countries down. These people are helping.
No, sorry, I've misjudged this gig.

Speaker 3 I think they are actually quite arrogant, to be honest.

Speaker 3 I mean, look at all the pictures they use. They have big hands compared to the rest of the world.
Like, they have serious ego situations going on.

Speaker 3 That one in the top left is, but I mean, that's that just looks like some kind of bizarre communal grope.

Speaker 3 which I think might be a metaphor for global capitalism

Speaker 3 see also tomorrow the 20th of August

Speaker 3 is well it's a momentous day it's the the birthday of my wife

Speaker 3 it's it's very rude to ask a woman how old she is but you can ask me she's 45

Speaker 3 and also it's World Mosquito Day

Speaker 3 annually observed on the 20th of August the commemoration of the British scientist Sir Ronald Ross discovering in the year 1897 that it's female mosquitoes that transmit malaria between humans.

Speaker 3 So malaria is the world's most deadly feminist disease. Thank you, sisters.
That's why it still exists.

Speaker 3 More than one million people die every year because of political correctness from malaria, because it's only transmitted by the lady mosquito, so we can't do anything about it, can we?

Speaker 3 Not these days, because us men are so terrified of being accused of not allowing the lady mosquitoes to live how they want to live that we can't even ask them out on a date now, let alone eradicate a deadly disease.

Speaker 3 Is this what Emmeline Pankhurst nailed herself to the cross for, really?

Speaker 3 I'll just call it as I see it.

Speaker 3 For World Mosquito Day, don't forget that there's a charitable element to it. So many of the World Days have.

Speaker 3 If you paid $2 to the World Mosquito Rights Foundation, you're allowed to take a box of mosquitoes to work with you.

Speaker 3 Unleash them on your least favourite colleague.

Speaker 3 And also, we have a free special offer for World Mosquito Day, a a free mosquito for every bugler who can correctly answer this question.

Speaker 3 Which current world leader thinks mosquitoes are in fact a global Muslim conspiracy?

Speaker 3 They are little miniature flying places of worship for mosquitoes that

Speaker 3 can inject Islam into the bloodstream of ordinary American people.

Speaker 3 Which is why we need to stop the Hondurans moving to California. So which world leader, a multiple choice? Is it A, Donald Trump? Send your answers on a postcard

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 as always some sections of this podcast are going where?

Speaker 3 I said they're going where Edinburgh?

Speaker 3 Correct, they are going in the bin. There we go.

Speaker 3 This week we have a special, special section. Are you democracy fans?

Speaker 3 Are you happy with the democracy that you're getting at the moment?

Speaker 3 Give us a cheer if you're from the United Kingdom.

Speaker 3 And give us a cheer if you're not.

Speaker 3 Where are you from? France. France.

Speaker 3 You live here. And

Speaker 3 not for much longer, I sincerely hope.

Speaker 3 We voted to get rid of people like this.

Speaker 3 We'd let the French in once before in 1066 and it has not gone well at all.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I don't know if any of you feel disenfranchised by the political process, but we're opening up to you now at the Bugle.

Speaker 3 We've struck an exclusive deal with the government to choose the Foreign Secretary.

Speaker 3 And we're going to run this as a knockout. The current Foreign Secretary is Dominic Raab.
Got any Dominic Raab fans in? No, because Dominic Raab is not in the building.

Speaker 3 He qualified for one of the great offices of state by virtue of being even less appropriate for his job than the alleged Prime Minister, thus making Boris Johnson look slightly less of an unelected travesty than he obviously is.

Speaker 3 Previously, he was Secretary of State for exiting the European Union, a job he carried out with, as you can see, incredible success.

Speaker 3 Given that Britain is still tearing itself apart like a hungry shark in a distractingly realistic seal outfit.

Speaker 3 But...

Speaker 3 I'm glad you like that.

Speaker 3 But who or what should be Foreign Secretary? Should it be Rob or should it be someone else?

Speaker 3 Over the next 63 weeks on the bugle, we'll be holding a knockout competition to find out who should be Foreign Secretary.

Speaker 3 Pitting the candidates against each other, head-to-head in performance categories of relevance to the job of Foreign Secretary. So let's find out who's the opponent going to be for Rob.

Speaker 3 Could it be Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornbury? Former World Snooker Champion Graham Dott.

Speaker 3 A single cauliflower.

Speaker 3 Would it be worse than Dominic Robb?

Speaker 3 At least it would look like it's got a brain.

Speaker 3 A vacuum, definite improvement, a bucket of eels, marginal. Let's find out.
I'll just draw the first round opponent out of the hat and it's Dominic Raab versus

Speaker 3 Sooty. The

Speaker 3 TV children's show, Glove Puppets, Sooty. So category one, is it going to be Sooty or Raab for foreign secretary? Category one, knowledge of international trade and politics.

Speaker 3 Raab was unaware of the importance of the obviously important port, Dover.

Speaker 3 Sooty, after his TV career plateau, did an open university degree in maritime law. 1-0 Sutty.

Speaker 3 Category 2, concern for the less

Speaker 3 fortunate. Dominic Raab,

Speaker 3 vocally opposed to workers' rights, the minimum wage.

Speaker 3 And well, fair enough. What about the rights of billionaire tycoons? Who's looking after them? The last persecuted minority.

Speaker 3 Also opposed to the Brussels ban on forcing babies to operate heavy machinery. I mean, I made that up, but at least I'm owning my deceit.

Speaker 3 Sooty, by contrast, devoted an entire 1980s episode to an admirably even-handed examination of the exploitation theory of Karl Marx

Speaker 3 if you listen to it backwards

Speaker 3 and also insisted on his less glamorous co-star Sweep being given equal royalty share from the hit 1990 novelty hip-hop skiffle single Don't Be a Puppet brackets unite to fight so

Speaker 3 2-0 Sooty category 3 attitude to the health service Rob wants to privatize the NHS Sooty thinks we should let the poor die. It's what God intended

Speaker 3 We'll call that a draw it amounts to the same thing.

Speaker 3 Judging by the American experiment, two and a half to a half. And finally, category four, ability to blame immigrants for stuff.

Speaker 3 Raab, as housing minister, said immigration has put house prices up by 20%.

Speaker 3 Rather than blaming, for example, the excesses of free market economics and multi-generational government failure to build enough houses or the will of Almighty Zeus himself.

Speaker 3 Sutty, by contrast, his co-stars included a panda, a parrot, and a Brazilian cat.

Speaker 3 Clearly way more open-minded than Dominic Raab. Three and a half to a half.
Sooty wins and we'll go on to play Novak Djokovic in round two.

Speaker 3 Right,

Speaker 3 that section in the bin.

Speaker 3 Thank you much.

Speaker 3 Right, it's time to meet our two guest co-hosts for today's Bugle. It register meets our co-hosts for this bugle.

Speaker 3 Now, I am from the northern hemisphere. I'm not going to lie about that.

Speaker 3 It's best to be open about these things. And what a terrific hemisphere that is.

Speaker 3 Easily one of the world's great hemispheres, but it's been going through a bit of a rocky patch of late.

Speaker 3 And I think we can acknowledge that as I mean, it's still a great hemisphere.

Speaker 3 Any hemisphere that can produce both Michelangelo and Michael Atherton

Speaker 3 has a pretty special hemisphere.

Speaker 3 But to provide some balance, both of our guests come from the other hemisphere, the wrong hemisphere, but they're here today to

Speaker 3 provide some objectivity to the news. Please, firstly, welcome, well, they're both huge bugle favourites.
Firstly, the wonderful Alice Fraser.

Speaker 3 Where she walks, she looks so so fine,

Speaker 3 like a farm angel.

Speaker 3 Hello!

Speaker 4 Hello, Andy! Hello, buglers!

Speaker 4 And happy World Mosquito Day.

Speaker 4 Interesting fact, mosquitoes are actually very closely related

Speaker 4 to

Speaker 4 the vampire.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 although vampires are more into asking for consent,

Speaker 4 it is an interesting thing.

Speaker 4 You don't know, but you don't see it in movies. They actually make the exact same annoying noise.

Speaker 4 So they're much less glamorous than you've imagined them to be. But mosquitoes are great, these little dick-nosed itch bugs.

Speaker 4 They are much like men on a night out in that you can never be sure if they're just going to try and penetrate you in a way that's annoying or in a way that will lead to your literal death.

Speaker 3 Fair point.

Speaker 3 Also, joining us today, also from Australia, please give a huge bugle welcome to Tom Ballard.

Speaker 3 Hello, buglers! Hello, Andy, hello, Alice.

Speaker 3 Lovely to be here in the correct hemisphere. Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 No fing respect. I was in London before this in an Uber, and the driver said, Where are you from? I said, I'm from Australia.
He said, Oh, yeah, where's that?

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 South, mate. It's south from here.
Never had to give directions to Australia before. Steal a loaf of bread and turn left, mate.
You'll find it.

Speaker 3 He said, Where's Australia? I said, It's New New Zealand. And he said, Oh, yeah.
What?

Speaker 3 You know Garfunkel, but you don't know Simon? Come on!

Speaker 3 Anyway, nice to be here.

Speaker 3 Right,

Speaker 3 so here we are. I think we're ready for our top story this week.

Speaker 3 Well, a terrific matchup at the moment between the Chinese presidents, very much like a mafia crime boss against a former British colony, very much looking at a Don Shi Kong confrontation.

Speaker 3 All right, good night, everybody. I'm done.

Speaker 3 It's all

Speaker 3 It's all happening in Hong Kong, and by all I mean a quarter of the population marching peacefully in protest, and that being described as borderline terrorism.

Speaker 3 Alice, you're our Hong Kong correspondent.

Speaker 4 Yes, I am.

Speaker 4 Apparently, satellite photos of a sports stadium in the city of Shenzhen show what appear to be armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles belonging to China's paramilitary People's Armed Police parked inside.

Speaker 4 The photos raised some questions like: Don't you have better ways to watch football than by perving on it via satellite?

Speaker 4 And why the flipping nut balls is a football stadium full of military vehicles?

Speaker 4 Some people are thinking it's because Shenzhen borders Hong Kong and it indicates a threat from Beijing of more extreme action against pro-democracy protesters, which seems like a pretty obvious and frankly boring thing to think.

Speaker 4 I refuse to accept that conclusion, Andy. I don't know what you're thinking, but I'm thinking tank ball.

Speaker 3 See this, Andy? This is why I hate sport, okay?

Speaker 3 If you're on the side of sport, you're on the side of

Speaker 3 totalitarian regimes, and you're also quite boring to talk to at parties, all right?

Speaker 3 They said this is all part of

Speaker 3 a pre-organized exercise, which I just don't think sounds like a very legitimate excuse. They're like, nah, we've got to put the tanks there anyway.

Speaker 3 And that's not actually a picture of a Hong Kong protester with an umbrella. That's us preparing for a Merry Poppin' style invasion from the future.

Speaker 4 I mean, what is the mission to achieve excellence in sport other than a long-term eugenics program, really?

Speaker 4 I'm just saying, they always conveniently run out of condoms in the Olympic village.

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, the way I see that, you know, the tank, I mean, clearly people say sport and politics shouldn't mix.

Speaker 3 I mean, I'll go further than that even and say that sport and military repression is a real no-no for me.

Speaker 3 But I know, as the old song goes, sport and political propaganda go together like a horse and jet engine.

Speaker 3 In that it gets messy and there's only one winner.

Speaker 3 But I think, let's see that picture again, Chris, of the stadium there. Could that not just be a FIFA experiment

Speaker 3 to find a new way of dissuading footballers from faking injury? If

Speaker 3 rather than getting the physio and the magic sponge, they're getting the Chinese military.

Speaker 3 See how quickly that's going to be. Look, that tank's offside.

Speaker 3 Tank bull. Tank bull.

Speaker 3 Clearly, the situation in Hong Kong

Speaker 3 was quite complicated, as I saw from the case in places that were formerly run by Britain.

Speaker 3 And it's not entirely our fault. Hong Kong was loosely incorporated

Speaker 3 into the Qin dynasty back in 220 odd BC, which coincidentally is the last time that Britain was truly British. Hashtag Romans out.

Speaker 3 And we picked it up, as along with so many other little trinkets in the 19th century and took it out on a lease for 99 years, which ran out in 1997.

Speaker 3 And it turns out that the Chinese government, surprisingly, has not been quite as committed to the idea of maintaining Hong Kong's democratic freedom as might have been ideal.

Speaker 3 There were no real warnings for that, were there, in the years before 1997

Speaker 3 in China. There's a

Speaker 3 famous joke,

Speaker 3 Chinese joke.

Speaker 3 Here it is. Did you hear the one about the dissident poet who was arrested by the Chinese police? No.

Speaker 3 There you go, bro. That's the first joke ever recorded on the bugle.
How about that?

Speaker 3 That's huge.

Speaker 4 I like to think of the British colonial experiment as you know that person who keeps having terrible, terrible relationships, and all of the breakups go badly, and after a while, you're like, maybe it's you.

Speaker 3 It's pretty amazing. They got 1.7 million people turned out.
It was torrential rain. Like they turned out there.
There was a threat of

Speaker 3 military oppression.

Speaker 3 1.7 million people. But I still can't get 100 people to come to my Edinburgh show in a light drizzle.
You fing fascists!

Speaker 3 9 p.m. monkey barrel.

Speaker 3 Do you think the people of Hong Kong are aware of how democracy has turned out around the rest of the world? Well, it does appear not, because this is one of the big demands.

Speaker 3 Obviously, they want the withdrawal of the extradition bill, which can

Speaker 3 dispense people accused of crimes in Hong Kong into the welcoming, loving bosom of the Chinese justice system.

Speaker 3 They've also demanded universal suffrage, and that doesn't work.

Speaker 3 We know this in Britain. Take it from us, Hong Kong.
Do not go for universal suffrage. Suffrage should only be extended to people who agree with you.

Speaker 3 That is the only way the system works. The Chinese government has said that the protests are terrorism.
So what we're going to try and do now is help you to spot whether or not something is terrorism.

Speaker 3 We'll do this by vote. Would you say this is terrorism? Let's have a picture.
1.7 million people peacefully marching. Is that terrorism?

Speaker 3 Or is interning 1 million people in re-education camps more terrorism than that?

Speaker 3 That is the correct response.

Speaker 3 And let's

Speaker 3 is this terrorism demanding proper self-governance and doing so by stopping some airplanes taking off from an airport?

Speaker 3 Or is terrorism occupying a country for more than 60 years and repressing all political opposition through hardline military rule? Boom! Is this on?

Speaker 3 In America, is this terrorism? Trump says the anti-fascist protesters are terrorists. He says major consideration is being given to naming Antifar an organisation of terror.
So is that terrorism,

Speaker 3 which is essentially shouting at fascists, or is more terrorism is being a fascist? It's a tough call.

Speaker 3 Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, Andy.

Speaker 4 Can't we all be terrorists?

Speaker 4 You know, the only way to fight a bad terrorist in a mask is a good terrorist in the mask.

Speaker 4 And the important thing is to make sure your violence is the good kind of violence, not the bad kind of violence.

Speaker 4 And the only way to determine that you're not actually just punching a doctor in a surgical mask is to do it and see if they treat their own wounds in a competent manner.

Speaker 3 Terrorists don't kill people, terrorists kill people.

Speaker 3 I've actually got the definitive list of what is and isn't terrorism here. If you'd like to hear it, Andy,

Speaker 3 heckling at my comedy show, that's terrorism.

Speaker 3 Me yelling at my audience because they're not laughing enough, not terrorism. Very interesting.
Andy doing a pun run, terrorism,

Speaker 3 blocking me on Grinder, that's terrorism.

Speaker 3 Three-star reviews? That's f ⁇ ing terrorism. Saying, f ⁇ you, Chris? That is not terrorism.
Accommodation prices at Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival. Oh, you better believe that's terrorism.

Speaker 3 £1,200 to sleep on a mattress thinner than an Instagram model. That is my 9-11, Andy.

Speaker 3 I'm done. That's it.
That's all the list.

Speaker 3 What about occasional scuffles with far-right groups intent on destroying the fabric of society?

Speaker 3 Well, according to Donald Trump, terrorism, slaughtering innocent people in the cause of white supremacy, not terrorism. So there's disagreements around that.

Speaker 4 What about Stephen Fry calling his show the same as my show and being much more famous than me? Definitely terrorism.

Speaker 3 Vultures news now. Alex.
Yes, in Spelly Death News. Sorry, you never see this on the BBC, do you? They never look at us, you're going, what are we doing next? Yeah, let's do vultures.
F it.

Speaker 3 Well, that's because they edit out the 24-hour news channel. It's not long.

Speaker 3 Each day takes them a week to record.

Speaker 3 They just guess the news that's going to be happening a week from now. And actually, that's a lot easier than it used to be.

Speaker 3 Some cunts are being cunts. Next, here's the weather.

Speaker 3 Well, since we're in Edinburgh, and as we've talked about the accommodation prices, Vultures News seems an appropriate section.

Speaker 4 Yes, indeed, Andy. Smelly deathbirds coming for the rich news now.

Speaker 4 A relentless swarm of black vultures that apparently smell like, quote, a thousand rotting corpses has forced at least one family out of their home in luxurious West Palm Beach, Florida.

Speaker 4 Apparently, locals have implemented a number of methods to discourage the balding avian corpse enthusiasts, including deploying fake owls, helium balloons, and loud music.

Speaker 4 I mean, to be fair, that sounds like exactly the kind of fake owl balloon party I'd want to be at if I were a stinking gangly-carrion bird with a party attitude and a taste for necrosis.

Speaker 3 If?

Speaker 4 Local spoil sport Cheryl Katz has called the presence of the black vultures in her pool house bloody, vile, vicious, and traumatizing, which is pretty strong language for someone whose name makes her sound like a bit part on an episode of Seinfeld.

Speaker 4 Cheryl Katz is definitely walking in with some sort of mild but incredibly infuriating personal habit that Seinfeld and his wacky mates will blow all out of proportion in order to resolutely keep their eyes away from the gaping void in social utility they have made of their lives.

Speaker 4 Homeowners in West Palm Beach are blaming the sudden bird surge or vultural appropriation, if you will.

Speaker 3 No!

Speaker 3 No, don't encourage them! That's terrorism! No!

Speaker 3 I think we all need to just take 10 seconds to just think about how glorious that job is.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 They're blaming it on an anonymous neighbour who they say is feeding the vultures, leaving them bags of dog food and even roast chicken.

Speaker 4 The friendly woman has been warned, but Neighborhood Association President Gordon Holmes, nominative determinism if I've ever heard it, said their options are limited because black vultures are protected by federal law, which is fair.

Speaker 4 What has a vulture ever done to you other than being a constantly circling reminder of your own imminent death and smelling like a pile of corpses to shat out another pile of corpses?

Speaker 4 Which it can't help. It loves eating corpses.
What else do you want them to do with a corpse and not eat it?

Speaker 4 It's kind of the raison d'être, which they pronounce raisin deter, but when they say raisin, they mean your shriveled corpse balls.

Speaker 4 But who else is going to enjoy your shriveled corpse balls, mate? Give them a fucking break.

Speaker 3 Have you written jokes about any other news story?

Speaker 4 Cheryl Katz said the anonymous neighbour wouldn't answer her calls or emails, and she ended up putting four fake owls with moving heads and blinking lights outside.

Speaker 4 But the vultures just pecked and chewed the owls up.

Speaker 4 They ripped the heads off, Katz said, before going on one date with George Costanza and deciding he's too hairy to date.

Speaker 3 They smell like a thousand rotten corpses, which is the equivalent of about one street performer, if you're wondering.

Speaker 3 Oh, edgy joke at the fringe.

Speaker 3 My cousin's out there on the Royal Mile.

Speaker 3 But as you said, some people have to leave their houses because of this, which is like just heartbreaking. I think.

Speaker 3 Imagine being targeted and victimized by evil predatory vultures, and it gets so bad you actually lose your house.

Speaker 3 And the vultures in question are never properly punished because they're protected by law.

Speaker 3 And because of the vultures' actions, your government introduces brutal austerity, which cripples the country and the working classes.

Speaker 3 All the while the vultures keep giving each other massive bonuses and start preparing the next attack on people's houses. That would suck.

Speaker 3 I think they're.

Speaker 3 Oh, sorry, there wasn't a pun in there, everyone.

Speaker 3 Might have been a subtext. I don't know, I might be reading too much into it.

Speaker 3 I haven't done that yet. You're done.

Speaker 3 Let's move on to environment environment news now. And

Speaker 3 you, environment fans?

Speaker 3 Some of you?

Speaker 3 That's only about 20% of you, the rest. The rest of you, evidently, thinking, no, no.

Speaker 3 The environment hates our way of life. And

Speaker 3 it's the biggest threat we have. Maybe the environment.

Speaker 4 It's just so dramatic. The moment you set up a coal-powered power plant, they're all like,

Speaker 3 oh, no, no more polar bears.

Speaker 3 Dramatic.

Speaker 3 A sad death in the environment this week. The Opjocal glacier in Iceland sadly passed away.

Speaker 4 Yep, it melted like the hopes of an Edinburgh comedian with three reviewers, two parents, and a dog in the audience.

Speaker 3 That brings back some memories.

Speaker 3 Apart from the reviewers, bit.

Speaker 3 The glacier sadly died of excessive melting,

Speaker 3 aggravated by carbon addiction. Not its own carbon addiction, obviously, but it was definitely a factor.

Speaker 3 It's the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier, and they put up a special commemorative plaque for it this week. Are you concerned about the loss of this glacier?

Speaker 3 I mean, yeah, but do we actually need glaciers?

Speaker 3 I mean, who hears when did you last actually use one?

Speaker 3 I would ask you. I mean, really, not just look at it and say, isn't that lovely? I mean, actually, do something useful with it, like, I don't know, ward off a bear or shift some rocks off a mountain.

Speaker 3 They are basically just inefficient rivers of ice for me. Rivers of water, way better.
I mean, what you can get from a river of ice? Frozen fish fingers, but not much else.

Speaker 3 There was a dedication on this.

Speaker 3 Have you got a picture of the

Speaker 3 little plaque they put up? What up? Okay, we'll just imagine. Got the fing glacier.

Speaker 3 Sorry.

Speaker 3 I'm sure that didn't Michael Kane say that in a film at some point.

Speaker 3 Episode 4000 of the bugle and tensions arising.

Speaker 3 It gave the date of the ceremony and also the concentration of carbon dioxide globally in the air, which is 415 parts per million. That is 0.04%

Speaker 3 of our atmosphere now is carbon dioxide. And I think we're getting way overstressed about this.
Because I mean that isn't that much, is it?

Speaker 3 I mean, it's very hard to actually find a bit of carbon dioxide in the air, despite the scientists telling us there's way too much of it. And we need to look at it in context as well.

Speaker 3 0.04 on earth venus 96.5 percent yet we're the ones with a problem but you can't but you can't criticize venus can you and why not because venus is a lady planet

Speaker 3 god can't say anything this ever since you became an mra this show is really

Speaker 3 i was very sad about the glacier

Speaker 4 no it is really interesting because uh people are saying that the melting of this glacier is an indication of rising problems and things like rising temperature in the world.

Speaker 4 And they put up this plaque to indicate. But it's basically, I don't think we have a problem until the plaque melts.

Speaker 4 Then we might want to change.

Speaker 3 We're 700 years old and just one day away from retirement.

Speaker 3 Tragic.

Speaker 4 Apparently, homeless seals are now migrating in droves or whatever the collective noun for seals is, and there's been a subsequent rise in ethno-state nationalist populism in the neighbouring penguin and polar bear communities.

Speaker 3 Wow!

Speaker 3 Oh, gosh.

Speaker 3 Dance as old as time itself.

Speaker 3 In other environment news,

Speaker 4 when you say a dance as old as time, do you mean that time is a dance? Like a tick?

Speaker 4 Very visual for a pen.

Speaker 3 I take it back. That is as close as I ever get to dancing.

Speaker 4 Just slowly aging.

Speaker 3 Well, just slowly.

Speaker 4 But gracefully.

Speaker 3 What do you mean, slowly?

Speaker 3 I'll just go round in a circle in 60 small

Speaker 3 instalments.

Speaker 4 Surely someone with a forehead that's moving at your pace should have more sympathy with a glacier.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but the glacier is shrinking.

Speaker 3 In other environment news, Tom, you've been keeping an on the entire Pacific Ocean for us. Yes, yes, southern hemisphere, everything's going very well.

Speaker 3 Critical talks at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu almost collapsed over Australia's positions on climate change and coal. Just to remind you, our position on climate change is no,

Speaker 3 and our position on coal is reverse cowgirl. We love it.

Speaker 3 Family, show us off.

Speaker 3 In response to these collapsing talks, Australia's Deputy Prime Minister, who is, say it with me everyone.

Speaker 3 He made some interesting comments.

Speaker 3 He was in Australia and he said, I get a little bit annoyed when we have people in those sorts of countries pointing the finger at Australia and say we should be shutting down all our resources sector so that, you know, they will continue to survive.

Speaker 3 The finging nerve! The nerve of these savages telling us to stop being one of the biggest polluters in the world so they don't have to start developing gills. Selfish much?

Speaker 3 His name is Michael McCorback. He went on, they will continue to survive.
There's no question they'll continue to survive.

Speaker 3 They'll continue to survive because many of their workers come here and pick our fruit.

Speaker 3 And that's a little thing I like to call Australian diplomacy. Yeah?

Speaker 3 Some countries use soft diplomacy. Some countries use hard diplomacy.
We're a bunch of.

Speaker 3 Pick our fruit, Andy. They'll survive because they'll be able to pick our fruit.

Speaker 3 And it's good Australian fruit as well. He said,

Speaker 3 pick our fruit grown with hard Australian enterprise and endeavour.

Speaker 3 Not quite hard enough enterprise and endeavor to actually pick the fruit themselves

Speaker 3 without resorting to cheap foreign labour, but hard, grown with hard Australian. I mean, how do you grow fruit? Does fruit not just grow?

Speaker 3 Do they stand there sledging it like cricketers or what? Yeah. You might just let it grow in this country, mate.
This softcock nation, not in Australia, mate.

Speaker 3 We yell at it and we throw footies at our fruit and we pump it with beer and we stump all the gay fruit. No pineapples.

Speaker 3 He also went on to say, McCormack, what we won't do is we won't listen to the Bob Browns of the world and say we should be shutting down our resources sector.

Speaker 3 Now, Bob Brown is an environmentalist, but it did sound like he was just using that as a collective term for.

Speaker 3 Anyway, let's not.

Speaker 3 He also said that the fact that we're not going to be hijacked into doing something that will shut down an industry that provides tens of thousands of jobs and two-thirds of our energy needs.

Speaker 3 So basically, the message is don't let the fossils have died in vain.

Speaker 3 Laid down our lives for us. We have a moral duty to use them.

Speaker 3 Also, is there not quite, no, I'm not a rocket environmentalist, but is there not

Speaker 3 other sources of fuel that could be used in Australia?

Speaker 4 Arguably, the fact that we are one of the largest and sunniest countries with some sort of very broad, empty, windy plains

Speaker 4 and the sort of surrounding girt by sea situation. Nah.

Speaker 3 Nah, all right, okay, that's good.

Speaker 4 It's coal or nothing, Andy.

Speaker 3 Coal and hypocrisy, that's basically

Speaker 3 sorry, I've just got to do a quick commercial announcement. Tonight's Bugle Live Show is brought to you in association with Ethi Snooze mattresses.
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Speaker 3 A blanket-inspired quilt made from the snugly wuggly pelts of badgers, deer, or if you're lucky, wild boars scraped off your local trunk ropes.

Speaker 4 Andy, must you alienate every potential sponsor?

Speaker 3 Still got Kalashnikov on board.

Speaker 3 The rifle you can't stifle.

Speaker 3 If you're looking for a great night's sleep, can I recommend my show, 9 p.m. in the monkey barrel? That's a whole hour of shut-eye there.

Speaker 3 Right, now, what's uh, Chris, do you have any idea what's next in the running order?

Speaker 3 Uh, things that you haven't done involve another species of bird. Uh, they involve I've got a picture of some animals fing, but I don't know what that story is.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's just your personal.

Speaker 3 There's the lichen story.

Speaker 3 Um, there's oh, sport. Let's do sport.
Okay. Um uh sports, uh Alice, you are the Bugle Sport correspondent.

Speaker 4 Tank ball. No.

Speaker 4 Britons Jess Lermanth and Georgia Taylor Brown were disqualified from the World Triathlon Olympic qualification event in Tokyo after they crossed the finish line hand in hand.

Speaker 4 And what has become of sport, Andy? Surely, like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, it's about ruthlessly tearing each other down in order to win at all costs.

Speaker 4 It's about being a sociopath in Lycra fighting for a million dollars in sponsorship and a job in commentary for the next Olympics.

Speaker 4 It's not about building character and supporting one another through the grueling process of elite athleticism. Bloody hell, they can cycle, swim and ride, but can't those read the rules?

Speaker 4 There is an I in triathlete, you teamwork fkuckles.

Speaker 4 It's worse because they're female athletes ignoring rule one of being a woman, which is I can't win if you're not losing.

Speaker 3 Shirley, you've got some thoughts about these women here, Andy? Well, I mean, to be honest, I'm still recovering from

Speaker 3 the Cricket World Cup final, which, by rights, should have ended like this.

Speaker 3 Can we do a quick QA? Yep. Right, so we're going to do a QA or an ANQ.

Speaker 3 Do you have any questions for the audience?

Speaker 3 Who's coming to see my show? Jump! Okay. Right, who's got a quick question for the panel today? We will answer them as seriously and factually as humanly possible.
What's that?

Speaker 3 There's one down the front here, Chris.

Speaker 3 Excuse me. We have a query on the bottom.
Excuse me. This is traditional meeting.
Excuse me. Jesus.

Speaker 3 Excuse me. This is an incredible feature.
Excuse me. We had a new history

Speaker 3 months months ago. Excuse me.

Speaker 3 Excuse me, it's not great.

Speaker 4 The tradition of the bugle audience in making Chris go as far as possible.

Speaker 3 I've actually changed my mind.

Speaker 3 A one-man metaphor for Brexit, Britain.

Speaker 3 Thought he had something to say and then backed out of it and was haunted by regrets. Next question.

Speaker 4 Alice, why exactly do you hate flamingo so much? And can you agree with me, you as well, Tom, that koalas suck oh

Speaker 3 oh

Speaker 4 oh oh wish koala gave you chlamydia that made you

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 3 what a game show that would be

Speaker 3 that's your next show for abc isn't it

Speaker 3 this week blinky bill

Speaker 3 any funny stories from the fringe this year no it's a pile of tears

Speaker 3 what about at the fringe?

Speaker 4 I saw a man arguing with a bin

Speaker 4 and I thought, ah, classic Edinburgh. And then I came closer and realised there was a busker in the bin, and this man had put a burrito in on top of him.

Speaker 4 I was like, double classic Edinburgh.

Speaker 3 Five stars.

Speaker 3 A haunting evocation of modern Britain. I've had some good audience interactions, you know.
You out there, try to get a vibe in the room, start of the show, get a bit of energy out there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, ask someone what they do for a living. Hey, man, what do you do for a living? I'm a Holocaust educator.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Tough crowd.

Speaker 4 What's your favorite?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 And I have a bucket. If anyone does come to my show, please bring currency for the country that we're currently in.
I'd appreciate that.

Speaker 3 Had quite a few Derma from the UAE dropped into my bucket, which it's always quite insulting getting currency from a country that'll probably kill you if you go there.

Speaker 3 An abomination in the eyes of God.

Speaker 3 Well, Chris, I think we're out of time, aren't we? Yeah. Because you were trying to encourage me to do some puns three minutes ago.
I know, encouraging is not

Speaker 3 the word I would have used.

Speaker 3 Well, I was going to do some puns about because I was invited to review some

Speaker 3 jams,

Speaker 3 some

Speaker 3 preserves for a local Edinburgh. But I thought, no, I can't.
It could go very badly, and

Speaker 3 I can't

Speaker 3 pick all of them.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 that was.

Speaker 3 the first one. I don't know if we missed it, but there was one there.
Yeah, there was one. I just absolutely delivered it terribly.

Speaker 3 But I was invited to see this musical actor, former Labour Home Secretary Jack and TV historian Mary riffing out some sweet improvised blues. It was a strawberry jam.

Speaker 3 Kaboom, I've got a friend of mine got an OBE for services to the fruit-based spread industry.

Speaker 3 He explained to the Queen how best to watch cookery shows and how best to use oranges on a high-tech new television.

Speaker 3 One of those

Speaker 3 ones with the organic light-emitting diode technology. And the Queen said, is there an acronym for that? And he said, yes, MAM OLED.

Speaker 4 I mean, that was a marathon.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Is that a compliment or an insult?

Speaker 3 Right, I think let's leave. Let's see.

Speaker 3 I was doing this memory test the other day. I had to remember

Speaker 3 a vehicle and what colour it was and in which prison it was from a selection of jails and the sheep. And turned out it was the red car in J Lee.
Red car and jay. Red car and jail.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 my granddad, he played tennis with Elvis Prezi, but Elvis was like Novak Djokovic. He used to bounce the ball like loads about 30 times before he served it.

Speaker 3 He got very impatient and said, Go on, Prez, serve. Prez serve.
Prezerve.

Speaker 3 Right, that's it. What?

Speaker 3 What? You appreciate it. He asked for it.
Don't fking. He didn't.

Speaker 4 You approach puns in the same way as like a medieval pubic hair tapestry maker, in that it's needlessly elaborate and nobody's comfortable with it.

Speaker 3 Right, enough about our sexual techniques. Now,

Speaker 3 actually, a friend of mine got a sexually transmitted disease. His blonker became all rough, like a scouring pad, because he used it for washing up.
He called it his member brio. Member Brillo.

Speaker 3 Member Brillo? No.

Speaker 3 You're right.

Speaker 3 You're right.

Speaker 3 I'm shutting that down.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much for coming. That is the end of the video.
Mugs. We have six mugs left from the stash of mugs that Chris brought here.
Six.

Speaker 3 So if you want to buy a mug, you have to be fast.

Speaker 4 Tank ball.

Speaker 3 Tank ball. Tank ball.
Yeah, have a game of tank ball. We'll be outside the front after the gig.
Thank you very much for coming. Good up for Alice Fraser.
Tom Ballard. I've been Andy Lothman.

Speaker 3 Good night.

Speaker 2 Thank you to everyone who came to the live bugle shows in Edinburgh and indeed Satirist for Hire and Political Animal as well.

Speaker 2 We will play you out this week with some more lies about our voluntary subscribers.

Speaker 2 To join them go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button and you can choose one of the various pre-programmed schemes or just make up your own donation whether it's recurring or simply a one-off.

Speaker 2 And here now are some lies. Chris, music please.

Speaker 2 Albert Farkas wonders whether humans would be more efficient as a species if they had one lobster claw and one human arm, instead of two of the latter.

Speaker 2 Similarly, Toby Yang thinks lobsters could do with at least one set of functioning fingers. He doesn't really mind where on the lobster they grow.

Speaker 2 Richard Haynes is wrongly convinced that the words potato and tomato were both Latin verbs, meaning I am starchy and I am juicy respectively, whilst Lawrence Agleton has never understood why they don't grow potatoes in superheated soil, so they come out of the ground pre-baked and ready for buttering.

Speaker 2 Matt Lewis has done some research and concludes that former Olympic swimming champion Mark Spitz probably shares at least 8% of his DNA with a nuclear submarine.

Speaker 2 Adam Cherrett once met the celebrity chef Scluton Malvane in a public library before Malvane was ejected and then arrested for quite literally cooking the books.

Speaker 2 Anonymous donor DA thinks the motorcycle pyramid is the future of commuting. It's efficient, it's environmentally friendly if you use an e-motorbike and above all it's fun.

Speaker 2 Tess Tess likes that idea and would furthermore install zip wires between the upper floors of tower blocks in all CBDs around the world.

Speaker 2 Rachel Slater wonders whether Britain should update the monarchy by choosing randomly selected families to be queen and or king, princes, princesses and sundry minor royals on a rotating five-year term.

Speaker 2 Nick Hills have developed this idea still further and suggests that that families should be able to make pitches in televised hustings for what they would do as the royal family.

Speaker 2 But Sam Wilkinson reckons Britain might as well just auction it off to the highest bidder, like every other public utility in the country.

Speaker 2 Ruth Berger, misunderstanding this proposal, has started crowdfunding to buy the Queen. So far, she's rustled up £768 million of her target total of an impossible-to-refuse £2.3 billion transfer fee.

Speaker 2 Here endeth the lies.