Bugle 4111 - Not Enough Kicking

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4111 of the Bugle coming to you as is so often the case in the form of sound waves powered by Sonorax, ancient god of sound.

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Welcome to the Bugle.

I'm Mandy Zoltzmann and we're here in London to chronicle every single relevant moment in the universe over the last week or so.

And I'm joined, firstly, by the woman who only has to look at an exotic bird to turn it into a mortal enemy for all humankind.

It's the Hemisphere Hopper herself, the one-woman comedic tribute to the American penal system in that she's not afraid of unnecessarily long sentences.

It's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Hello, other mystery guest.

How are you?

I'm very well, thank you.

Welcome back to the correct side of the equator.

I am very happy to be back, and I've come back in time for some real good sunshine and sudden rain.

Yeah, well, you're in the right place for that.

Yep, it's made me very happy.

Also, my twin brother's wife's maternity leave is finishing, so they're following me back with the baby.

So there's nothing wrong in my life right now.

Sounds like they are pursuing you with a baby of which they want to dispose.

That's all I've ever wanted.

Also, joining us today

in London, it's the yeast from the east, in that he always rises to the occasion and comes from east of here.

It's Anuvabh Pal.

Hello, Andy.

Hello.

Also, if you put him in a cool, dark space, he lasts a thousand years.

I'm going to get a yeast from the East Pal t-shirt.

Should give it to every family member.

Good.

Welcome.

Welcome to London.

Thank you, Adi.

I thought it would be a unique visit in the summer.

I'd be the only person visiting, but I just recently heard from the British Consulate in Mumbai that there is a 2,000% increase in a demand for visas.

Because apparently we, as a nation, are filling up your cricket stadiums.

Yes.

Well, and we'll might touch on this later on.

Filling up in the sense that the stadiums are sold out and about three-quarters full.

So it's...

I was in Southampton yesterday for India's first game of the Cricket World Cup for any non-cricketers listeners.

We will be covering the World Cup through the Bugles on the summer, as well as on

the Unbelievable podcast that I'm also doing.

And total sellout this game, weeks and weeks in advance, and about three-quarters full.

So, I don't know if people are just too excited by the prospect of cricket now to just lie down in a darkened aircraft hangar.

I think cricket watching is a very prestigious activity.

So, they might be doing it for the Instagram likes, just taking a picture of their ticket and then not bothering going because they don't actually like cricket.

Yeah, I mean, people have always been doing that to my stand-up shows, certainly.

Also, joining us, stepping in for Chris, who is currently a little indisposed due to his wife having had another baby.

Not for the first time.

Well, for the first time, she had another one.

Not the first time she's had a baby.

So, for any maths fans out there, you can probably work out how many children they now have.

It's Rich.

Hello, Rich.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Hello, mystery guests who are now being disclosed.

Yeah, no longer mystery guests.

And of our pal, I didn't want to reveal you because I wanted you to have the full spectacle of walking down the red carpet.

We have a red carpet in here.

That's correct.

And also being known as the East from the East.

It's Bugle issue 4111.

Also, incidentally, the exact words in a slightly awkward conversation just a couple of days ago between Donald Trump and the Queen.

4.

We are recording on the 6th of June 2019, 75 years since D-Day, a day which proved pivotal in paving the way for a world that could move beyond nationalism, isolationism and unnecessary conflict towards international collaboration and cooperation and a European continent that would always work together towards a better future.

So thanks to all involved.

As always, some sections of the bugle are going straight in the bin.

This week, in the bin, a section advising you how to cut down on your unnecessary plastics use.

Tip one, try to avoid buying plastic-wrapped food in supermarkets by tearing the plastic off before you get to the checkout.

The supermarkets will then be able to reuse the plastic on tomorrow's food.

When recreating great battles of the medieval era, do not use little plastic bottles of shampoo or shower gels stolen from hotels to represent the divisions of the competing armies.

Use biodegradable exotic fruits instead, flown in from around the world, to give you a visually arresting and aromatic battlefield.

When getting married...

When getting married, do not make a false enviro economy by not having a wedding cake, which would require eggs from carbon dioxide-emitting chickens, and instead building a 20-foot-high statue of your spouse out of plastic beads and ceremonially catapulting it into your local harbour in a traditional gesture of good luck and long-lasting love.

Do not do that.

Also in the cake instead of eggs use coal for every lump of coal you eat is a lump of coal someone else is not burning.

And further plastic reduction advice, don't wrap all your coins and banknotes individually in cellophane to avoid leaving fingerprints on them in case the government want to track your spending.

Just use gloves.

And final piece of plastic reduction advice, don't bother buying imitation plastic cockroaches to leave lying around your kitchen when unwanted friends and unloved relatives pop round for tea instead carve them out of bits of driftwood humanely collected from a consenting beach so that's five ways to reduce your plastic use that's going in the bin

Top story this week the world well my world for the last week and indeed the next five weeks is largely consumed with covering the cricket world cup so frankly I'm a little bit behind on what's been happening in the real world or as I also like to know it the less good world Luckily, I have two people with me who are correspondents for the rest of the world on behalf of the Bugle.

Alice, firstly, what's caught your eye in the world this week?

In Australia, the Federal Police have raided the ABC News building and are accessing, scanning, and reviewing thousands of documents in a hunt for sources and data linked to state secrets about sweeping new surveillance measures.

It's the biggest attack on press freedom in Australian history.

Director of News Gowen Maris said journalism is not a crime, to which the Australian Federal Police probably said not yet before twirling their moustaches and setting some books on fire.

It's quite an interesting story, this.

I mean, it is possibly linked to the return of the ABC unbelievable cricket podcast featuring me and Felicity Ward.

I'm over here, suckers, you'll never take me alive.

And I guess, you know, there's a lot of questions on whether there needs to be greater protection for whistleblowers in Australia.

I mean, I mean, I guess the the qu the thing is, you know, when when everyone who has evidence of high-level wrongdoing is going to simply put it in the public domain, then it's going to be so hard for governments to

suppress public knowledge of all the corruption that's coming.

Where will that leave us?

I mean, it'll leave us in a bad way, Andy.

They also raided the home of News Corp journalist

Annika Smethist, who reported on government plans to spy on its own citizens in a story that included images from a top-secret document.

And the headline, tomorrow, will read, Massive explosion of painful irony kills hundreds,

hundreds of years of developing a fourth estate.

Andy, Alice, I have a question.

As you know, it is my job on this podcast to bring the perspective of deceit and treachery into

any existing institution.

So, journalism, I think you guys had done a good job with it for a couple of hundred years.

Now, what they've done in India is that billionaires have bought up most of the news channels.

So, what this would be, and the billionaires that have bought up the news channels basically also spend a lot of money owning the government.

So, when a government raids raids a news organization, they're basically going into their office in the evening.

So is that something that can be done with street broadcasters like the BBC and ABC?

I mean, we're open to corruption

here at the Bugle at the very least.

Come on, bribe me.

I dare you to.

And we are literally taking bribes in the form of our voluntary subscription scheme.

But, you know, if you just leave us some money, no questions asked, I will tell a lie about you on the show.

So

fundamentally undermining the whole point of journalism.

I enjoy that satirical element that I hadn't yet noticed, Andy.

Well done.

Scott Morrison, your God-given Prime Minister, very much a politician whose face and indeed politics exude the joie de vivre and humanity of a moulding potato, was asked if he was concerned that a journalist's home was raided.

And he said, It never troubles me that our laws are being upheld.

So exactly how sinister

did you find that your Prime Minister

said those were, I guess it depends on, I mean he didn't say it in a German accent.

So I mean it could have been worse, couldn't it?

He didn't demand papers first, which is my bar for entry.

But I just constantly maintain in my mind the mantra that he shat himself in a McDonald's in Engadine in 1997.

Whether it's true or not, it makes everything seem safer.

Another bit of Australian news that, I mean, this builds up a picture of a nation that's,

I guess, got a few things it could work on from an objective point of view.

Australia was criticised in a UN report this week for detaining a blind, mentally ill Tamil man who had fled persecution and torture in Sri Lanka for nine years.

They detained him for nine years.

And I guess, you know, I mean, Australia clearly

likes to get tough on immigration because the thing is, if you let in one blind, mentally ill Tamil man who's fleeing persecution and torture, you're going to be inundated with millions and millions of blind, mentally ill Tamil men fleeing fleeing persecution and torture, taking all your jobs, stealing all your women, and selling all your natural resources to unaccountable overseas billionaires.

And then where would you be as a nation?

Well, Andy, I will answer that accusation by saying, look, a koala.

This is the first time Waterboutery has led to a marsupial.

Anuvab, what's the top story in your world?

Well, Andy, I was reading in the New York Times.

I don't own a pet,

but I know a lot of people in in the Western world do.

And the New York Times had a headline that there's a new law that's been passed that says cat declawing is now illegal in the state of New York.

Right.

You cannot declaw a cat.

And my understanding of this seemed to be that this is a question of consent.

Right.

Right?

Like, if someone cut my fingernails without my knowledge,

I don't see myself being friends with that person in the long run.

And I don't know if any of you are cat owners.

Is declawing a thing?

Is it a...

First of all, cats are not friends with anyone.

Testify.

So it was a bipartisan bill.

They put it through.

It needs to be reviewed and signed by their governor and Andrew Cuomo before it becomes law.

And unless he's recently been the subject of a cat attack, it is likely to go through.

I'm torn about it, Andy, because on one hand, I wouldn't let a person sit that close to my groin with a handful of knives.

And

if cats want to live among humans, maybe they should do some cultural integration and learn the f ⁇ ing language.

On the other hand, I do think cat owners probably deserve a ball sack full of poor daggers for the impact their little murder pets have on native wildlife.

And then, also, from a Jewish perspective, when we're given a small helpless being in trust, I feel we are probably entitled to take the tip off anything we can reach.

But also, I empathize with the suffering of a cat being declawed.

What if they get itchy or suddenly need to claw someone's eyes out?

It happens to me on the way home from comedy gigs all the time.

So itchy.

I think this should be in the law.

This is exactly what Alice said.

Should be in the actual statute.

I mean, I just see it as bloody animal rights lobby interfering.

I mean, but wherever next?

You know, they're going to stop me ripping the claws off my cat.

They're going to make me take the alloy wheels off my rhino and the big bass subwoofer out of my elephant.

So Pimp My Pachyderm was probably the TV show that has changed my life the most.

Now,

look,

I do get it.

Nelly, the elephant.

I mean, I do get it.

That, you know, if you have a cat, I mean, because it's hot.

We don't really do, I don't think we do cat declawing in this country.

I don't, you know, I've not had, my parents had cats when I was a kid, but I didn't much like them.

The parents or the cats?

Exactly.

Potato, potato.

But it's not something we do over here.

And I guess, you know, as you say, if you do have a cat, then it is likely that your cat is a bit of a dick.

And you might want to take some measures to stop it clawing your eyes out when it starts to tar of your infantile dog impressions.

But there are alternatives on there to declawing.

For example, don't get a cat or leave the cat with its claws on and learn to live with it.

Or if you're worried about your furniture and clothes getting snagged, which appears to be one of the main reasons that people get their cats declawed, if you're worried about your furniture but you really like cats, get a robot cat with sensors in its legs that instantaneously retracts its claws whenever a snaggable fabric is detected.

Or just get a watermelon instead, which doesn't have claws but is in its own way quite comforting to hold in your lap, I'm told.

And I guess one of the benefits of declawing a cat is it does make it much harder for your cats to pick locks.

So your possessions are safer.

Never, ever trust a cat.

Have you ever looked deep into a cat's eyes?

Never,

never trust a cat.

Onwards in World News, three men in Boston are taking it on themselves to act as representatives of all embarrassing people everywhere by applying for a license for a straight pride parade.

The organiser, Mark Sahadi, wrote in a Facebook comment that the event will celebrate heterosexuality and is meant to poke fun at the identity politics of the political left.

There is a particular kind of person in the world, Andy, who thinks the best way to poke fun at something is to apply for a license to do it.

They've designed a flag, they've designated actor Brad Pitt as their mascot, though I I don't know what Brad Pitt thinks about this honour.

But apparently the parade will include floats and vehicles, which I take leave to seriously doubt.

The we are going to have a straight pride parade promise is about as likely to come true as the hey, let's catch up for a coffee promise, which is to say about as likely as the promise of mind-blowing head.

You've got big dreams, mate, but I doubt your skill at mustering sufficient enthusiasm for this will be fulfilling for anyone involved.

I mean, I have limited understanding of gay and straight history, but it is safe to say that there was never large periods in history where straight people were imprisoned and electrocuted and shot for being straight.

Well, we don't know that.

I mean, because when you look at the history of evolution,

I mean, it did take humans a long, long time, a suspiciously long time to evolve, which suggests to me that all the heterosexuals were being...

covertly imprisoned and prevented from breeding for arguably millions and millions of years.

Yeah, we don't know what happened to the dinosaurs, really, do we?

Yeah, maybe that's why the dinosaurs died out.

All those rampantly heterosexual dinosaurs like the T-Rex and the Stegosaurus, you don't get much more heterosexual than that.

Yet, where are they now?

One great big gay asteroid wiped the lot out.

So if anything, this is come up and this is deserved.

Yeah,

absolutely.

I just think this is going to be a bit of a dud of a...

You know how there's quite often these neo-Nazi marches and there's like eight people in very frumpy clothes walking down the street while people walk alongside them blowing sad trombones.

I think it's going to be like that.

I put my money on it being something like that.

Well, that is what heterosexual pride is all about,

sad trombones.

In

other

exciting news,

there's been a huge breakthrough in

in, well, gender relations, Alice,

and medical equipment.

Can you just talk us through this huge moment in

the advance of gender equality?

Yes, the first female CPR dummy is now available.

Although, weirdly, female sex dolls have been around since the use by Dutch sailors in the 17th century.

CPR dummies have been traditionally male, or at least while thankfully penless, masculinely shaped with boobless Ken doll chests.

Following a recent study by Dr.

Audrey Blewer, which found that women suffering from cardiac arrest in public are 27% less likely than men to receive CPR, a New York-based creative agency has created the first-ever attachment designed to convert a standard CPR dummy into a female version.

I think this is very exciting.

The research determined that the traditional Kendall chest training protocol led to an uncertainty about how to perform CPR on, well, anyone other than Zach Efron, but more particularly about how to perform CPR around the heart-attacky chest of an emboobled rib cage.

How do I perform heart palpitations without mashing her boobs?

Can you even electrocute a heart through all that tit with the zappy thing?

Do women have hearts, or is it just three boobs with one on the inside?

Oh, yeah.

Four.

It does, I mean, this is obviously, you know, it's it's uh arguably overdue.

Um,

but uh um I mean, it is rather stepping in after God has clearly decided to punish women for Eve stealing the apple from Pandora's lunchbox or whatever it was.

But it does raise the question: you know, if we're going to have female CPR dummies, when are we going to get the first male practice womb?

Because it's always women who get the advantages in obstetrics, and I'm fing sick of it.

Economics news now, and bad news for India, Anuvab.

No longer the world's fastest-growing economy.

Devastating news.

Yeah, a couple of economic stories, Andy.

Apparently, in India, we've just realized that after a while, you just can't make up your GDP.

Right.

Apparently it's an actual calculated number whose accuracy is checked by some people called economists.

No one told us this.

Didn't know it was a thing.

So apparently we've been saying we're growing at 9%, but apparently facts and independent verification says we're growing only at 5.8%.

So who do you believe?

Us saying this is what's happening?

Or numbers?

Well, I mean, facts have got a very bad rep over recent years.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Well, I don't see any problem with that.

I mean, that's essentially what the entire Brexit debate was based on: was pretend numbers, real numbers, and that is a fight that no one can win

other than the pretend numbers

who won.

The winner is lies.

And

Dr.

Das, Saktikanta Das, who is the head of RBI, came out and said, it's a question of perspective.

We're looking at the GATP a certain way,

and foreign economists are looking at it in a different way.

And maybe we can meet, but who knows?

And

I think that's what I like about mathematics.

It's never specific.

You know, it's vague.

Two plus two is whose perspective is it?

Also, I mean, in terms of growth, this whole stat of fastest-growing economy, which was trumpeted a lot in Britain as well, we were the fastest-growing economy in Europe.

But we only managed to achieve that because we'd tanked our economy like a Titanic into an iceberg.

So therefore, we had the opportunity for it to grow fast.

So in many ways, actually, this, I mean, it's a great achievement for India.

You have to have been one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

But you've actually got us Brits to think about for essentially stealing all your resources and

impoverishing you in the first place.

That gave you the opportunity then to grow

more.

There was some extraordinary statistic that came up in our, when we were doing that radio series

last year about

Indian GDP before and after the Brits had helped.

Yeah.

So apparently India was a wealthy economy, but you're absolutely right.

I think the early viceroys felt zero was a good starting number.

Right.

Because how would you know if you're growing if you're already growing at 11%?

So I think all the extraction of wealth during the colonial era was just to level the playing field.

So now that we're growing at 6%,

it's from zero.

So that's good, right?

If you're already at four, thank you.

If you're already at 14% under the Mughal Empire before the British came, where do you go from there?

You know, like you're already way ahead of zero.

So I thank you.

Thank you, Andy.

And I'd like to.

Truly, the colonial project was a long exercise in tough love.

Speaking of which, and staying with economics, New Zealand decided to come up with an entirely independent metric to measure their economic growth.

So Andy, they're going to use GDP, but New Zealand has just introduced the world's first well-being budget.

So the government will give you some money for what you regard as important to your well-being, apart from food and shelter.

So for example, I imagine if I lived in New Zealand, I love espresso.

I like roast beef because it's banned in my country.

And I like going to the theater.

So this would be considered...

I could make an appeal.

I'd also have to...

be from New Zealand, which I'm not, but you'd have to appeal for these things, and they'd give you these things.

So food and shelter are given because, you know, I'm sure they have some sort of a Scandinavia-type system to take care of that.

In addition, they give you these things for well-being.

So, maybe, you know, it's it's just another way of looking at it.

You know, just like we're making up our GDP numbers, New Zealand is helping us by saying GDP is not the only measure.

Right.

Right?

Uh, so we'll have a well-being budget.

So, whatever is important for web your well-being, Andy, for example, a lot of cricket.

Yes.

I mean, this is exhausting.

I am sick of New Zealand showing off on the world stage about how fing nice they are.

Making the rest of us look bad is what it is.

Where's your blind, disabled

Tamil refugee box?

Well, he's in Australia.

In other world news,

this is a very distressing story.

Apparently, rich nations

such as such as Britain are having we're having our waste sent back to us and Australia as well from the countries that we are outsourcing it to so uh essentially what recycling involves is chucking a lot of shit on a ship and sending it somewhere else and forgetting about it and and then it just gradually seeps back into the natural ecosystem and turns into uh christmas trees um

but uh some countries have started sending stuff back because they're being sent stuff that they can't they can't recycle things are being and put in the right i mean it's a very great concern to be honest speaking from a from a british point of view if suddenly these precious relics of our society are being given back to us, then the pressure is going to grow for us to return all the rubbish we collected from overseas in the past.

If countries like Malaysia and Indonesia start sending back Darren's mostly eaten kebab box and empty cigarette packet or Little Timmy's swiftly broken Christmas remote-controlled toy ferret, then

the Greeks are going to want those broken old bits of nudie people and horses back for their broken old temples as well, aren't they?

I do not like where this is going.

I mean, on one hand, it sort of feels like justice for our over-consumerism and wastefulness, but also Malaysia sending up to 100 tonnes of plastic waste back to Australia.

They don't know that my secret dream is to live on top of a palace of old car parts.

I just want to sit on a big pile of car parts and dispense

wisdom from a throne made out of defunct hypercolour t-shirts, slap pans, and other essential office supplies from the 1980s.

Like the giant rat philosopher, come martial arts sensei splinter in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

That's all I've ever wanted.

Alice, you've just described the new high-rise in Mumbai.

Build a ton of it.

But I have a question, Alice, Andy, Rich.

Would it be okay not just to send back fecal matter, but also fecal things?

Right.

By which I mean the show Big Brother is extremely popular in India.

Can we send that back?

Well,

I mean, I don't know what George Orwell would say about that.

His family are absolutely raking it in off all the royalties, I think.

Indian elections news, Anuvab.

Now, when you were last on, the elections were in progress, I think.

That is correct, Andy.

It ends up with a convincing win for Narendra Modi, who retained his title as Prime Minister.

How's I mean, how is that going to affect India?

Well, Andy, they've done all the analysis now post-elections, and it was a tight election.

Narendra Modi only won 86% of the votes.

So it was a close battle.

But recently, Bloomberg did a survey, and they found that in India, two-thirds of the voters received cash directly.

And I know that sometimes the moral values of the Western world, or the developed world, can have issues with that.

But

I've been following elections in the West and in the developed world.

And I've seen people give speeches where they talk about when they're elected, they'll improve livelihoods of people and incomes in the future through policies.

Now in India, it's much better to do it before

by just giving people money and then blackmail them into voting.

Like if you think about it, apparently there is a word for it, bribe, but it's a new concept for me.

I've never heard of it.

But it is a novel way to think about governance.

Right?

It's like,

you know, I've heard all these speeches about people trying to be the new British Prime Minister saying, I'll take the collective along and then the economy will improve, then you'll get jobs, then you'll make money.

What Prime Prime Minister Modi did was: here's some money.

Will you vote for me?

I'm not telling you what I'm going to do, but here's 50 bucks and a bottle of gin.

The future is another country, one I will own.

For now, take these $5 and go buy yourself a packet of chips.

Exactly, exactly.

And there's no problem with the media because he owns that as well.

So we won't have any Australian-type raids.

So, you know, things are good, actually.

And what about, I mean, the various non-Modi fans?

Because most of, I mean, the Indians I've met are not huge fans of...

Correct.

I mean,

one of my closest Indian friends calls him a genocidal bastard.

Yes.

There's two sides to every coin, I guess.

But I mean,

how's the reaction on that side of the political spectrum?

Well, you may want to check with your friend what country he's moved to.

But artists, you know,

commentators tend to be left of center and that's fine.

They just have fewer fewer avenues now to express their left-of-center views.

Twitter is probably the only one.

They'll probably get fired from all the newspapers because they're owned by the government.

And I think Prime Minister Modi is a fair democratic Prime Minister.

I mean, apart from controlling the government, the courts of law, the banks, the Reserve Bank,

and free speech.

Everything else is free in India.

Okay, that's good.

So I don't see how he's a fascist.

You know, people are saying Hitler and all that.

I don't see it.

You know, because he's only controlling all the major institutions and public opinion.

Other than that, with a slight religious fascist undertone,

helped by the religious infrastructure of temples and slightly anti-Muslim.

But other than that,

as manifested by one tiny riot, but

other than that, other than that, people are allowed to be free and fair.

So I don't know what

your fans and friends in India are complaining about, Andy.

Okay, I'll pass that on.

Yeah.

In extremely local news now, I'm a big believer in locally sourced things, and locally sourced news is the newest thing I'm sourcing from extremely locally.

The buzzer on my flat hasn't worked since I moved in, despite repeated calls for investment in infrastructure from the governing body.

So people have to stand outside the wall of my house and shout until I come and get them.

Last night I was so tired I accidentally kicked a cup and broke the cup and then when I was getting into bed I clipped my ankle bone so hard I was pretty sure I'd done severe damage to myself, but I was too sleepy to get up and check, so I just dreamed that I went to the hospital and I felt much better this morning.

There's a local lady who says I seem like quite a nice person, which is good, although she then said I have the eyes of a husky dog.

In weather news, a high-pressure period is sweeping down from the north with Edinburgh fringe previews and not a lot of paid gigs.

I'm hoping for a break in the industry so I don't have to worry about where my rent is coming from.

And according to my period tracker app, I've got three days to go.

The local news.

This is Seinfeldian.

It's genius.

Your local

friend said you had the eyes of a husky dog.

Yes.

Did she mean in your own head?

She meant in my own head.

No, it wasn't.

I wasn't carrying them.

I think she just.

Oh, right, okay.

She didn't say, you have the eyes of my husky dog after you've gouged her dog's eyes out.

She just sort of came up and took both of my hands and stared into my eyes eyes and said, you seem like a very nice person.

And then she said, you have beautiful eyes, like a husky dog.

Then did she try to make you carry her across Alaska?

Then she tried to strap me to a sleigh.

Then she asked me for £20.

Donald Trump has been visiting the United Kingdom.

I've luckily had the Cricket World Cup on, so I was basically able to...

He He did fly over the ground in Southampton yesterday.

While the India-South Africa game was going on, two helicopters, one of which contained Trump and the other of which contained parts of his ego, flew over the ground.

And I was disgusted that he should have been allowed anywhere near the

holy sanctuary of the cricket ground, supposed to be free from this kind of stuff.

Now,

he is clearly a one-man Kalahari of common sense,

a goby of good nature.

And he waded in during his brief trip over here.

He had a pop at the London Mayor.

He told some lies.

He spoke like an ignorant f about various issues.

He stuck his oar in on British politics where it was emphatically not wanted.

He told some more lies and said some things that he obviously didn't mean and waggled his ostentatious pseudo-imperial nepotism right in the faces of our royal family.

Come on, Trump, have some fing dignity.

So all in all, it was ugly, his most impressive and dignified performance since becoming president.

I mean, he had his sort of serious, kind of serious,

serious mode.

I'm never comfortable when Trump is in his, I really have to pretend to be a real president mode.

It's like seeing Freddy, it's like seeing Freddy Krueger in a heavy mascara and lipstick.

Just worry about what's coming next.

He refused to meet Jeremy Corbyn on the grounds that Corbyn was, quote, a negative force, which is not entirely the pot calling the kettle black, more a tarantula calling a bench a little too eight-legged for my liking.

Yeah, Trump in informal presidential reading off a script mode is very much like somebody who's been living at the end of an alleyway under a pile of rubbish for eight years and then comes out with a really slick side part.

You just don't know what he's been using to brill cream his hair down.

It seems like it can't last.

Sport now and well the Cricket World Cup as discussed well underway now.

Ticketing fiasco's

many empty seats as I was saying at supposedly sold-out games.

And also people had not received physical tickets, despite having bought them a year ago or more and having been traveling from around the world to come to games.

And eventually they let people print them out at home on day two of the tournament.

But it clearly does seem that there was a bit of a mix-up in the ticketing department on the to-do list.

A.

New swivel chair.

B design some pretty pictures to go on the tickets.

C, design an irritatingly unuser-friendly ticketing website.

D, new coffee machine that can make a rat milk frappuccino for those who don't like dairy.

E, office sweepsteak on which umpire will give the most LBWs in the tournament.

And they forgot the key parts of printing and sending out the tickets, which is easily done, I guess.

If that is your one

role,

if that is the one thing, yes.

And Alice, I have to ask,

the World Cup Cup is a slightly big deal in India, in that it's only obsessed over by 800 million people.

It's not that big a deal, but you know.

And it's not available on your terrestrial television.

Now, if that happened in India, it would lead to a few cases, by which I mean millions of cases, of arson, loot,

banditry.

Here, it is going on, but as the Guardian recently pointed out, the World Cup opening ceremony was attended by massive celebrities like Malala Yousufzai and Malala Yousafzai.

It appears it's not.

It's

the.

Yes, I didn't see the opening ceremony.

It was the day before the tournament started.

And

I don't think quite as many people turned up as they were hoping.

Partly because they said, do not turn up unless you've got a ticket.

And then no one had tickets.

And yeah,

I don't know how big a cricket fan Malala is.

Obviously, she grew up

Pakistan and would assume, you know, she's a hugely impressive human being.

Therefore, one would assume she's a massive cricket fan, as all the greatest human beings should be, and indeed are.

And your newspapers were quite kind about the World Cup opening ceremony.

It they called it a drenched, sodden, mediocre affair.

Which is essentially a pretty decent history of English cricket through the 1980s and 1990s.

In well, other

away from the cricket,

the, well, football is happening.

And today, as we record, recording on the Thursday, England are about to play a semi-final in the new European Nations League tournament.

They are in Portugal

and they are about to play the Netherlands.

And, well, there's been a bit of an issue with England's notorious football fans.

And the FA had launched

a campaign entitled Don't Be That Idiot.

Unfortunately, the Don't Be That Idiot campaign fell on the deaf ears of idiots,

as idiot England fans have acted like idiots and caused violent mayhem in the city of Porto.

And

it is one of the curious aspects of football, which is at its heart a very simple sport, a childlike pursuit of trying to kick a thing into another thing, that it can make people behave as if human evolution were just an elaborate hoax.

And

this is always kind of dodged and tainted English football, and it must be deeply irritating for the vast majority of England fans who are either not idiots or not that kind of idiot.

But as the old saying goes, a few hundred bad apples can spoil the barrel.

It feels like just

not using your opposable thumbs means that you've forgotten the level of evolution that's gotten you to the point where you would use them.

Right.

Maybe they need more handballs, just to remind, just to remind you of the colours of the colours.

I don't know if they just hold the bottles of lag with a thumb to it.

Not sure, really.

They just embrace them in their arms.

But I guess historic city centres are the red rag to England's.

And to be fair, though, this is probably not the first time England has gone into a country and done what they wanted.

Well, no, which is

built into our

national DNA.

The level of rage when it comes to this is always bemusing to me, and I'm never quite sure what they're angry about, whether it's too much kicking or not enough kicking or the kicking wasn't interesting enough.

I think not enough kicking.

The problem with

football is essentially that it's not violent enough as a sport.

Because rugby's never had a hooliganism problem.

Yeah.

Because all the violence is taken care of.

That's a great point actually.

But yeah, I mean hooliganism is essentially the social minotaur, that is the unwanted offspring of the uneasy conjugation of sport and an ill-informed but potent sense of nationalistic superiority with no other convenient outlets that at the same time allows enticing opportunities for travel.

And they also pick really sleepy towns, like

you know, fights in Sevilla or Cordoba, you know, where everyone's snoozing in the afternoon.

Towns that are not inherently violent, you know, just

they just bring this aspect.

Are you suggesting that the next Football World Cup should happen in Mogadishu?

Or Thimpu in Bhutan?

I just want to see what happens.

But that's not the only football happening.

The Women's Football World Cup is kicking off this week, and women's sport has belatedly been receiving media attention in recent years after someone at World Sport HQ got hold of an influential piece of market research suggesting that at least 50% of the world's population are not men.

This research has been suppressed for many generations in World Sport HQ.

Women's football was essentially banned for 50 years from the 1920s by the Football Association because,

well, Alice, oh, never mind, you wouldn't understand.

Because you can't possibly understand men making decisions about women's sport unless you've been a man.

I think that was the logic.

But anyway, so anyway, let's hope.

I mean, it's getting a lot of media.

England has a good team with a realistic chance of winning.

And we can only hope that we'll see further steps towards equality in sport over the next month or so in France, by which I mean I want to see England fans going on the rampage at a women's football tournament.

That is when we'll know we'll have real gender parity in sport when the fans of the England women's football team are chanting abuse at minorities, singing songs about the war and urinating in historic fountains.

Then I'll know we're becoming a nation I want my daughter to grow up in.

Holy ghanism.

Very good.

That brings us kicking and screaming to the end of this week's, which is essentially what is happening with England football fans.

To the end of

this week's Bugle.

I'm afraid there's no time for lies about subscribers, but we'll do a bumper set of lies about subscribers next week.

If you wish to join the voluntary subscription scheme, give whatever you can and wish to on a weekly or one-off basis, do go to the Bugle website, thebuglepodcast.com, and click the donate button.

Until next time, Annivab, it's been a delight to have you here and in person.

I mean, it would have been, I mean, that really made no sense.

That sounds been a lot.

I've been hologram.

I've spent most of the last week just with half an hour in the cricket and one and a half eyes on two screens of statistics.

It's been, I love it.

You've done very well, Andy.

But what statistics they are, Andy.

So reality is just my

always

slender grasp on reality is more gossamer-thin than ever.

Alice, great to have you back,

kit.

We are doing a live bugle together on the 22nd of June in London at the Underbelly.

It's a Saturday afternoon.

I think it's a 3 or 3.30 p.m.

start.

It's unusually early for a bugle.

So let's see if we can incite some hooliganism in the round.

Not enough kicking.

We will have segregation.

We'll have barbed wire fences separating the Alice Fraser fans from the Nish Kumar fans.

A pun run that leads to violence.

Like all the best pun runs do.

Any other shows to plug?

Oh, heaps.

Ethos, my last year's show, is now available on my Patreon for $5.

And I have a trial, preview.

What are they called?

Mythos on the 10th of July in the Museum of Comedy and other things.

And then Edinburgh, we'll both be doing the Edinburgh Festival.

Anyway, you're coming to the show this year.

I am indeed, yeah.

I'm actually here doing Edinburgh previews.

It's a very different show.

It's called Democracy and Disco Dancing.

And

it's about those two things.

Yeah.

Staying alive by the will of the people.

Exactly.

Two greatest legacies of ancient Greece.

Plato gave us disco dancing and democracy.

So last time it was about empire and India's relationship with Britain.

This time I spent three months on the road on the Indian election campaign.

And I guess it's an hour about the things I saw that I cannot unsee.

Do come along to all of those shows as often as you possibly can.

Until next week, Buglers.

Goodbye.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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.