Bugle 4112 A Human Centipede Of Backstabbing

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers, and welcome to issue 4112 of The Bugle, the world's foremost audio chronicle of all human knowledge and wisdom.

I am Bitsy Squiggles.

Sorry, sorry,

it's not my Grime podcast today, is it?

I'm Andy Zoltzman, and Lemon Souffle holds no fears for me, or indeed most other people.

I'm in London, and this is my day off from cricket duty.

Since I last bugled at you last week, I've been to six World Cup cricket matches in six days, three of which actually happened.

There were two rained off, and one basically rained off other than half an hour of cricket.

Now, obviously...

Sport is supposed to be a metaphor for real life.

So watching nothing happen for ages and then leaving a disappointment is not entirely inappropriate.

Especially in cricket, a sport where watching nothing happen for ages, is part of the joy of it.

The difference being when you're watching nothing happening for ages with players actually on the pitch, it's the potential that something might happen that makes the nothing happening so enjoyable.

Anyway, we are here in just filling it in for non-cricket aficionados.

We are here.

I thought you were describing Brexit.

There's many similarities.

We're here in London.

It's the 13th of June 2019.

And joining me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of what's going on in the real world, A huge welcome back to Tiffany Stevenson.

Hello.

Hi Tiff.

Have you been enjoying the Cricket World Cup?

Oh, I've been loving it.

Right, good.

No, I mean, I lost, I'm mainly interested in Shane Warne.

He doesn't play anymore.

He doesn't?

No.

I'm fascinated by his face, which I feel has had more updates than my iTunes agreement.

Like every time I see him, he looks different.

So yeah, I'm fascinated.

Actually, I'm fascinated by hair loss and cricketing.

Right.

Because it seems the more runs a cricketer has scored is sort of inversely proportionate to amount of hair follicles.

That is a very interesting because I've been working with some fairly prominent ex-international cricketers, not all of whom have retained the hair that nature gave them, I think it's fair to say.

And yeah, I mean, that's maybe it's something about undergoing stressful situations whilst wearing a helmet

that leads to hair loss.

It just comes out.

Hence, advanced hair studio, though.

That's why there's quite a few cricketers involved in the old advanced hair studios.

Yeah.

Can women get that as well?

Like hair transplants, or is it just cricket-aggravated baldness?

I don't know.

I just want it to be equal, Andy.

Equality.

Yeah, when we have female sportsmen advertising hair replacement therapies, we'll know we've reached equality in the world of sport.

Also joining us, representing 30% of the world's surface area, it's the Bugle-specific correspondent, James Nakisa.

Welcome back.

I just realized I referenced the Australian advanced hair adverts, which always involve an Australian cricketer going advanced hair, year, year,

to British people.

So it actually sounds like I was weirdly affirming.

I do miss cricketers like Shane Warren, because I feel like we've replaced, you know, how cricket was always about the characters, like the smoke a cigarette?

I feel like we've replaced the cricket characters with political characters now, because all of those car crash human beings seem to be in parliament now instead of the cricket pitch.

And maybe that's what's gone wrong.

Right.

And cricket is full of upstanding members of society we turn to for guidance and illumination.

I I mean, you're talking to a New Zealander, so you play cricket with rugby and knows exactly how our society functions.

We are recording on the 13th of June, on this day in the year 313, the Edict of Milan was signed by Constantine the Great and Valerius Licinius, which granted religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire.

That's

how's that going generally around the world?

We've had what?

1706 years.

Still haven't quite nailed it.

And in 1381, just down the road from here in London, the Peasants' Revolt burned down the Savoy Palace, just on the about a mile away from here.

And that brought in a much more equal society and reduced the gap between the rich and the poor for the following 738 years.

I've been just peace and equality ever since.

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

This week, plant death.

After a new scientist report found that humans have driven over 500 plant species to extinction in the past 250 years.

I read this.

That doesn't sound like many.

I mean, how many plant species are there in the world?

Fucking millions, I reckon.

500.

We're going to lose 500.

Sure.

And can they be succulents just because I don't like that word?

Well, exactly.

And this is my theory.

We are going to now look at the species in this section of the bin that we might want to target next.

So votes for the plant you would like to see removed from this planet from the following bugle shortlist.

Japanese knotweed, the fragile housing market, is underpinning our economy.

That's not our fault.

That is simply the will of God.

And Japanese knotweed can really stifle house sales and push up prices for houses that don't have Japanese knotweed.

Our entire livelihoods thus remain vulnerable to the housing market, to someone somewhere saying, it's never really worth that, is it?

And the whole system coming collapsing down around our ears.

That is all the fault of Japanese knotweed.

That should be next.

The dandelion, what is the f ⁇ ing point of all that fluffy stuff?

Seriously, if I wandered around displaying my seeds quite so brazenly, I'd be put in jail.

Pear trees, well, in particular, one specific pear tree I'd like, the one in our next door garden, the pears keep falling on my roof and my shed in the autumn.

I diminish my annual economic productivity by up to a thousandth of a percent.

I can't afford that.

You can vote for that.

Or you can vote for the Venus dog trap, the little-known relative of the Venus flytrap.

That can pouch a Labrador and turn it into a cactus in under a minute.

Or the chicken, not generally regarded as a plant, but if you can put it in a salad, it's a plant.

So, which of these

of these do you want dead forever?

Do vote on whatever website you can find the vote on.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week: democracy in action.

Very exciting news here in Britain.

The putrefying parody of democracy that we hold so dear in Britain, that we fight wars for, that we drill ourselves into

a black hole of economic future for.

We are putting the crank into cranking into action because the nation is preparing to have a brand new Prime Minister inflicted upon it.

It's very exciting as a democracy fan.

Those of us who are not fully paid up members of the Conservative Party, and I assume that involves everyone here.

Tiff, you'd never struck me as a hardcore Tory.

What if I was a small C?

Anyway, those of us who are not members of the Conservative Party, we just get to sit back and enjoy the hassle-free delight of having our Prime Minister chosen for us by the Conservatives with nothing to do but just enjoy the warm glow of taking back control from the European Union.

Hashtag will other people.

There is a unique delight in a Tory leadership race as the candidates jockey for position to appear the most and/or least humane candidate, depending on which polypus front of the Conservative Party they're trying to appeal to and or discuss, before the whole thing turns into a human centipede of backstabbing as the candidates strive strive to prove to their Tory MP colleagues and party membership that they are the one with the clearest plan to sell future generations of British people down the river.

It's, I guess we've just got to enjoy it, you know, it's like the Grand National, isn't it pick a name out of a hat, like a horse at the Grand National?

The difference being that you'll actually probably prefer a horse as Prime Minister than any of the candidates that are currently on the slate for the Tories.

And horses are less likely to bang on about how it is now time to focus on what really matters to the British people after spending an entire political generation doing it, doing everything possible to do the exact opposite and also when a horse falls really badly in a race people don't suddenly start saying well that proves it's a good candidate to run a much more difficult race which basically seems to happen with uh with politicians so um well well tiff

where are we yeah um well i think it's more like a gladiator's because they have rounds don't they and the least popular ones go so it's kind of like a knockout what i'm enjoying is uh less the leadership race and more the race to uh tell everyone they've done drugs.

That's been real fun.

I've never wanted to do drugs less.

I mean, we can go go through them all, but I just, I need to say, it's been said before by me.

I need to say it again.

We can't have a Prime Minister BJ.

That cannot happen.

Democracy is always in, is already in a shocking state.

So we can't.

Also, he's more irritating than the wrong size tampon.

That's how I like to describe Boris Johnson.

I was thinking exactly the same.

It is quite delightful and British, I think, that you guys are still shocked by rich white guys confessing the cocaine.

It's just so, like, I too have taken cocaine.

Like, no, really?

You worked in the financial district during the 90s?

I'm amazed.

Well, there's gove and then there's the idea of gove on cocaine, which is absolutely terrifying.

I mean, he's been accused of hypocrisy, having admitted taking cocaine and yet, you know, with the government's various...

Hypocrisy

could play really well with core Tory support.

I mean, it's really appealing to the Tory heartlands.

I guess it's the right type of hypocrisy, isn't it?

It just makes them stronger, right?

They absorb hypocrisy.

Boris Johnson, the current front-runner and

former Foreign Secretary, renowned for his many successes around the world, including abandoning a British citizen in an Iranian jail.

He was described by one of his rivals, Sajid Javid, as yesterday's man, which again is his greatest selling point to the core Tory membership.

He's pledged to unite the country and lead Britain out of the disillusion and despair of Brexit,

which, I mean, it's impressive that he managed to say that without just crumbling into a soup of irony.

But he has as much chance of uniting the country as Colonel Saunders has, of bringing that bucket of chicken back to life as a pterodactyl.

Because one, he wanted the chicken dead in the first place.

Two, he has no real incentive to make it alive again.

And three, no one can turn a dead chicken into a live pterodactyl.

And as I keep saying, no one can possibly unite the country.

Not since the Luftwaffe disbanded.

But if you're a guy who who led people into the hole, then when everyone's standing in the hole in the dark, you're probably the guy who can legitimately go, actually, guys, I know the way out

because I'm the guy who got us here.

Just jump on this bus.

Yeah, but he's not really advocating that.

He's advocating digging further into the hole.

Yeah, but they don't know that because they were dumb enough to go into the hole with him in the first place.

Like, he's clearly lying about everything.

I mean, if not Boris, who?

Jeremy Hunt.

I have to sort of control my rage with this stuff.

but Jeremy Hunt did an interview where he talked about running for a Tory party leader and Prime Minister and then sort of said, also, by the way, like, this is just a personal opinion.

I obviously couldn't do anything about it, but I'd lower the abortion limit to 12 weeks.

I'm like, really?

Because I would extend it to however old Jeremy Hunt is.

Can we do that?

Is it possible to do that?

I hate that, because he knows it's not a position that he can put forward if he was Prime Minister.

But all he's trying to do there is kind of shore up some right-wing, like conservative Christian support, I assume.

But, like, why are you offering it up as an opinion?

It's got nothing to do with the leadership race, it just frustrates me.

I mean, I mean, it's not Mog, it's normally Mog doing this.

I mean, Jeremy Hunt, who is whose name fits the rhyming scheme, let's all be honest.

Um, and he's now just there are just people calling him a on TV now.

Yes, like, was it Victoria Derby Show or something?

It has happened periodically through his career, and you do get the feeling that at times the presenters are using the convenience of it was just a slip of the tongue when

it evidently wasn't.

I mean, he has a, you know, viewed by many in the health services having been absolutely catastrophic as health secretary, which I guess makes him ideally qualified for the task of pile driving Britain into the disused quarry of Brexit.

Other candidates, Rory Stewart, he appears to be falling off the radar in today's preliminary vote.

And it appears to have some kind of moral compass, which has proved a fatal Achilles heel for his campaign.

Fallopiana Scrivenge-Glarch,

she's still in the running.

She's the former Minister for Plebeian Affairs and Social Immobility.

She ran a cake stall at a local church fair in 1994, so actually has more hands-on personal experience of dealing with real world than many of her rivals.

You're talking about a real person.

Not always.

I genuinely was like, I mean, it is hard to tell, isn't it?

I can't tell in British politics because that definitely sounds like either a politician or a bond villain.

I mean,

it is, they are two sides of the same coin.

In the the modern era.

Scrivenge Glarch is, of course, renowned for her impregnably impersonal persona when dealing with anyone who doesn't own a multi-million pound business or an inherited title, and made a famous blooper when Minister for National Decline when she mistakenly claimed that Nuremberg was a town in Yorkshire where they held the trials and executions of the union leaders in the aftermath of the 1980s miners' strike, for which she was rewarded with promotion to be Secretary of State for Economic Injustice.

She has pledged to dig up the corpse of Margaret Thatcher and build a pyramid for it in commuter belt, Surrey, built by the forced labour of of schoolchildren.

So she's really positioning herself

to this kind of centre-right of the Tory Party, I think.

I thought Theresa May already had dug up Margaret Thatcher's corpse for an altar.

But hey, that's a good thought.

What about Theresa May?

Just a surprise second go.

Well, I mean, she has clung on remarkably long.

I mean, her resignation seems to have taken about 18 months before she's finally defenistrated.

The negotiations have been going on for three years now.

Like, And

I once flirted with a guy in the office for three years.

He turned out to be gay.

And I feel like that was less of a waste of time than this three years has been.

She has clung on.

But she's gone now, and I'm happy because, as we've discussed on this very podcast before, she was ruining leopard print for everyone.

So finally, it's back.

I'm wearing a leopard print skirt today.

I feel like it's back, and I've reclaimed it from Teresa.

It is a difficult...

I've never been happier to have so much cricket to...

And of the cricket games, I mean, I've just spent three days of the last week watching rainfall.

There have been two matches in the history of the Cricket World Cup dating back to 1975 that have been totally washed out by rain before this tournament.

11 World Cups, over 400 games.

I've had two in a week, both in Bristol.

But

even that was better than...

sitting at home watching the news.

And there was a poll from YouGov that found that 35% of Britons now actively avoid the news due to frustration over, quotes, the intractable and polarising nature of the Brexit debate.

So we are now, as a nation,

I can't believe it's that low.

Surely it must be happen.

It must be a misprint, isn't it?

85%.

It says a great number of Britons claim they're actively avoiding the news, but then they found that news websites have reported record numbers of visitors wanting to read about major developments.

So that discrepancy suggests that while many people publicly insist they're avoiding news, some may be unable to stop themselves.

Secretly gorging

on updates about Britain leaving the EU, like gorging on Brexit, like it's ice cream after a breakup.

Just going to binge an entire season of Brexit, guys.

Brexit and chill.

It's really the straight male butt play of politics, isn't it?

No, I'm not into that.

Yeah, so it seems that even if people are saying that they've disengaged from it, that they secretly just slide right back into it.

Like any bad habit you're trying to give up.

I think this is an addiction that could drag on for the next 300 years in Britain.

Pacific news.

In Hong Kong,

there has been protests slash riots, depending on what side of the governments you're choosing to be on.

Yes, which side of the water cannon.

Rubber bullets.

Rubber bullets, which are not as easy to dodge in slow motion as Chinese cinema would suggest.

The protests are about a new bill which would allow people to be extradited to mainland China, which has provoked concerns that the new laws could lead to Beijing targeting their political opponents in Hong Kong and then human rights abuses in China's not always transparent legal system.

However, these fears, I would say, are only based on precedent and overwhelming probability.

There's no use crying over milk that may one day be spilt, even if you are currently drowning in a reservoir of milk.

It's the sort of creeping totalitarianism from China, isn't it?

People are saying you don't need to protest it.

It's the same as with the women's march.

I remember Piers Morgan were people going before,

like kind of, you don't need to protest.

What are you protesting?

Protest once they've done something wrong, and it's too late to protest when your rights have been taken away.

That's sort of the whole point.

The women's march, they're marching against Donald Trump, and and now Roe versus Wade is being rolled back.

Like, that's what these people are doing.

They know the potential, you know.

Yeah, but where were you marching when Pandora opened her box back in the mythological dawn?

Sorry.

Well, it's interesting because the Chinese foreign ministry has described reports that security forces from the mainland could be sent to Hong Kong to quell the riots/slash protests

as fake news.

So they're using the President of the United States' own term towards Western journalists to quiet them on reporting on what's going on there.

It's a certain level of

insanity in the dictatorship.

Poor old Hong Kong.

They thought they were getting freedom when they got free of the British tyrannical empire.

It's like a game of frisbee between one sort of tyrannical leader to another.

They just want to make action films and be a drug port.

That's all they want to do.

Is that too much much to ask?

Also in the Pacific News, again, speaking of Donald Trump, a nine-year-old Cook Island girl was detained by the United States and held in camps because of suspicious material that was found on her legal guardian's cell phone.

Now, you're probably going to say, James, how are those two things linked?

To which I say, I have no idea.

And neither does the United States government, but that didn't stop them detaining her for 17 days.

I mean, people have made a big fuss about this.

But that is less than half a percent of the girl's life.

It's not that long, is it?

Really, to detain a child for no apparent reason.

Why are they detaining her?

Like, that's the thing.

If he's got objectionable stuff, why isn't he getting detained and she gets sent back to the Cook Islands?

What, like, was it a manifesto that she'd written?

Like,

just been a photograph of Hillary Clinton.

So he was a friend of the family and

had taken the girl's siblings to America for sort of holidays before.

And the, yeah, so this, but it ended up with a nine-year-old girl whose parents appeared not to know where she was after she'd been detained in America.

So I guess, you know, it's a good thing for show and tell at school, isn't it?

If you're nine, is it such a horrible experience?

I guess, because if you're nine years old

and you're from the Cooks,

as we call them in the Pacific, and then you're in America and you go to a camp camp with stuff you haven't seen before, like armed police.

Yeah, you know.

I mean, I guess there's camps and there's camps, aren't there?

Yeah, there's an American summer camp.

Maybe she thinks that's what she was at.

Maybe she's nine years old.

She comes back and goes, I went to an American summer camp.

What are the Cook Islands like?

This is the most accurate description I can give you of the Cook Islands.

I was flying over from New Zealand last week and I found myself talking to a Cook Island coffee maker who was making me a lum macchiato as we drink over there.

And

I was telling her a story about how, when I was young and we'd go to Samoa, my dad would make us buy KFC the night beforehand and wrap it in tinfoil to smuggle in our luggage to the village in Samoa.

And I thought she'd laugh, like you guys are giggling, and she straight faced went, oh, does he do it the night before?

My dad makes me buy it on the day of the flight.

And then I've got to like wrap it up.

And I was like, you do that.

And she's like, bro, everyone does that.

And then she went, at least you sarmore and have a McDonald's in Sarmaw all of the Cook Islands we've got is just some random guy that sells pizza so that's the level of capitalism you're in right and then you go to the United States to Disneyland except when you grow up you realize it wasn't Disneyland it was an interim camp

rugby news now uh the Christchurch rugby team uh James has decided to retain its name the Crusaders um rather than going for an alternative name more appropriate for modern rugby, such as the Christchurch Cranial Traumas.

But they've stuck with the.

And it's interesting, isn't it?

The branding of sports franchises that's over recent years become increasingly controversial.

We have the Redskins in America, the Washington Redskins, also the Streatham Redskins ice hockey team, who rebranded as the Streatham Redhawks

before the American sports franchises felt the name, the need to do the same.

So talk us through the Crusaders.

Well the subtle difference there is that the Redskins comes from like was it the 1940s or 1930s of America?

The Crusaders comes from all the late 90s of New Zealand.

And

part of the problem is that the Crusaders team, it was felt after the terrorist attack where 51 people were killed in Christchurch who were predominantly of the Islamic faith that having the local sports team called the Crusaders was in bad taste, partly because Kiwis at that point hadn't really thought about what the Crusades were and what went on there.

So two things.

One, it's incredibly Kiwi that this is the big political story to come out of the Christchurch shootings.

And two,

they researched, they called up people, they said, what do you think?

And they came back and went, no, we're going to keep it as Crusaders, but we're going to get rid of the sword and the shield because that's less offensive.

Right.

I've seen them on the pitch, they have them like it's like inches away from a pre-match jousting.

They've got them all in, like, and then they interviewed.

I don't know if this is like the manager of the team, but I read a quote: The reality is, Addy doesn't have got to make jerseys, there's merchandising and that sort of stuff.

Impy told Radio Sport on Saturday morning, I love the fact that an official statement came from someone called Impy, and we're going to get updates from the rest of the seven dwarves imminently, I presume.

Yeah, that's a no, it's a Kiwi because it's called MP.

If it was Australian, Empo.

Oh, okay.

So the brand, so they might keep the name, but so change, because I mean, crusade can mean a number of different things, can't it?

Have they been good crusaders?

But it's become known now a term for a broader political campaign for change.

The problem is the symbolism that goes with it is basically knights on horseback galloping off to kill Muslims.

So, I mean, that is where the issue is.

So, maybe they could just, you know, keep the name Crusaders, but use environmental Crusaders as their branding.

Just have

a person in a giant hippie costume tying themselves to a tree before every match to get their crowd whipped up.

Or a picture of like Harrison Ford and Sean Connery from the last Crusade.

See, now that'd be good.

I think Kiwis could come in on that.

The problem is that people went, oh, we can't change the name because it wouldn't make sense.

I'm from Wellington, and our sports team is the Hurricanes.

And we are a southern hemisphere team.

My knowledge of the crusade, which happened

800 years ago,

give or take,

not a huge contingent from New Zealand, as I recall.

No, it would have been the Maori contingent,

who, of course, made a name for themselves in World War I and II, but weren't quite involved in colonial matters.

Late 1100s, nor in Christian matters,

really.

They didn't have much skin in the game between the Christian-Islamic wars.

And also, we should remember, not all medieval crusaders were knights on horseback.

They were also ordinary foot soldiers dying of dysentery.

But again, that's harder to get a decent sports logo out of a desperate mercenary shitting themselves to death.

You never know until you try it.

Yeah, hell of a half-time show.

Ukraine versus Vanuatu news, which is a section we've not done previously on the bugle, James.

There's some spat between Ukraine and Vanuatu.

This comes in under, it's true, but we don't, it's kind of taken everyone by surprise.

Ukraine politicians have been accused of holding dual citizenship, which is illegal in the Ukraine.

And the country they've been accused of holding citizenship with is Vanuatu.

Partly because Vanuatu sells their passports.

And partly, I mean, there's no other reason why

they would have citizenship with Vanuatu.

It can't be for spying, because Vanuatuans would be the worst spies to have in the Ukraine.

They would somewhat stand out.

But it's really kicked off in the Ukraine.

I'm not even sure from my research that Vanuatu is aware of the issue.

But there has been a strange link between the Pacific and Northern Europe in the past when it comes to passports.

I believe Russia and Fiji have an actual relationship where people with passports from one country can go into the other.

Brilliant.

It seems to benefit Northern Europe, I think, more than the Pacific.

I want one.

I want another passport with all the Brexit stuff going.

A Russo-Fijian passport.

Yeah.

Yeah, why not?

I like the look of it.

I didn't even know about it until this story came up.

So apparently, it's only a 29-hour flight.

So I'm quite keen.

It's good for scuba diving and it has the highest density of languages per capita in the world.

It does.

It's pretty impressive.

Isn't Prince Philip a god in Vanuatu?

I'm sure we covered this before on the bugle.

I mean, I believe he he is.

Oh, that's off-putting.

Yeah.

That's straight up off-putting.

But then there's also religions in the Pacific of planes, just planes themselves.

So, I mean, it can't all be Jesus, although mainly it is.

Hashtag colonialism.

It also says there's no

seriously poisonous snakes, spiders, or insects on the island, unlike the UK, which is sort of crawling with Varages, Morgans, and Hopkins.

So I'd be very excited to go.

There is actually a website that ranks passports.

It's Global Passport Power Rank.

And I went on this website, and Vanuatu is ranked 70F, the Ukraine is ranked 134.

What, for most stylish passports?

I believe so.

Well, I don't know what.

What the hell is the Ukrainian passport?

It's just a piece of toilet paper.

It could be.

I can tell you that the number one is the United Arab Emirates passport.

Really?

Yeah, that's number two is Finland.

Right.

Shouldn't necessarily link those two countries together.

The UK comes in at 33 equal.

Right.

And New Zealand's 34.

Well, Well, that's interesting.

So

because they've changed our passport and they've taken the words European Union off the passport and they're going to replace it with a little white, wipe, clean bit of whiteboard so you can just write whatever you want on it.

Like, sorry, or for f's sake.

Now, James, your family heritage is Samoan, or as you wrongly.

How is it you wrongly say?

We say Samoan but English is a second language to us so

there's been some censorship going on of the Elton John movie Rocket Man there has there has the movie Rocket Man has been censored in the one cinema in Samoa

not to mention the pirated D V D copies being watched in many villages

it follows in the footsteps of other films that have been banned in Samoa because of homosexuality male homosexuality in particular, Milk, the Sean Penn biopic on the US politician, was banned.

However, controversially, at the same time, the British film, Lesbian Vampire Hunters, was let through.

That is feminism gone mad, Tiff, isn't it?

It's feminism gone mad.

They were killing vampires.

It's important to note that.

It's true.

They were lesbians, but they were also fully functioning members of society.

So this is basically

being un-Christian, insufficiently

Christian

as a film.

But in a particular type of Christianity, because the Da Vinci Code was also banned in Salmo because it spoke badly about Christians.

Okay.

So it's not just gay.

Because Terminator wasn't banned, was it?

No.

I mean, I see the Terminator as not particularly Christian in the way he goes about his business.

Well,

I don't see him really living out the lessons of Jesus Christ.

He does keep coming back, though.

I guess there is that.

Is it three days later, though?

Silence of the Lambs, I would say Animal Lecture is a bad Christian, but then that said, I guess it depends on your view of transubstantiation and the whole cannibal schmannimal stuff.

Well, it's bizarre, isn't it?

Because in Samoa, they sort of recognise a third gender within the culture, right?

Yes.

Is it fafain?

Is that how you say it?

Fafafine.

Fafafine.

Okay.

Yeah, and that association had actually been protesting against a ban on Rocket Man because, of course, diversity, and they think a lot of young people will see Elton Jong being a top or a bottom.

I haven't watched the film yet, and this will open up people, pardon the pun, to embracing their own sexual identity because there's a lot of mental health issues due to, of course,

repressing.

Yeah,

like most Christian countries.

There's a lot, it's bizarre at the moment because it does feel like, in this kind of time of like, well, it's Pride Month, isn't it?

That there is like almost like this kind of kickback against the LGBTQI sort of movement generally.

There's been, there's been talk of straight pride.

Someone tweeted the other day like, gays, here's some news for you guys.

Gays in Britain exist without persecution.

They rightly have the same rights.

Just straight.

Unless you're holding your parade in Saudi Arabia or the equivalent, then what you celebrate in, you're just celebrating being gay, which is just basic what about her isn't it?

It's persecution still happens daily.

Just because it's not state authorized doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

So case in point, two women on a London bus just like in the week just gone by.

So like it feels like a time when pride is needed more than ever.

And you've got someone coming out saying, you know, groups in America are saying they want their straight pride.

And let the dickheads have their straight pride because everyone knows it'll be shit.

Who's going to do your costumes?

Take any of the like kind of gay music off the list.

Buy, you know, Bowie, Prince, Janelle Monet, George Michael, Janice Joplin, Queen.

It's embarrassing.

But like what kind of...

absolute parade of fleece and crock wearing that will be.

I mean, that would be if it was here.

If, you know, maybe

they have a lynx float or something.

I don't know.

Like, why, why?

Why?

Well, because

they're just trying to get some belated overdue recognition for heterosexuality in the mainstream media and the acceptance of opposite sex relationships in society, religion, and law.

What's wrong with being persecuted for so long?

Yeah, yeah, it's never celebrated, is it?

They took Brad Pitt down as the face of it in America.

Also, they called themselves the Super Happy Fun America group.

Gotta be honest, sounds pretty pretty gay.

Like, as names go for your

shit.

But Brad Pitt just went, take my face off of this.

But it's some kind of like, like, alt-right group in America.

And that's kind of why it's sort of worrying.

Because I was sort of joking about it on Twitter, going, let them have it.

And then people are going, no, I actually don't.

And I think Milo Iannopoulos

has is apparently Straight Pride's new mascot or has proclaimed himself to be.

So Straight Pride would actually have a gay mascot.

It just keeps getting better.

you know i imagine they'll be handing out bumper stickers that say honk if you like big tees

i don't know any straight women that are going on this march do they all just want to have sex with brad pitt is that

it just sounds like a group of guys who have not dealt with their deep love of brad pitt yeah so far back in the closet they're sucking cock

Just quickly, before we leave this week's bugle, there's some very exciting news that apparently there could be an entire mirror universe.

Tiff, I believe you've had this explained to you by one of the leading mirror universe scientists in the world.

Mirror universe specialist Scottish boyfriend explains a hang.

Scientists claim to be on the brink of discovering a mirror universe.

As far as I could tell, that's a place the same as this, but your dad's got a wee goatee and your ma calls you a ct.

Alicia from Cumbernauld, then she tells you she's proud of you.

Scientists are experimenting by firing neutrons at a wall and if any are detected on the other side it means they're mirror neutrons or some pish.

They're too late anyway my pal Horny Dave discovered a mirror universe in 2004 after a bottle of half a bucky and a bag of mandy.

He told us he was looking into a window upon the tune.

I think it was Burger King or something then he says everybody inside looked like they were having a great time then the windy went all wobbly so he poked his head through it but then on the other side in in the mirror universe, everything was red like it was on fire, and everyone was running about screaming.

So, he pegged it.

Sounds like a pure nightmare, by the way.

Well, I think we're all illuminated by that.

Film out the mirror universe is where you have a pride parade of a gay mascot.

Well, we have to, well, to be honest, get out of the studio before the next people come in.

So, that is the end of this week's bugle.

Next week, we have a live bugle coming to you from the Underbelly in London.

That show is on Saturday afternoon, the 22nd of June.

It will feature me, Nish, and Alice Fraser.

So, do come along.

I believe there are still tickets available on the internet, or just by asking around,

just turn up and

blag your way in or pay.

Preferably the latter.

Don't forget, you can join our voluntary subscription scheme at thebuglepodcast.com.

Click the donate button.

James Tiff, thanks very much for joining us.

And we'll see you again soon.

Have Have a good week, everyone.

Bye-bye.

Due to studio constraints, we did not have time to record the lies about subscribers bit of the show this week during the regular recording.

However, I am now recording it very late at night in a hotel room in Southampton.

So, producer Rich, standing in once again for Chris, if you could put a sweet little late-night vibe on this, let's lie through the night.

Stephen Azhar has calculated that, when you are at the seaside, every 124th wave contains a bit of a ripple caused by the Titanic sinking in 1912, although you only notice it if you are naked and pretending to be a ship.

Suzanne Stevenson knows from bitter experience that shooting fish in a barrel is actually harder than it looks, largely because most barrels do not actually contain fish, but you can only discover this after strafing it with bullets and then dealing with a very angry landlord in a pub.

Anonymous donor initials AW is only a couple more experiments away from developing the world's first fully vegan version of the ancient sport of cockfighting.

All he needs is for his new crop of naturally pugilistic marrows to grow to fruition.

Alan G.

Rosenkirter often ponders the etiquette of wearing your own crown when meeting the Queen.

He acknowledges it might be awkward, but equally it might spark a conversation with Her Majesty.

Where do you get yours?

How do you keep it so shiny, etc.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Rosenko, who one assumes is related to the aforementioned Alan Rosenkoeter, does not think that Olympic athletes should receive medals until after they've answered five quiz questions correctly to prove that they are balanced individuals worthy of the watching public's adulation.

Anonymous donor JJ thinks football fans need to calm down about refereeing decisions and believes this can be facilitated by showing old newsreel footage of the First World War on the big screens in stadiums whenever a controversial penalty decision is made just to help everyone keep things in perspective.

Varon Wallia was so inspired by a trip to a sushi restaurant that he now advocates a global system of conveyor belts to replace all roads and airplane routes.

Trains can stay, They're basically the same, but without the fish.

John Bingham is convinced that Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke made up pretty much everything about their supposed early 19th century expedition to explore the western parts of what is now considered the USA.

They probably didn't get much beyond St.

Louis, thinks John, before they got bored and scared and just guessed what they'd find, with surprisingly accurate results.

Libby Witt found a strange inner piece, surprisingly, one afternoon, thinking about whether you could teach a dolphin to play chess if you removed all all other distractions and kept it well fed with herring.

And finally, Tom Slatter does not believe that chickens eggs are genuine, they just seem a little too convenient.

And caviar, well, that is obviously a hoax, too.

Here endeth the lies.

If you wish to join the phalanx of people who have been lied about on the bugle or just wish to be a contributor in any other way, please go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Thank you.

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.