(Andy is watching cricket) Bonus Bugle

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to a sub-episode of Primist Hogwashering from the Bugle's much sought after vaults of the never previously heard, the previously heard but probably forgotten about, and the, let's be honest, rightly and deliberately ignored.

This week, you will be hearing from the recent past, the less recent past, and the world of voluntary subscriber lies.

Let's start with some bits of recent bugles that, on health and safety grounds, were withheld from public consumption due to being one or more of too funny, or too politically dangerous, or too true, or not true enough, or because they contain secret codes embedded by the Russian Secret Service.

They change them every few weeks, so this stuff is now safe.

Chris, start the gramophone.

I went to a place called Toba Mori.

Now, did you ever get a programme in Australia called Bella Maury?

No.

Kiddies.

It's a kiddies thing.

And there was a little thing, a little tune, What's the story, Bella Mori?

Wouldn't you like to know?

And there was Mrs.

Oh, I can't remember what her name is.

Oh, I wasn't allowed to watch TV as a kid.

I read books in trees like an Enid Blind asshole.

Well,

this is

quite late.

It's 10 years ago, maybe a bit more, 15 years ago.

But it was all brightly coloured houses, and it was filmed on this place called Tobermore.

And there was one of the women who was called Mrs.

Hooley.

And the house that Mrs.

Hooley lived in, in this fictional children's place, they rented out this...

a real house that was a bright colour.

And I visited the people who lived there, this really odd couple.

They were a narratis.

And they were just this delightful couple.

But they were just sick of the number of people who come and knock on the door and say

can we see mrs hooley and she was and the bloke was from glasgow he was just sat there he wasn't she and nothing like and then the and the woman was from she'd lived there all her life on this little wee island and it's just a go out and i see there and there's me mrs hooley there and and she was all sweet and like would you like a biscuit and as and as she got telling the story she got more and more animated she was in her 80s and i see there and some there was a wee guy crawling through my garden and i said what are you doing?

He said, I'm looking for Miss Hooley.

I said, this knee search person.

And he said, but there is, we've seen her on the television.

And I said, but that's the television.

It's not real.

And he said, but I've seen it.

And by the time she ended, she went, and I received her, well, you're f ⁇ ing off.

And you're f ⁇ ing sort in the heat.

You're f ⁇ ing wee shite.

You're f ⁇ ing.

There's Need.

You don't f ⁇ ing it's a wee television.

And then the boy hadn't said anything.

He said, I went out and I said, if you went to the Rio Grande, would you won the way there was Need knee John Wien shooting f ⁇ ing Andeans?

In other plant news, some very distressing news coming from the plants of Europe, in particular the olive tree, the xylella bacterial pathogen could ruin the European oil harvest.

Not that that's any of Britain's concern these days.

We don't need European olives anymore because we have very British rabbit droppings, which are basically interchangeable.

Now, olive oil is to me probably the second most important substance in our lives after oxygen, maybe second equal with water.

And a similar outbreak of xylella put olive oil prices up by 20% back in 2013.

I mean I'm just not sure that Britain can can handle this in this this delicate economic stage.

There are concerns that the xylella pathogen could actually now come over here to the UK and put our own homegrown plant pathogens out of business.

And they're in fact in the run up to European elections, there are posters of swarthy-looking xylella pathogens snaking their way towards Britain.

Could prove a crucial factor in the forthcoming vote.

You just don't know these days.

And Xylella, of course, not only a threat to our olives, but is also renowned for its very popular video blogs about issues ranging from how to devastate a crucial Mediterranean crop, what make-up to use when you're trying to attract a new insect vector, how to keep looking good when you're slowly killing a vine, plus a travel guide to the delightful Puglia region in southern Italy for any other plant pathogens contemplating a summer getaway to a most scenic and hospitable part of the world.

Yeah, Andy, you know, the environment is getting ropey when a food that's been the cornerstone of a whole dietary genre for 3,000 years is under serious threat.

I mean, to explain this to Americans, so olive oil is such an important part of southern European cuisine and culture, it's as if we had like a pathogen in like lard or high-fructose corn syrup.

That puts it all in some harrowing perspective.

You know Steve Irwin, most of us thought he was an idiot.

74% of British people in the survey said that they had tried cocaine, although that is mostly because of an EU directive forcing us to take psychotropic substances that leave a trail of human devastation around the world.

And the founder of the Global Drug Survey, Professor Adam Winstock, said, in the UK, we don't tend to do moderation.

We end up getting drunk as the point of the evening.

I would take issue with this.

Would you look at town centres, city centres on a Friday or Saturday night?

We don't get drunk as the point of the evening.

We get drunk as the point of existence.

It's a key difference.

He also suggested we need to change our culture and become, quotes, more European.

in our drinking.

Have you not been watching the news for the last two years, 11 months?

That was explicitly a vote against moderation in all things.

He said, we might have to bite the bullets.

That is one way of cutting down on your drinking.

And think about how to advise people to get drunk by drinking, well, drinking less.

And it's good to set achievable goals.

Not how to advise people to find purpose and meaning in life without needing the consciousness-numbing refuge of cheap booze and aggressive cocktails.

But get drunk a little bit less.

Vomit in a bin, not all over a bus-stop attack in a police cell.

Just wean yourself gradually off it.

My favourite part of Professor Andam Winstock's statement was that we get told too much is bad, but current guidelines fail to accept the pleasure of intoxication.

Also, I should say that we respect Steve Owen a lot now, but it's mainly because he's dead.

It's all from the way, isn't it?

Yeah, we didn't appreciate him when he was alive.

We were all like, why would you do that?

Yeah, I mean, it's basically a fairly accurate summary of, I guess, the

life and times of Jesus Christ.

Very similar stories.

If Jesus Christ had had two adorable children that spend their lives following in their father's footsteps and a zoo.

Did he not?

Where did all those donkeys come from?

Andy, I have a quick question about the Indian electoral process, and I know that you are a keen observer of both democracy and Indian chaos.

So,

yes.

So, in my home city of Calcutta, there is an actress who's just become a politician.

Her name is Mimi Chakravati, and

she does soap opera, she does films, and she's been given a ticket to run as a candidate from the ruling party of Bengal.

She was campaigning on the streets of Bengal, but

in a way to connect with voters, she decided to shake hands with them wearing gloves.

Right.

She doesn't catch any unexpected diseases from them.

And later, when she spoke at an election campaign rally, she started shouting at them, saying, I'm very busy, I'm very rich, I have other things to do, but I've taken the time to come here, so you better shut up and listen.

Do you think, Andy, that these make you more endearing to voters or less?

Well, I just don't know with democracy anymore.

I mean,

if they're cricket gloves, then you could maybe see that that is

trying to exploit

India's great passion for cricket.

Exactly, exactly.

That's an opinion.

Like, if she's dressed like a wicket keeper, maybe she sings something.

Well, it's a very strong image.

I'm a safe pair of hands.

What more do you want in your political leaders?

I mean, if Theresa May had conducted the entire Brexit negotiations with wicket-keeping kit on, I think we'd have done a lot better.

Well, this week, as I'll record, the 2019 Cricket World Cup began.

England, in a deeply unpatriotic desecration of decades of national tradition, are beginning the World Cup not only as not completely and utterly useless and years behind the times in the context of world cricket, but actually as favourites.

They began with a win against South Africa, the highlight of which was Ben Stokes taking a catch that made physics quake in its very boots in the fear that everything it always thought was true might merely be a charade.

We've all been there.

Eight years ago, the World Cup was held in Asia, and here are some of my reflections on my first experience of travelling on the world's most popular continent.

4.5 billion plus people can't be wrong.

Here's a chunk from Bugle issue 145.

Bugle feature section now and travel.

And since we lost both, John, I have skipped the country three times.

I'm a fugitive from the law, albeit on a pre-planned itinerary without the law having any real beef with me and hence not devoting any resources to tracking me down.

I initially fled Britain for Dubai.

I was turfed out of Dubai after 36 hours as scheduled.

All I could get at the airport was a flight to Bangladesh.

Possibly with that as a flight I'd built for myself.

And then after three days in Dhaka, I was forced to peg it to India India due to a contractual agreement with CrickInfo and a desire to watch some more cricket.

Since then, I've been ducking and diving, never staying in one place for more than a couple of days.

That's how they find you, down the paper trailer, hotel, and travel bookings, I guess.

Delhi, Nagpur, back to Delhi, and now Bangalore.

And in a change from the traditional British tradition, I have thus far managed not to shoot any tigers or subjugate the locals and exploit their natural resources for my own personal gain.

So, well done, me.

Just shows what a modern,

enlightened man I am, John.

So, here's my bugle travel guide to some of the places I've been so far.

Dubai.

As discussed previously in this esteemed journalistic organ that is the bugle, Dubai is a silly place.

The world's biggest and most expensive toy.

The highlight of Dubai, other than the departure lounge at the airport, was the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest and f ⁇ ing stupidest building.

And John, it is properly staggering.

It is majestic.

Physics defying a half-mile-high shard of pure economic cock and architectural wang flops onto the table of humanity to the sound of oil-rich billionaires saying, what do you think of this, my dears?

It is a startling marvel of engineering, a thing of sky-popping, ice-scraping beauty in its own way, a honkingly amplified f you to the concept of impossibility, a pajol middle finger glittering defiantly in the face of gravity, necessity, and reason.

A statement that there is nothing that is beyond the reach of humanity if

the part of humanity making it is prepared to spend billions of dollars it doesn't have on something it doesn't need while shafting other parts of humanity hard and persistently in the ass with a solid gold truncheon.

The bird Khalifa, John, is undeniably magnificent and certifiably fing stupid.

There are, however, a lot of buildings in Dubai that are not nearly as magnificent and even more fing stupid.

Because as soon as the world economic downturn kebabs, the bubble of blind idiocy that drove the Dubai bulletin boom, like Juan Pablo Montoya driving a jet-propelled mobility scooter, there are, as a result of of this,

hundreds of power blocks with basically no one in.

Now Dubai, and you can't help thinking, particularly when you go to Dhaka afterwards, could that money not have been better spent doing something else than building a pointless skyscraper?

No, for a long time.

No, no, honestly not.

For a long time Dubai has had more money than sense, by a similar margin to how millipedes have more legs than tits, or how the Bodley and Library has more books than inflatable blimps in the shape of

Crocodile Dundee style at Linda Krislovsky.

But, and Dubai had more money than sense.

But then the money turned out to be pretend, but the unquenchable lack of sense remained.

And this is the Dubai we have today.

So these fing stupid islands in the shape of the world are sitting fing stupidly, sinking even more stupidly into a suitably embarrassed sea.

Sky scrapers are one or both of them empty and unfinished, standing in sheepfish uselessness, gathering sand and dust.

As necessary as pogo sticks for kangaroos, rucksacks for goldfish, or zero-gravity snooker tables for starving sub-Saharan children.

As Albert Fizzwiz Einstein himself said, you cannot put a lead on a headless dog.

Sorry, that's the wrong quote.

The author says, an ostrich in the catapult is not the same as a helicopter.

No, sorry, that was Thomas Edison.

But anyway, Einstein said that the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

And if he'd been to see the Bird's Khalifa, And if he'd seen, like I did last week in Dubai, two ice hockey teams full of Russians playing each other in a game in a shopping mall in a desert.

If we'd seen a hotel with a helipad where a room for a night could feed a village for a year, he would be patting himself on his back with his magic test tube saying, nice one, Albert, you have hit that nail, bang on the bonce.

Now, DACA, next, John.

No one would mistake Dhaka for Paris.

It doesn't have quite the same array of chic designer clothes outlets.

No one would mistake Dhaka for Los Angeles.

Its film industry is much less prominent.

And even fewer people would mistake Dhaka for Dubai.

Dubai, a place with about as much soul as a bombed-out Kabul fishmonger.

Dhaka, a ceaseless wave of humanity clinging to the precipice of viability with its triumphs and tragedies bustling together.

And last week, John, it was going stark, bonkers, crazy for cricket.

And at the end of this week's bugle, to show you quite how stark, bonkers, crazy for cricket they were going, we've got some audio of the crowd at the opening World Cup match in Dhaka during an over in which the Indian bowler Sri Sant conceded 24 runs.

Now for our American listeners, that is fing shit.

And the crowd went absolutely ballistic.

And he said, if you like, if you like sports, if you like cricket, you'll love it.

If you like sports, you'll love it.

If you like life, you will love it.

And that's coming at the end of the podcast.

And the World Cup began in Dhaka last Saturday.

There was an opening ceremony featuring, well, can you get to it, featured John?

I mean, who would you obviously book for the opening ceremony of a cricket tournament in Bangladesh?

There's only one person, Andy, and her name is Tina Turner.

Wrong, it's Brian Adams.

Anyway, so close.

But, you know, it's all about cricket in Bangladesh.

You know,

if you play Summer of 69 Backwards, it's basically a pi-in to the Bangladesh test captain, Habibal Bashar, who has retired now.

Anyway, I arrived in Dhaka just as the opening ceremony was finishing, and my first experience of Asia was a taxi ride through streets that were blistering with enthusiasm for basically the biggest

international event in the country's history.

And the people I met, you know, it's a country of massive and obvious poverty, but the people I met at the cricket grounds in the streets were proud and optimistic and incredibly welcoming in the face of this long-term battering from history and nature.

I couldn't help but thinking, London needs to lighten the f up.

And going from Dubai to Dhaka is like playing consecutive frames of snooker against Kim Kardashian and Mother Teresa.

So it was an eye-opening experience.

And I've met some really charming Indian cricket journalists.

And some of them have got a a flight from India into Bangladesh, had to fill out an entry form, an immigration form, in which they had to say, colour of skin, black, white or medium.

What?

That was on the Bangladeshi entry form, the immigration form.

Black, medium, or medium.

I'm guessing that was a form that

was designed by the British years ago.

And then I went to Delhi and I went to a game in Delhi and

some of you might have read about the Delhi police being a little over-official and essentially starving the stadium close to the point of death by not letting any food in.

And they were confiscating pretty much everything.

And I was searching away and they wanted all my coins because they have had a bit of crowd trouble in Delhi in the past.

And they searched my wallet for coins.

But interestingly, I had to give them my Indian rupees.

But I was allowed to keep my British pounds.

Which, I don't know, I don't know if that's good or bad for Britain.

If it just, you know, it it means that um no one would possibly throw a British pound, it is an honourable currency, it always has been and always will be.

Or it's just that Britain's currency has fallen so low in the esteem of the world that people think it's not worth being collected for charity as the rupees were, and also it's so embarrassing to its owner that no one would consider throwing it as a missile in a public location.

Ah, cricket, way better than all reality.

Last week, Bugle issue 4110 was released.

But what was the world like 4,000 episodes ago, including all the ones between 294 and 4,000 that we didn't record?

Well, let's find out.

Here's some highlights from Bugle issue 110, featuring Andy Zoltzmann and the former Spanish comedian, Juan Olivera.

Top story this week, the final countdown to nearly 50% of eligible UK voters not bothering to put some paper in a box.

Yeah, they said it would never happen, John.

They said it was an impossible dream.

They said no one would have the balls to make it happen.

But it's on, John.

It is on.

It's general election time.

I see I got a bit of that wrong.

But they said it would definitely happen.

They said it was a procedural inevitability.

And they said no one would have the policies to make it interesting.

But it is still on.

It's on.

Democracy was on.

Oh, a Donkey Kong.

It might not have received much coverage over here in the US, Andy, but indeed, Britain has announced the date of its next election, and it is to be, wait for it, May the 6th.

So put it in your diaries, spray paint it onto your fridge, tattoo it onto your children's foreheads and everyone, and I do mean everyone, everyone in the world, take the day off work May the 6th.

Make sure you spend the entire 24 hours sitting in front of your television, flipping the channels and wondering why there seems to be no coverage of the UK election where you are.

It's interesting you should should say that because

I was on a school trip to Greece in 1992 on the day of the general election then.

Right.

And

we were all gathered around.

We were waiting for the results to come late at night.

But the only international TV channel in this Greek hotel was CNN.

Right.

And we were waiting for the result of the general election that had been built up as being a hugely significant defining moment in the history of modern Britain.

The choice between

still properly left-wing Labour and the continuation of the legacy of Thatcher.

And it was mentioned in about a 30-second

final score, basically, after a 10-minute report about a farmer from Arkansas who'd lost a hand in a combine hire.

But why hasn't this been a bigger news story around the world this weekend?

Well, I think it's because the UK are clearly doing a few things wrong.

One, Britain is simply not as relevant as it used to be.

If it could fix that and once again become a dominant imperial superpower, that would go a long way to piquing people's interest.

Two, where's the Rasmataz?

Here in the US, they automatically know when the next election is going to be.

There's no element of surprise.

So the UK has a huge advantage there with the opportunity to announce it with some spectacle and they blow it every time.

Where was the motorcycle pyramid jumping through a hoop of fire while holding a horticultural arrangement spelling out May the 6th and tulips.

Where was it?

Instead, it was once again a group of men in charcoal suits reading out a press release.

Not, and I repeat, not from the top of a motorcycle pyramid.

Come on!

Wow me!

Also, number three,

the election campaign is just not long enough in the UK.

Four weeks?

What?

Four weeks?

What can you do in four weeks, Andy?

The election here in America took a year and a half last time.

It's like John Adams said.

if it doesn't take over six months it's probably not worth doing

he was talking about uh human pregnancy doesn't

doesn't matter and he was biologically correct at that time

well um i don't think everyone is talking about it here john other than on the tv news channels where they're obviously massively excited by it one of the major features of this election campaign uh apart from the cynical use of leaders' spouses and the squawkingly infantile poster campaigns uh is uh

this it's slightly more Americanized coverage actually.

They seem to follow all the leaders around the whole time and interview them about every 30 seconds.

In effect, the three party leaders are just on a permanent Twitter feed, a verbal Twitter feed.

And I think there is a large chance that most of Britain will emigrate on May the 5th just to avoid the end of it.

Alastair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was today

rebutting Conservative financial figures and said these very clever words, what you can't do is spend money you don't know you've got.

Which,

you know, from a man basically holding the purse strings of a government who spent a lot of money that it did know it didn't have.

That's an interesting sideways step.

If you don't know you've got it, you shouldn't spend it.

But if you know you don't have it, spend away.

That's economics, John.

That's why you and me can't do it we don't have that level of sideways thought

david cameron the conservative candidate is as part of their manifesto proposing voluntary national citizen service for all 16 year olds where they join a two-month residential scheme featuring outdoor activities and community work he said show me a gang taking drugs and i'll show you a group of people who have nothing to look forward to now hold on i mean that's not strictly true andy i believe they're very much looking forward for instance to the next time they take drugs.

That's the ideal thing on their horizon and also not that this scheme doesn't have its merits in principle but I would question the viability of appealing to a gang taking drugs with a two-month scheme of outdoor activities and community work.

Yeah, it probably doesn't have not the same instant adrenaline rush, is it?

No, it's a longer hide.

A more sustained hide.

It's just that more ultimately satisfying.

An An interesting fact regarding the UK elections and one that probably provides a great insight into the British electorate psyche is that our elections are always held on a Thursday.

Now this is just a convention rather than a full legal stipulation.

The original reason for it being that people were not paid until Fridays so holding polls on Thursdays ensured that they were not too drunk to vote.

We might want to vote Andy but such is our predilection for self-annihilation that we need to be protected from our own bad decisions by scheduling the election on the one day a week we are least likely to be unconscious.

Such is our drinking problem.

We need that decision taking out of our hands.

And apparently the Electoral Commission has recommended trials of weekend voting as a way of improving turnout.

But again, they will just have to be trials, Andy.

And I fear that those trials may reveal results of a lot of people vomiting, urinating, and falling asleep in voting booths.

Does that count as a spoiled ballot paper?

You know it does.

You've chandered on it.

Well, there you go.

That should keep you going until at least next week.

And now, in the time-honoured bugle tradition, we will play you out with some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

A huge thanks to all who have contributed so far.

To join them with a recurring or one-off donation, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Chris, you may now instruct the Lies Band to begin their music.

Murray Tibbing used to work in a secret government establishment researching the economic implications of sneezing, which costs the global economy an estimated $5.4 trillion every millennium in working time loss to pre-sneeze inhalations, the main sneezing phase itself, and the after-sneeze recovery and clean-up.

Carl Stoltzman always makes up a surname when communicating with people that rhymes with the person he's trying to make contact with.

He has in the past written letters as Carl Twerlasconi, Carl Greesmog, Carl Blitherspoon and when he wrote to the Queen asking for an autograph Carl the Fecond.

Alejandro Trio, in a former career in a hospital, sneaked into the radiography department and took an x-ray of a 14th century Bible.

It showed the unmistakable outline of a games console handset.

Read into that what you will.

Mike Runo, well he once heroically saved a gallon of water from drowning in itself.

What a guy.

Daniel Puddick submitted a proposal that the creation of sliced bread and the birth of Jesus Christ should be replaced as the international standards of datekeeping by the first Wimbledon final.

An anonymous donor, initials NJ, thinks that Olympic swimming would be significantly improved by using pools with a wave machine.

NJ also wonders whether the Javelin competition might get more media attention if it were conducted as a last athlete standing contest.

Paul Walsh is unconvinced that the pen is mightier than the sword after yet again finishing last in his local fencing club's annual championships.

Anonymous donor initials JK would love to go back in time with an electric guitar and give it to Mozart to see if the celebrity 18th century composing star would come up with the riff from Sweet Child of Mine.

Another anonymous donor, this time initials MD, does not consider the word honey to be an appropriate term of endearment, given that the substance is essentially the byproduct of forced labour under an archaic hierarchical monarchy that we should have no truck with in a modern enlightened society.

And finally, Mark Greenwood once won a year's supply of ice cubes in a competition at a local cocktail bar, but was very disappointed when the prize was delivered in one single consignment, dumped on his driveway on a hot summer's morning.

So there are your lies for this week, thanks to all of those people and indeed any of the rest of you who have contributed to the bugle.

This came in from Tim Wilkinson on Twitter on the subject of the bugle lies.

He writes, if you could say, please leave a message at some point, preferably on the show, it would be less useful otherwise, wrote Tim.

Well, I mean, yes, I do say it basically all the time anyway, but I'm recording this one for you.

Then, says Tim, I can turn my bugle lie into an answer phone message in case anyone ever calls me for whatever reason.

Well, here you go, Tim.

Please leave a message.

Let's have an alternative take of that.

Please leave a message.

Please leave a message there.

Take your pick from those.

Until next week, goodbye.

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.