The News Stinks - Bugle 4109

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4109 of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world.

I am Andy Zaltzman here in London, a city that is in a considerable state of nervous excitement ahead of the long-awaited European elections that will take place next week.

And we can finally have our democratic dreams of voting for something even more pointless than we usually vote for.

Joining me

from around the world, we are covering an awful lot of A hemispheres and B time zones in this show.

Firstly, from New York City, USA, welcome back to Hari Kondabolu.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Alice.

I mean, you've just, I mean, thrown a massive spoiler as to who the second guest is going to be there, Hari.

Who is it?

I'm trying to build it.

I've got to build suspense again.

Let's find out, listeners.

Also, joining me from Very Early Tomorrow Morning in Australia, it is Alice Fraser.

Well guessed.

Very well guested, everyone who got it right.

Hello, Alice.

Hello, Harry.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

I assume you're there, but it is 10 past 1 a.m.

and boy am I everything tired.

Well, I mean, we can balance that out because Hori is at 11 a.m.

today,

Thursday.

So presumably you are absolutely full of beams.

I'm not sure what that means, but if you're saying I'm awake, then yes, I am very wide awake.

Alice, how is the future?

At the moment, it is dark.

That's both metaphorically and literally.

Good, the forecast was accurate.

Yeah, exactly

What a happy start to the show this has been a mixture of fatigue and the bleakness of existence Welcome to the bugle

We are recording on Thursday the 16th of of May

So it is the bugle for the week beginning Monday the 20th of May, which is World B Day

That's B-E-E-D-A-Y

rather than B-I-D-E-T,

which may be an accurate description of the world these days.

So anyway to commemorate World Bee Day which was only instituted in the last couple of years this week's bugle comes with part one of a free audio beekeeping kit and part one is shitloads of bees

being quite so many.

As always the section of the bugle is going straight in the get the thing off my face.

Going straight in the bin including well a quick science section a very exciting discovery this week a new facial feature has been been discovered, the previously undiscovered flutch.

Apparently, humans have one on each cheek, equidistant between the chin and the eye.

No one knows what they're for.

Also, an archaeology section, they've discovered a load of bones in Winchester Cathedral belonging to English monarchs from a thousand years ago.

And they've concluded from these bones that monarchs a thousand years ago may have had legs and heads, as so many monarchs have done through history.

I mean, they're not so different from ordinary people like you and me.

And also,

while we look at the very notable breaking news from the world of news media, the BBC this morning announced plans to rebrand its flagship 10 p.m.

news bulletin.

Its current title, The 10 o'clock news, will be replaced by, Oh God, what now?

The BBC News and Current Affairs Commissar Aglaf Plomery explained.

It gives the viewer a much clearer idea of what they're about to watch.

So we investigate all that, those sections in the bin.

Top story this week: abortion in the USA.

Well, in the self-styled land of the free, the home of the brave, the senators of the state of Alabama have bravely given themselves the freedom to impose their pseudo-biblical will on the wombs of women.

The unrolling and imposition of arrogantly countish medievalism is, of course, just part of the fabric of life in the United States.

And after this decision by the Alabama Senate, Governor Kay Ivey said in a statement to the bill's many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabami's deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.

Alabama is a state which loves life in all its forms so much that it requires no permit for the purchase of firearms and has the second highest gun death rate in the USA.

Take that Statue of Liberty.

Sorry, sir.

Hang on.

Let me do that again.

Take that Statue of Liberty back, France.

Time to melt down the old copper whopper as she's known and replace it with a statue of irony, a 150-foot, 200-ton balding white man with a knowingly raised eyebrow.

Hari,

it is

an oddly divisive topic in the year 2019 in the world's leading civilization.

Self-proclaimed.

How has America reacted to this

what seems

at best

outdated legislation?

I mean Americans are reacting the way Americans always react.

You know a chunk of the people are freaking out.

The other chunk of the people they're celebrating.

And a larger chunk, the largest chunk, has no idea what's going on.

And at some point in the next few years, we'll say, what do you mean we can't get abortions?

So

things are going the way they always go.

It was kind of stunning because Alabama lawmakers, like a lot of states are trying to ban abortion in in different ways because they really, they want it to go up to the Supreme Court so the historic Roe v.

Wade decision could get overturned with a conservative Supreme Court.

So what Alabama does, Alabama has like the strictest anti-abortion laws.

Even in the cases of rape and incest, women are not allowed to get abortions.

The incest part in particular shocked me because that hits Alabama pretty hard.

Are we going to cut that one?

We're probably going to cut that joke out of it.

People who assist in abortions could get up to 99 years in prison, which is so shocking that even Pat Robertson, the famous televangelist, thought it was too extreme.

And I'm pretty sure he thinks homosexuality leads to earthquakes and tsunamis.

Well, Harry, I don't think they'll cut it because the Bugle has very strict rules about cutting jokes.

We believe a joke begins at conception.

And you've got to bring it to absolute fruition whether you want to or not.

I truly think

this law does not go far enough.

For example, abstinence-only education has been proven not to work.

I think we should legislate sex itself.

Ban it all.

Ban sex.

Why not?

It's the only way to really prevent any kind of abortion.

Medieval style chastity belts for all, except those who are into that sort of thing.

That's gross.

Paternity payments should be backdated from conception, and by that I mean from the first moment the people involved conceived of having sex in the first place.

Yeah, tax ejaculation, stop the problem at the source.

There's a lot of very constructive suggestions there that make, frankly, a f a lot more sense than what the Alabama Senate has just put through.

Well, I have a counter-proposal to Alice, if that's okay.

Yeah, that's what we're very open-house here.

Well, I think that men should get vasectomies at the ages of 23 or 24, mandatory, or whenever it is people first start having sex.

What is that, 23, 24?

Because the thing is, you can reverse a vasectomy.

So, you know, if you want to have kids, you reverse it.

And if you don't, you just, you know,

you just get the vasectomy.

Plus, men don't want to wear condoms.

And many don't want to be fathers.

So this is like perfect.

And you might think, well, what about the risk of STDs?

But based on statistics in America, no one clearly cares about that.

Again, Harry,

this is a very reasonable proposition, but I think, again, it doesn't go far enough.

I think all men should keep their bowls in a Tupperware bag

next to their body at all times and only reattach them in case of emergencies.

Well, I mean, I'm going to have to disagree with that because it supports the plastics industry.

I don't think that's, this is neither the time or place.

Representative Terry Collins, a Republican who sponsored the legislation, said this bill is about challenging Roe versus Wade and protecting the lives of the unborn, because an unborn baby is a person who deserves love and protection.

But did not finish the sentence as it should have gone on, which was

a person who deserves love and protection until it is out of the womb.

And then it can, in political terms, go f itself.

Because by slithering out of the sinful vaginarials of whatever woman has been harlot enough to incubate it, it would would have become a person who deserves whatever the brutal harshnesses of social inequality can vomit at it.

The ever-present death shadow of unrestricted guns, the slow slayings of a carbon-obsessed economy, and the misanthropy of a free market healthcare system.

So that's the problem with politics.

They don't fully go through with the things that they genuinely mean.

Also in Alabama, Alabama, the 24th most populated state in the USA, but managed to finish seventh in total executions.

That's since 1976.

fourth in the number of prisoners on death row, and I think second in,

yes, as I said, second in the highest gun death rate by state in the USA.

So it's very much punching above its weight, albeit that that punching is of itself in the face.

Just some breaking news coming through.

Alabama is now considering a law forcing women to wear whatever bras are allocated them by a state tool of 50 old men.

Infra penny, in for a pound.

Oh, wait a minute.

Isn't that called the fashion industry?

It was noted by a number of people that this legislation was passed by 25 white men.

Speaking as a white man, I mean, at last,

my voice about what happens in women's wombs is being heard long overdue.

And it is this, I mean, it is a curious biathlon of American conservative politics, of forcing as many people to be born as possible, and then making life as dangerous and intolerable for them as possible.

I mean, the solution potentially is: I think that we need to create more interracial babies.

I think that's it.

If you

never asked white people mixed.

I mean, if you want old white men to be able to.

Get a room, guys.

Get a room.

Or get two separate rooms 17 hours apart.

I mean, but historically, that would do it, wouldn't it?

Like, if you increase the number of

interracial babies, I think white people would be like, okay, well, abortion then.

I mean,

it's an interesting way of addressing the situation.

Alabama, so I mean, we need to give this some context.

How would you describe Alabama as a state's Hari?

I've never been there myself.

I would say they are a state that would do a thing like this.

It falls right in line.

You know, like if New York did it, I'm like, oh, okay, Russia's involved.

But, like,

this is something they would do.

Extreme, not well thought out,

very religious.

A white woman signed it, of course.

The fact that there's a right-wing white governor who's a woman in Alabama is seen as progressive there.

There was a report that came out, well, just this week, in fact, from the website U.S.

News and the World Report, and it ranks the 50 states of the USA based on more than 70 metrics including economy, infrastructure, public safety, fiscal stability, healthcare, education, crime, the natural environment and basically to determine the best and worst states and Alabama, well let's say just missed out on the top 48.

Unlucky Alabama pipped to the coveted third least shit state in the Union by Mississippi.

Louisiana came last.

But it does suggest with Alabama that maybe if the elected representatives focused a little more attention on things that are not other people's wombs, then they might make this precious life slightly less fing shit for their victims.

Sorry, citizens.

So while this was happening, there was a report that came out that the U.S.

population's birth rate from 2017 to 2018 dropped.

But I think we need to analyze the numbers because it says that it dropped 7% for teenagers 15 to 19, which is good.

That is a good thing.

And then it dropped 4%

for women 20 to 24.

Also a good thing.

College age,

that's a positive thing.

Why are we seeing that as negative?

And then for women 30 to 34, it dropped 1%.

So really the issue is the 3% drop in birth rate between women 25 to 29.

And that's the problem because women apparently are now unwilling to destroy their careers during this pivotal time.

But luckily, the abortion ban will help with that.

Well, look, I understand all of these statistics very, very well, Harry, because I wouldn't want to bang an American teenager either.

This seems to be like a self-solving problem

with the immigration issues that are rolling around at the moment.

I also, I don't know if this is too much, but I hear there are some Mexican children floating around loose that could probably fill those gaps.

Some of them aren't that loose, Alice, I think.

Not entirely free range from some of the news reports.

Oh god, this story is so depressing.

Of course,

children being born in America at the moment are being born into a nation at war, albeit at trade war with

China.

America has managed to restrain itself from too much actual war recently, although apparently the notoriously hawkish John Bolton is agitating for a war with Iran

and one can only assume he's a bit bored of the various Iraq war films and wants some fresh stories for Hollywood because no other explanation makes the blindest bit of sense.

Trade war, a more realistic option, if less fun for a sociopathic president with no moral compass.

And Donald Trump has slapped tariffs on 200 billion dollars worth of Chinese goods and it's not gone down entirely well in Beijing.

The Chinese president Xi Jinping, speaking at the Conference on Asian Civilizations, urged countries in general, quotes, not to close their doors and hide behind them.

I mean that's

not the least unhypocritical thing that any Chinese leader has ever said.

And also urging countries not to close their doors and hide behind them.

Typical elite trying to cancel Brexit and everything it stands for.

He said, Xi also, no civilization is superior over others.

I think you'll find, Mr.

Zhi, oh, never mind.

We don't want to flash it about, of course.

And he added, the thought that one's own race and civilization are superior and the inclination to remold or replace other civilizations are just stupid.

Hang on, did he miss out the common between just and stupid?

And he added that to do so would invite catastrophic consequences.

Fair enough, yes, speaking as a Brit with some experience of

remolding and replacing other civilizations with our own.

Yes, catastrophic consequences do happen, but on the plus side, more interesting museums.

So let's see the positives as well as the negatives.

If we've learned nothing from the Great Depression and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, it's that trade wars are really good for economies that are already suffering.

If you don't know anything about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, that happened after the stock market crash of 1929, and it is generally attributed as having been the thing that really drove the U.S.

economy into the ground.

So, it's good to know that Trump is learning from history.

I don't understand why it's a trade war, because trade implies that things are going both ways, and I don't know what the U.S.

has to trade.

Like, what do we make uniquely in America other than Kardashians?

I mean, it's trade war is very, very complicated.

Trump's chief economic advisor predicted that both sides will suffer from from this, and Trump then tweeted, mission accomplished.

And of course, there's the famous saying, all's fair in love and war.

That claim incidentally is not supported by either the Geneva Convention or divorce law.

But all is even fairer in trade war, when frankly, anything goes.

It's a dangerous cocktail of complicated, infantile, obtuse, and expensive.

Very much like my Edinburgh show is saying

on that stand.

From August 13th to the 25th, roll up.

Roll up.

Trump tweeted,

our great patriot farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of what is happening now.

About his heroic trade war actions with Trump.

Patriot farmers, I mean, that's I didn't even know that existed.

They're growing patriots in inhumane battery conditions, fed only on scraps of confected national myths, unable to see the light, and then they finally emerge.

They haven't developed like true, real patriots, and they straggle around in confusion until they are finally taken to the abattoir of political opportunism and processed into fodder for the electoral cycle.

So it's awfully sad.

Didn't he pitch for the Alabama legislators back in the 30s?

Patriot Farmer.

Yeah.

I think he did, yeah.

That's a good joke.

I like that joke.

There was a genuine real baseballer called Urban Shocker in the early days of the

20th century.

He played for the New York Yankees, or maybe they were the Highlanders at the time.

There we go.

That's a rare fact in the bugle.

Let us clamp down on it.

Urban Shocker sounds like a euphemism for something a 12-year-old would tell you about.

Just a quick bit of other Trump news.

There was a report in the New York Times on Trump's business losses in his previous life as not the f ⁇ ing president of the world's

biggest economy.

And CNN said Trump's Emperor has no clothes moment has come.

Yeah, but the difference, CNN, is that well, I mean,

it's quite different from the story of the Emperor with no clothes on, because in this case, the Emperor is proudly standing stark bollock naked outside the front of your house, masturbating into your window box.

Thank you for that image.

If I had a dollar for every Emperor that's masturbated into my window box.

What a song that was.

The

early Euro of Dollipart.

In marginally less depressing political news now, Australian election time.

Election fever has struck the nation as the public is faced with the rare opportunity to approximately choose our own federal leadership by voting in the party whose leader will be Prime Minister of Australia for the next three to seven months it will take before they're rolled out of power by internecine power struggles within their own organisation.

Australia has a preferential voting system with numbered votes that cascade down a series of preferences, which means more or less the same thing as a two-party system, although people often vote strategically in safe seats for parties like the Greens or independent candidates, in order to make it clear that while they know realistically their first preference won't get in and their vote will go to the one of two major parties that they hate marginally less, they're not happy about it.

It's important to make it clear.

Like I said, there's not really a preferential system, that, is it?

That's

a tolerational system, but the party that you're most prepared to be irritated by for the next three years.

Well, yes, it is actually looking to be one of the marginally more interesting elections in recent Australian political history with some actual policy differences appearing between the two major party

leaders who normally just slightly rearrange their loyalty to various mining interests that they both are loyal to, like a child rearranging chunks of corn in a dog's vomit their parent hasn't noticed them playing with yet.

Of course, Australia

is not always renowned as necessarily

the sharpest lemon in the fruit bowl as a nation.

And the Prime Minister cleared things up for a confused electorate by saying, I'm not running for Pope.

I'm running for Prime Minister.

Just to make that clear for any Australian voters who hadn't quite got a handle on thing, he'd been asked for his opinion on the hot topic of whether or not gay people are going to be damned to eternal hell, which is tearing apart Australian society and Australian rugby union, currently as discussed recently

on the bugle.

But

I mean is there a lot of support for Scott Morrison as a potential pope?

I just think it's funny to imagine an open pope election.

Like if it was open worldwide and it could be anybody.

My two choices would be R.

Kelly or Katy Perry.

R.

Kelly because he was able to cover up a sex scandal for decades and that seems useful for the Catholic Church.

And a Pope costume is something Katy Perry would wear naturally.

So those are my two candidates.

I thought I was going to find out something about Katy Perry there that was going to change the way I listen to whatever the song is that she sings and is famous for.

Paul Keating, former Prime Minister, had a pop at Peter Dutton, the Home Affairs Minister.

And Keating, famously, has never been a man afraid to unleash his full vocabulary arsenal on his political opponents.

And he urged the voters, talking about Peter Dutton, to, quote, drive a political stake through his dark political heart.

That is the kind of language we need more of in politics.

Straight down the line, this man is a vampire.

Keating, of course, is the man who famously caused the biggest constitutional crisis in Brito-Australian history, probably the biggest crisis in Britain, certainly, since King Harold copped a pointy one in the paper at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

When he was Prime Minister in the 90s, he touched the Queen on the back.

Or, judging by the way the British media covered this unforgivably Australian breach of royal protocolia, he groped Her Majesty the Queen full on the arse while suggestively licking his lips before asking Her Royal Highness if she and Phil wanted to go on a swinger's holiday to Florida with him.

It was quite, I mean, it was an extraordinary moment in the history of Britain when the Australian Prime Minister slightly touched the monarch on the back.

I mean has Australia ever fully got over you think that you think you're exaggerating there, but Paul Keating was very famous for his way with words, including talking to his opposition saying if there was a university degree for greed, you c would all get first-class honours.

That's real

political chat right there.

He was known for his insults including that man is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.

That is class.

That is pure class.

If you have a spare hour, it's worth looking up some Paul Keating quotes.

And Alice, could you tell us a bit about Clive Palmer, who seems to be kind of slightly positioning himself?

He's a kind of businessman, seems to be positioning himself as the American Trump.

Yes, absolutely.

Oddly, having taken his cues from Trump, Clive Palmer...

He looks like what you would imagine would happen if somebody threw a ball of wet tissue paper at a fat idiot and then took the ball of wet tissue paper away.

He's a bloated representation of overblown greed.

He has a ranch full of animatronic dinosaurs.

He is

a failed Australian businessman and politician.

He has a number of mining interests

and he cannot put a sentence together to save his political career and yet somehow he seems to keep going.

Again,

he created the Palmer United Party in April 2013, winning Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax in the federal election then.

And he sat as MP for one term.

He's quite famous for falling asleep during Parliament.

And in 2018, he revived his party, announcing he'd be running candidates in all 151 seats of the Senate.

So basically, just what the world needs right now is

another

big businessman

with absolutely no concern for the future of the planet.

Yes, he's absolutely taking his cues from Trump, speaking in almost incoherent half-sentences, and his slogan is: Make Australia great,

leaving off

the again for copyright reasons, I assume.

And for accuracy, am I right?

Hey,

rude.

At least his dinosaur burnt down.

It did.

Domini, that's a sentence you don't hear enough, is it?

It's true.

In Breaking Australian News Now, 89-year-old ex-Prime Minister Bob Hawke has died

apparently at home, very peacefully and calmly.

He was a giant in Australian politics, not only unusually serving a whole term, but he led Labour to a landslide victory at the 1983 election and he became one of Australia's greatest prime ministers, known as the Silver Bodgie.

He was very famous for being able to scull a beer

in record time

and saying after the 1983 America's Cup: any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum.

The silver what?

The silver bodgie.

Bodgie, what is there was a sort of a rival gangs thing in Australia and they were called the Bodgies and the Widgies.

It was a whole thing.

It doesn't make sense.

It didn't make sense at any given time, but as Australians, we are obliged ethically to pretend that it made sense.

In other Australian news now, more than 500 students and teachers were evacuated from a university library as a result of a smell that was initially suspected to be gas, but turned out to be a durian.

If you don't know what a durian is, it's a tropical fruit.

It's known for its incredibly strong smell, firefighters were called, and

discovered the fruit.

Kipling called durian like eating custard in a railway bathroom.

It's a large, yellowish fruit covered in long, hard, sharp spikes, which should give you a clue that it doesn't want to be eaten, Andy.

It's disgusting.

It's banned in most hotels and public transport in Southeast Asia because it smells like someone farted through a used sports sock and then it congealed.

I mean, it's quite impressive that a piece of fruit can lead to the evacuation of a university.

I mean, a piece of fruit led to the casting out of humankind from Eden, so I don't know what you're talking about, Anne.

A library's meant nothing on paradise.

They were afraid that it was some kind of gas or the act of, like an act of a terrorist.

When told it was a Durian, right-wing Senator Fraser Anning said, a Durian?

What kind of Muslim is that?

Also, when reached for comment, Paul Hogan replied, you call this a fruit?

Now this is a fruit.

And he was holding up a shoe.

Some more Durian facts for those unfamiliar with it.

The Durian is also known as the giant stink melon, the putripe, and the noxious fruit testicle.

It's been likened in odour to, amongst other not traditionally consumer-friendly aromas, rotting onions, raw sewage, the later stages of the Battle of Passchendale, the cockpits of the Apollo 11 after three grown men had spent eight days locked in it without, as far as we know, winding the window down at any point, the post-intensive game of squash scrotum of Beelzebub and the soul of Boris Johnson.

Other durian facts are that the durian almost bankrupted Scotland in the 1690s.

It's banned on public transport in many parts of Asia and is thought to have been the inspiration for the atomic bomb.

If you played football with a durian by the end of the game the pitch would be 83% vomit.

Some people kind of like it though but then some but then some people like all kinds of weird shit.

And if you paint a portrait of a durian the fruit stays fresh and fragrant but the painting ends up looking and smelling like a whale carcass after a summer holiday in a Mexican greenhouse.

Durian is notable, it's known as the king of fruits in many Southeast Asian countries and it has some symptoms when you eat it.

It causes some physical symptoms which is what you want in your foodstuff.

It'll heat you up, it'll make you hot if you eat too much and and some say that you shouldn't eat it while drinking alcohol because you might explode.

I mean, that's that's good to have a warning.

Survey news now, and some very important research has been conducted, which has found out that climate change is mentioned less in British television drama shows than zombies, cheese, dogs or tea.

For some reason the company Deloitte compared the frequency of words such as carbon emissions, recycling, wind power and hybrid cars with words such as Christmas, zombies, cheese.

And climate change

it was mentioned 3,125 times behind beer twenty one thousand six hundred and forty eight dog 105,245, tea 60,060, and sex, 56,307, which suggests that as a nation, we like to seduce dogs with hot beverages.

I just want to be the person who pitches that survey to the survey commissioning team.

You want to watch telly for a year.

Climate change, as I mentioned, left off less often than Zombies, Urine, or Rhubarb.

And Rhubarb, Zombie Urine, coinciding.

It was the original working title for the TV series that eventually became Doctor.

And they've highlighted the need to give more prominence on television to green issues and how we might change our lifestyles to adapt to the climate-changing world that we live in.

And the BBC has announced a new adaptation of Hamlet, in which the Prince of Denmark vacillates indecisively over whether to get a hybrid or not to put it in the next store.

Also, a new World War I children's drama series, Terry in the Trenches, shows the eponymous heroine Terry, aged 12, avoiding the slaughter at the Somme because she was putting the recycling bin up.

Whilst a new documentary marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon mission will show the celebrity rocket blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida by being catapulted by a giant mechanical trebuchet made from sustainable wood before taking 17 months to reach the moon using only a battery-powered motor motor from a mobility scooter belonging to Buzz Aldrin's grand.

And well, another survey with further and perhaps slightly less surprising, even less surprising findings.

Britain

is the drunkest nation in the universe.

The survey showed that out of 36 nations in the research project, British people get drunk more than any of those other nations.

And there are some pretty drunken nations we've been up against.

It

shows a lot of commitment.

And also that cocaine use amongst people in England tops that global list.

So we're taking back control.

We're taking back a lack of self-control.

That's what I think Brexit is all about.

I mean to be fair, like

you know,

the rate that the survey shows is actually much lower than it was before 2002.

And 2002, of course, was the year Dudley Moore died.

That's an Arthur joke.

You guys remember Arthur?

It's a joke about that movie.

It's always

fascinating to me which bits and pieces of other people's cultures Americans tend to absorb.

You like that crocodile Dundee reference from earlier, Alan?

You like that?

You call that a joke?

Now, this is a joke.

No one does that here.

Don't know.

Just a quick look ahead to the European elections, which are coming up next week, next Thursday, we votes

for the parliament that we decided to leave and it does appear that Theresa May's leadership could be under threat some what is it six months after she basically resigned how long is this f ⁇ ing resignation going to take?

Theresa May, still, if I may refer back to the joke I've made, pass him on the bugle, still lobbing those bananas at the burning fire station, even as the flames start lapping at the trousers of her homemade fireproof suit, which is of course made made of bananas.

On Brexit, she's continued not so much to hit the nail on the head, but hit the nail with her head over and over again, like a self-hating limbless Jesus.

What?

And, well, Boris Johnson today has confirmed that he will run for the leadership of the Conservative Party to replace Theresa May, which is good news as far as I'm concerned, because there's this pile of of dog shit on the pavement near where I live that was thinking of running for the Tory leadership, but didn't want to be the worst possible candidate to be Prime Minister.

So at least that's a bit of a weight off the pile of shit's shoulders there that Boris Johnson is running against it.

Boris Johnson looks a lot like Philip Seymour Hoffman Incent of a Woman.

Nobody points that out.

Take a look at that movie.

He looks like Boris Johnson in that.

When did the bugle become a film podcast?

You like Scent of a Woman, Andy?

That's more contemporary, isn't it?

The Conservative Party allegedly is currently in power.

It's very hard to remember.

But they are heading for historically catastrophic results at these European elections as voters take out their anger on the fact that Brexit either hasn't happened yet or is still going to happen.

There's very little middle ground between that.

And the Tories are leeching votes, ironically, to Nigel Farage, the political bloodsucker himself,

who has clasped onto the clogged up arteries of our democratic system and is guzzling away like a child on a milkshake.

And one of

Farage's new Brexit party could do extraordinarily well.

And

I've long called for a more dynamic political system that allows new, fresh political ideas to

come forward and get aired publicly and have some kind of democratic representation.

And

well,

I guess that is blowing up in my face as we speak.

Amongst the proposals of the Brexit party are that only the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit should be allowed to vote in all future British elections.

It seems only fair.

Your emails now, this comes from Richard Martin, who writes, long time listener, soon to be supporter.

Almost, not quite yet, through being a broke student.

Anyway, well, if you do want to join Richard and almost becoming, or actually becoming a supporter of the Bugle in a financial sense go to the bugle website thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button richard writes last night i was on a blind date a few hours into it i discovered that she loves puns and even had 10 setups memorized i told her about the bugle and took her through a couple of your pun runs needless to say she loved it i mean those two sentences don't necessarily go together but needless to say

and anyone loving pun runs she says you're a genius and now i have a second date wow That is what the power of the pun can do.

It opens romantic doors to a happy future.

Andy, you're a very creative writer.

Did you write that?

Richard continues.

Being a long-time listener, I've always considered the Bugle to be a highly sensual podcast, capable of sparking any number of romantic relationships.

Andy, who wrote this.

And now my suspicion has finally been validated.

Cheers.

From Ricky in Nashville.

There we go.

So, there you go, buglers.

Let the puns open the doors to love.

Do send your emails in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

There will shortly be some lies about our premium voluntary subscribers, which you can earn yourself by ticking the correct box on the subscription page on the bugle.

Thanks very much for joining us from around the world.

Harry, it's been a delight to

have you back on.

Do look after America.

It appears to need it.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll do that, Andy.

It's good to know it's in such safe hands.

Alice,

when are you back on the correct side of the equator?

I'll be on the correct side of the equator at the end of this month.

I have a live show in London on the 10th of July.

I'm doing Mythos.

My show, Ethos, last year's show, is now available as a video online.

I guess go to my Twitter and there's something there about how you can buy it

at alliterative A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E.

But yes, I'll be back in like, oh, a week and a half, two weeks.

I don't know.

I'll have to look at my emails.

Maybe I haven't bought a ticket yet.

I probably have.

By that time, I will be absolutely snapped down in the Cricket World Cup, which begins on the 30th of May.

Wave at me in the commentary box if you're at the vast majority of the games.

Hari, any shows to alert our listeners to?

Yes.

May 23rd through the 25th, that's next week.

I will be in Denver, Colorado at the Comedy Works.

June 14th and 15th, I'll be in Arlington, Virginia at the Arlington Draft House.

That's right near DC.

And this is the big one: the Creme de la Creme.

June 27th to 30th in Sunnyvale, California, I'm performing at the legendary Rooster T-Feathers Comedy Club.

Rooster T-Feathers.

And then my comedy career will end.

Yeah,

if you're listening to this before

Saturday afternoon, Chris, when are you going to get this up?

Before Saturday afternoon.

I'm doing a satirist for high show at the Underbelly on Saturday evening.

For heaven's sake, come, come, please.

And there's a bugle live show at the underbelly on the 22nd of June featuring Alice and Nish.

So do come along to that.

Oh, I'll put that in my diary now.

All right.

Didn't I?

Was it not already in there?

No, we mentioned it last week, but I forgot.

Oh, good.

All right, yeah.

So, see you all at all of those shows.

And Chris, start up the music, please.

Here are some lies about our voluntary subscribers.

Callum Cruikshank reckons he has proof that the dome of St.

Paul's Cathedral was modelled on an ice cream with a chocolate flake in it that architect Christopher Wren was eating when he was surveying the site.

Owen Griffiths, who writes Cuck You Fris, has a grudging respect for pigeons but still wishes they were all potatoes instead.

Paul Perinio wonders why we don't just grind all the cliffs down so there's a nice gentle slope to the beach everywhere.

Whilst an anonymous donor initials AK thinks that we could reverse global warming by making the world spin north to south for one year out of every 100.

Matthias Mickelson thinks socks should be earned, not bought or given.

He advocates replacing the current honours system in Britain by only allowing people to wear socks who've contributed significantly to public life.

Jonas Canafani teaches people who run sports teams how to smooth bits of wood into the shape of the 23rd letter of the Russian alphabet.

He trains coaches to plane cars.

Whilst Kevin Leider purchases manual harvesting implements for the French far-right leader who doubles up as the emergency stand-in for the former lead singer of Roxy Music when he can't make it to a concert, he buys sickles for ferry submarine.

Andrew Smith would like to know how a human would feel if 10 motorcycles ganged up, sat on his head in a 1-2-3-4 formation and made him run down the street for the entertainment of the baying masses.

And Anthony West believes fervently that life would be better if we all worked solidly for the first three months of the year, 24-7, and then took April to December off

instead of working eight hours a day, five days a week for the whole year.

Although he does accept that April might be a bit of a sleepy month.

Stephen Morris is worried that not enough research has been done into the precise melting point of bricks and reckons it is a climate change fused architectural time bomb.

And Daniel Grossman currently spends four hours a night secretly digging a tunnel from his local zoo to Greenland so he can help spring his favourite polar bear to freedom, Shawshank

Chris, have you got any more lies to

add?

Yeah,

who do you want to lie for?

We've got a couple of anonymous donors who need lies, TB and CW.

Okay, well, TB has had three top ten singles in Spain,

one of which is called Tuve Sexo con una balena.

Right.

Do you want me to translate?

Well, it's only about rather than no whale, is it?

That's good.

Yeah.

How are you already ruining?

I don't know the language.

I'm just guessing that's what you'd have gone with, but it's a fact.

And I listen to a lot of Spanish pop.

Who was the other one?

That was CW.

CW writes love letters to you, Andy, every day and sends them by email, but hasn't actually delivered.

They've just got them all scheduled and they're all going to arrive en masse in the year 2034 as you get the full arc of their longing for you, pining for you, and then regret that they'd ever done it.

Right.

Well, that's the year that I will turn 60.

So, in Shobi's terms, I will almost certainly be looking for a new spouse.

I've met your wife, Andy.

You can't do better.

That is emphatically the truest thing that has ever been said in the history of this podcast.

Thank you for your contributions, and well, congratulations for your earning your lies.

If you do want to join them in the catalogue of bullshit, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click donate.

Until next week, goodbye.

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.