It's the end of the world and I'm slightly bothered, but not enough really. - Bugle 4108

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4108 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

I am Andy Zoltzman here in London in the Cock Lane studio.

There's no need to laugh at that, Nish.

We've been here many times before.

It's always funny.

I'm sorry.

It's always funny.

I mean, I'm doing my best to make this podcast grow up a bit.

Then you should stop us recording on Cark Lane.

Fair point.

Yeah.

Next week, we'll be recording in Vaj Alley.

Equality.

Joining me, as you've already heard,

the extremely grown-up Nish Kumar.

The extremely grown-up Nish Kumar, who has had four strong coffees this morning.

I'm absolutely buzzing off my nut.

Right, okay, Rich, you might need to slow this

issue of the bugle.

Rich stepping in for Chris this week.

Hello, Rich.

Hello, Andy.

Good.

Joining us also from the other side of the universe, depending on which way you go,

and from Australia, it is Alice Fraser.

Hello, Nish.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Alice, you are in Perth.

I think this is a first for the bugle to have a Perth correspondent.

Tell us everything about Western Australia.

It is hot.

That will do.

That will do.

Not a great adverb for the Perth tourism borders.

It's not bad.

It's better than it's cold and wet.

I spent three hours in US immigration yesterday.

So

I'm a changed man.

I mean, I don't know what it is, but last time I had to get a visa, I think it was about five years.

I don't know what that.

Maybe it's a different age bracket.

I mean, I'm not sure.

They kept saying computer error.

I think just the mere fact that someone with my face was applying for a visa has caused a systemic breakdown in American immigration.

So why would you even try, Nish?

Well, Alice, I'm glad you asked.

I have live shows at the Soho Playhouse in New York next week on the hold on a second, hold on a second, 16th and 17th of May, which I forgot to plug last time I was on the bugle, despite the fact that this is really the only thing I do that has any sort of transatlantic audience.

Do go to both of those shows, New York Evil, and then fly over the Atlantic to come to my show at the Underbelly on the 18th of May.

Can we get a lot of plugs I'm supposed to go at the end?

It's just, I forgot it last.

I've got a show in London.

Never mind.

We are recording on Friday, the 10th of May, 2019.

On this day, in 1497, coincidentally, since you mentioned America, Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian exploration celeb and the man who gave his name to such renowned continents as North America and South America, amongst many others, allegedly left Cadiz in Spain for his first voyage to the new world.

Now, if you think fake news to do with America is a modern phenomenon, well, check out this middle of the second millennium trendsetter.

This entire 18-month voyage was a fake, according to some historians

that

have cast doubt on whether Vespucci's first and or fourth voyages actually happened.

Oh, wow.

experts, by which I mean a one-and-a-half-minute internet search, suggest that two of his four alleged voyages to the Americas may have been fake, and that on the first, he actually pissed off to Thailand to find himself for a year without telling his parents.

And on the second, he was actually doing a two-year stretch in the slammer for getting his plonker out at a convent barbecue in Lisbon and shouting, barbecue, this sausage, sisters.

The words convent and plonker should not be tied that close together.

Well, yes, certainly.

I mean, times have moved on.

In 1773, on the 10th of May, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act designed to give the British East India Company a monopoly on the North American tea trade.

That went well.

And on well, this is the Beautiful for the Week beginning in the 13th of May.

And on the 13th of May, 1940, Winston Churchill gave his famous blood, toil, tears and sweat speech, cheeky reference, of course, to the nicknames of the members of Churchill's favourite late thirties girl band, the Spicy Ladies.

By that time by that time of course founder member Grind had left the band and married England football star Eddie Hapgood.

Blood, toil, tears, and sweat coincidentally also the main ingredients for over 90% of all British recipes in the 1940s.

He said, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Turned out he was wrong.

He also had a keen strategic sense and a winning way with words, in a very confident manner with a cigar.

And of course the 13th of May this year, Monday 3rd, is of course the last day on which you can get your application in to be the long-awaited official messiah for the people of.

Oh, hang on, that's supposed to be still embargoed.

Sorry.

My mistake.

My mistake.

Let me just sit on that.

Just chop that bit out.

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

This week, we're looking at tech flotations.

The definitely not a taxi, but still quite taxi-ish taxi service, Uber, is to float on...

What is it, Nish?

Is it what's it floating on?

Backs of the

that it's one one of the stock exchange things yeah it's on one of the stock exchangey things i think that's the technical i'm a published economist mate don't look at me like

it has been valued at a disappointingly piddling uh uh uh sum of uh 82 billion dollars that is the paltry equivalent of a mere 1.1 times the gdp of kenya the renowned large african nation with 50 million people in it isn't global capitalism fun but uh uber of course is not the only tech supernova about to float.

Other companies about to float include ARC.

That is a Bay Area startup offering a guaranteed place on an ARC in the event of a biblical level deluge and or rising sea levels.

That's been valued at $59 billion.

The business currently consists of a hand-drawn logo of a boat on a wave and the ownership of the web domain, oh noahnotagain.com.

Unfortunately, they're only going to let two of each internet subculture on board.

That's still a big arc.

Two furries, two buglers.

That's going to be an awkward conversation in the dining room.

But a great stage show.

Coming to the Edinburgh Festival this year.

And Bark, another Bay Area startup that pairs up non-dog owners with personal grudges to settle with people who own dogs who can provide a doggy to go around to someone else's house and bark aggressively at them.

The infrastructure for that one currently Mike from Down the Road, who owns an unusually aggressive Staffordshire Bull Terrier and a roll of plastic bags for the inevitable cleanups.

That's been valued at $120 billion.

So do keep your eye on those tech flotations.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week.

Life on Earth is doomed again.

And or still,

another new report has emerged from the United Nations, which seems to do little more these days than just warn us that the planet's about to die, which may be its job, fair to it.

A report has come out saying that nature is

having a tough time of it, Nish.

It's in a tight spot.

Yeah,

it's up against it.

Yeah, it's really up against it.

To misquote REM, it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Well, actually, not fine.

I feel uneasy about the whole thing, but not enough to do anything about it because meat is delicious and I like to drive my car real fast.

The UN and scientists have conducted the most thorough health check of planet Earth of all time.

And if it was an actual health tech, we'd actually currently be looking for the biggest priest in the world to read an entire planet its last rites.

Yes, for too long we have been gorging ourselves on the spicy all-you-can-eat buffet of nature's resources, and soon the bloated shitstorm of regret will descend on the quivering butthole of humanity.

I mean, one sentence in, Alice.

One sentence.

Quivering butthole was my wrestling name.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's, I mean, the report said that nature is being destroyed at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the average nature destruction rate of the past 10 million years.

But on the flip side, there are way more zoos than 10 million years ago or free animal hotels, as I like to think of them.

And there are also way, way more urban retail parks than at any point in the last 10 million years, too.

So it's not all one-way traffic other than in the retail parks.

And you do have to have an efficient one-way system, otherwise, it's total chaos on the weekend.

The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by, any guesses correct?

82%.

So this report is not content with telling us that we're dooming.

It's also body shaming all mammals collectively.

I blame the Bible.

It's always the fatted calf that gets sacrificed.

No wonder these animals have evolved to lose 82% of their biomass.

It's basic Darwinian self-preservation.

Natural ecosystems have lost about half of their area.

I mean, downsizing is all the rage in property.

And about a million species are at the risk of extinction.

Now, that seems like a lot to me.

A million is a lot.

I mean, we can't need them all, can we?

I mean, I guess we're going to find out over the next few years, given that a million species.

Yeah, but things are all right at the moment and loads of things have gone extinct in the past.

So I mean, who really misses, you know, the extinct beasts that once roamed the earth, like the saber-toothed ferret, or the Madagascan dung eagle, or the McConagall's eye hornet, or the Patagonian penis beetle, or even the stinking fire donkey.

No one misses those.

So would we seriously miss the hyena, the guppy fish, or the dog that shits on the pavement outside your children's school on an almost daily basis?

That may be a particularly personal one.

Well, it's hard to say, Andy, because we don't know what the impact would have been of all of those.

It's perfectly possible that the dodo would have eaten carbon monoxide and shut it out as cricket statistics.

And so where would you have been with the dodo?

You'd have loved it.

I'd have, I'd have, yeah, I mean, we'd have, I've had a dope, I've had a dodo in my office.

Andy Purvis, who's a professor at the National History Museum in London, and one of the main authors of the report, described it as the most extensive planetary health check of all time.

And he said This: the take-home message is that we should have gone to the doctor sooner.

We are in a bad way.

Unfortunately, if we'd gone to the doctor with this country due to structural underfunding, we wouldn't have seen the doctor for six years.

And if we'd gone to the doctor in America, we'd have got into a level of debt that would have meant we'd have had to sell all of the animals anyway before they went extinct.

And it's not a question of just the fact that we should have gone to the doctor sooner.

The doctor has been banging on our window for at least the last 40 years, saying, You are genuinely ill.

The doctor's here.

We can't be sure that this is a direct causation thing.

I mean, more than 450 of the world's leading scientists and diplomats have said that all of this is caused by humans.

But how do we know that this is not caused by, for example, animals not listening to the bugle enough?

Do we know if the animals that are going extinct are podcast listeners?

Well,

we don't.

And as long as there is that scintilla of doubt, it's not worth overhauling.

our economies and our lifestyles.

So we're absolutely 120% sure.

I mean, they do say we're going to need to take drastic action on a large scale to clean up our planet.

Otherwise, we'll end up with a planet that can't support us.

I think we need to look to Marie Kondo for guidance here.

Does that coal-fired power plant spark joy?

Fold it up in three neat squares, thank it, and then throw it out.

Andy Purvis also said, if we leave it to later generations to clean up the best, I don't think they will forgive us.

Or, Purvis, they'll be dead.

The possible solution to this is we may as well just drive the whole thing into the ground.

Then we can't have judgment if none of them are around to judge us in future.

If you're going to singe the curtains, you may as well burn the whole house down.

Testify.

Well, also, I mean,

you say, yeah, if we leave it to future generations, they won't forgive us.

But, I mean, you say, well, and if they're dead, but we will be dead by then.

So they're going to be shouting at some coffins.

That is no skin off my nose.

Yes, the the uh the reports apparently has said that the uh

the knock-on impacts for humanity uh are including freshwater shortages but that's all right there's there's loads of bottled water these days uh are already ominous and will worsen without quotes drastic remedial action and that that is the big problem because no one ever won an election with a slogan drastic remedial action

no one you're looking at less than one percent of the vote Well, this is sort of a problem because, I mean, this is a very serious story.

I mean, it's hard to get more serious than everyone is going to die soon.

And yet, somehow, this has been pushed off the front pages, certainly in this country this week, by the newspapers being wrapped up in the royal baby, coverage of whom has been 50-50, with half the people saying the existence of a mixed-race prince proves that racism is dead, and the other half being racist about the baby.

I mean,

the great news about the baby is that the queen now has eight great-grandchildren, so she can decide her favourite one with a simple knockout, knockout competition, quarterfinal, semi-final, final.

And the great news is for Prince Philip, who can now say, how can I be a racist?

My great-grandkid is one.

I mean, politically,

it's hard to make people care about the end of the world.

Because, I mean, it just seemed a little bit vague.

It's far easier to make people worry, for example, about a few thousand people caravanning their way through Central America to try to work their way into the world's 146th most densely populated country, which is, of course, full.

146th America.

What is the real threat?

Poison in the air or 12 Mexicans?

The reports have said we are eroding the very foundations of economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide.

I mean, that is not the job of climate change.

That is the job of Brexit.

What about the 17.4 million?

Let them have their say.

Also, very telling that in that list, economies was first.

It's all about the Benjamins, baby.

It's a complete f ⁇ ing disaster.

We are so f ⁇ ed.

And we could sort of vaguely unf ourselves, but unfortunately, we really like f ⁇ ing ourselves.

And so we're going to f ⁇ ourselves until we're fed and there's no way of unfing ourselves.

Well, what I had was: it's important news that our threats to other species is now being conceptualized as a threat to ourselves.

Because as we all know, people don't give a f about what they're fing unless they're literally fing their own mouths.

Even then, some people are into that.

Great minds.

Great minds.

This show appears to have diverged somewhat from the initial purpose of a rigorous academic analysis of the global climate issue.

Cambridge University is not taking this line down.

It's setting up a research centre to find ways to fix the world's climate.

Now, you might say better late than never, but also you might say better quite a long time ago than late.

But at least well done, science, for moving on from such crucial, recent pieces of absolutely critical, crucial, crucial, crucial research, such as finding that WASPs have the power of deductive reasoning,

which was a report recently published.

I mean, I don't like that idea at all.

I mean, from the WASP point of view, just don't think about things too closely.

Your stripey picnic ruining sadis, it'll destroy you from the inside.

To be absolutely fair, that does put WASPs one step above the current president of the United States.

Oh, Christ, bang goes the visa.

Yeah.

So

this new research center in Cambridge is looking at ways to fix the climate, including refreezing the ice caps, encouraging everyone to just leave their fridge doors open for 20 minutes every day

and

just praying, praying harder.

Luckily,

the world's richest are not taking this lying down, Andy.

Have you seen what Jeff Bezos is going to devote all of his money to in the week that the UN has published a report suggesting that we need to do something about the climate crisis?

I have not.

He's trying to go to the moon.

At this point, between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, it is quite clear that rich people have given up on this planet and are planning to off to the moon.

Yeah, but you say that, but maybe we can learn a lot from the moon because we've talked about a million species facing extinction on Earth.

When was the last time a species went extinct on the moon?

Maybe we can learn from that.

That is a very good record of not sending species extinct.

And, you know, we appear to be setting the moon as our target and role model in the way they're treating Earth.

And I think, I think that's we're probably on the right track.

In Australian news now, or bad breakup news, an Australian man has been sentenced to 42 days in jail for mowing down a mob of emus near Ouyan during a post-breakup rampage in September.

Look, we've all done stupid things in moments of heartbreak, but I think murdering wildlife is probably a few steps below 3 a.m.

boom box in the rain in my personal Rolodex of post-relationship regrets.

Jacob Scott McDonald, 21 years of age, he pleaded guilty in Mildura to three charges relating to animal cruelty and two driving charges after filming himself running over 12 emus and killing them near the South Australian border.

If you don't know what an emu is, it's like a giant chicken with a snake for a neck and dinosaur legs that'll kick your guts out.

They're adorable, Andy, and no one should hit them with a car.

I mean, the only way this defense works is if it turns out his ex was fing an emu.

That's, I mean, I'm still saying it's not an excuse you know an ex of mine ended up going out with a dentist yeah i mean if i killed all dentists he wouldn't let me off charges but you'd at least go well there's some context for it what have the emus done to deserve being run over by this asshole okay well first of all uh nish emus are cs but secondly the judge said that he believed that uh mr donald regretted his actions but that he had done this egregious sin and was caught because he'd posted the footage on social media.

There is no

surer way to display your regret than sharing something on social media.

If the internet has given us nothing more beautiful, it is the rampages of people going through emotional breakdowns now being made incredibly public for everyone to view.

Yeah, and I'm not going to judge anyone.

People grieve for relationships in different ways.

You know, a lot of us just eat a tub of ice cream and listen to Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks.

For this man, it seems to be filming himself driving over emus whilst laughing and shouting, this is fing great.

But he did have Blood on the Tracks on the Cars for it.

I saw Saltzman's eyes light up at that moment.

I mean, it is, as you say, a curious...

a curious act of vengeance

on the end of a human relationship to slay some flightless birds.

But I mean, look, Lish, we live in Brex-Britannia.

Yeah, yeah.

Far be it from us to criticise someone for taking out their frustrations on something that had nothing to do with the proceeds of justice visit upon them.

But also.

Can I just say this?

I get accused quite a lot of bringing Brexit into stories where Brexit is not relevant.

But an Australian man driving over EMUs has inspired one of Salzburg's finest outpourings on Brexit.

And

I think he deserves and should receive a huge amount of credit and blame.

Also, I mean, I think the emus have to take some responsibility.

If you are a bird and you are faced with a car, you've only got yourself to blame for your own evolutionary laziness.

You cannot fly out of the way.

Mr.

McDonald claimed that he had diminished responsibility for the crime because of his emotional state, but he knew what he was doing.

There is so many technological innovations that have required for Alice to be sat in Australia and deliver that to us in England.

It was, I mean, I'm not going to criticise you.

It would be a bit ostrich to come from me.

You both.

Nish flips the bird.

Oh,

God damn it.

Money news now, and what more exciting news from Australia, Alice, in that

Australia's banknote producers have

committed one of the greatest spelling mistakes in the history of humanity.

A spelling mistake

on the Australian $50 bill that has now been printed 46 million times.

Which is a lot of money, Andy.

And the typo, the relevant typo is in the micro text, misspelling the word responsibility, which is delicious irony.

That is $2.3 billion worth of spelling mistake.

And they couldn't afford a spell checker.

I mean, you see, it's got a lot of news coverage, this story.

And as you said, understandable lack of familiarity in the rarefied confines of the money world with the word responsibility.

What is that?

A sport?

Is it French?

And also, it's Australia.

I mean, wait until Australia realizes that not only is it spelling words wrong, but it's been pronouncing everything wrong all the time as well.

Imagine the looks on their faces.

In other money news, David Cameron has been spending his money.

For those of you who don't know him, David Cameron, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, freelance wigger of social and political devastation

and a professional crumbler of other people's hopes and dreams.

He has spent £8,000 on a luxury hot tub.

Now,

I mean, David Cameron, clearly, he's not been that busy since

firing this country into an orbit of endless self-devastation.

But I would say it shows the endless well of empathy that lies within David Cameron.

The deep, bottomless well of empathy that enables him to be literally in hot water whilst his successor and the UK as a whole is metaphorically in hot water in the aftermath of his lettuce brain scheme to quell the right wing of the Conservative Party by giving them control over the entire future of the country.

Cynics might also suggest that this is good practice for Cameron, the 52-year-old living exemplar of the dangers of a slowly moulding democratic system, and the man who icarused Britain into the oceans before ejecting, floating gently back towards ground level, whilst muttering, that is going to make one f of a splash.

It's good practice for him as an acclimatisation program for the full or partial eternity in the fiery bowels of hell he surely has earned himself.

Yes, indeed, Andy, ex-Prime Minister and permanent David Cameron.

David Cameron is in the news again,

having bought what is apparently a red cedar and stainless steel wood-fired six-person luxury hot tub at his Cornish retreat.

Now, look, an 8,000 pound luxury hot tub is not the worst thing I've been forced by the news to imagine David Cameron putting his naked penis into, but

I nonetheless regret that a non-negligible part of my professional duties as a satirical news comedian is imagining David Cameron's naked penis anyway.

It was a weird experience reading this because, you know, David Cameron has fed this whole country up and now he's off building a hot tub and building his very fancy writing shed, which was in the news about a year ago.

And he anybody pops up in public life to give the occasional interview saying that he doesn't really regret the referendum and that he's proud of the austerity policies that created the economic inequality that drove at least a chunk of the referendum vote.

And it was a weird experience for me reading this article because it's the first time in my 33, nearly 34 years on this earth, that I've read a news story and my immediate first thought has been, I'm going to shit in that hot tub.

I'm going to track it down.

I'm going to shit in that stupid f ⁇ ing hot tub for cunts.

And then I'm going to make him have a hot tub bath in my shit water.

And then afterwards, if he has any problems with it, I'm going to say, well, look, at the time, shitting in the hot tub seemed like the right decision to take.

And ultimately, I'm proud of everything that the legacy of me shitting in your hot tub has achieved.

You talentless c.

Tomb news now, and well, a hugely exciting discovery of an ancient Saxon tomb in Essex.

Known for its enthusiastic approach to fake tan and lip injections, Essex is famous for the semi-scripted reality television show The Only Way is Essex and its groundbreaking archaeological finds.

So that's straight from the Essex Tourist Board.

A royal burial site has been found wedged between a pub and a supermarket.

Shows how much more in touch the royals used to be with ordinary people about 1500 years ago.

It's an ancient Saxon tomb.

And

to be honest, I'm not entirely sure this quite lives up to its billing as Britain's answer to Tutankhamun.

I mean, this is essentially a piddling collection of trinkets that a pharaoh wouldn't get out of their pyramid for.

Experts have said it could be the tomb of Siaxa, the brother of Sabert, Saxon king of Essex.

And well, that would be a relief.

It would be good to finally have some closure on Siaxa because

without a burial chamber, you just never know.

I keep finding myself at Saxon battle reenactments staring at people saying, Are you him?

Oh, you look too young.

it's taken 15 years of expert analysis to get the results of the uh this this dig um and it showed that the uh it was a timber structure which measured about 13 feet by 13 feet and was about one and a half meters deep um meaning that if it were it found in central london it would be worth 4.95 million pounds and be described as a characterful period space with contemporary touches and it housed 40 rare and precious artifacts now let's let's just look at the facts here this is the size of a small garage and it had 40 things in it and it's taken them 15

years

to publish that what the have you been doing you pottery bothering slow coaches hybrid schleman hacked his way through the hole of troy in a year back in the 1870s raise the bar

Well, the prince is thought to have been buried around the time of the introduction of Christianity into the culture of England.

And this comparison with the finding of Tutankhamun's tomb with this finding of the prince next to an Aldi is bothering me.

Because famously, when the the Egyptian prince Tutankhamun was excavated, rumors and stories circulated about the Egyptian curses of death and ill fortune that seemed to haunt the desecration of the grave.

Presumably, in this case, the curse already leaked out somewhere in Essex, because that Aldi is frighteningly haunted.

I mean, all Aldis are haunted, but this one is especially haunted.

It's the way the central aisles are laid out according to an arcane and deeply illogical formula.

You might call it a feature of budget supermarkets.

I call it a message.

A point in a wheelchair next to a solar-powered meerkat lawn light followed by 16 kilogram kettlebells of course dark lord everything makes sense now i will go kidnap some children and give them all the same haircut and teach them to sing nursery rhymes very slowly in decrepit houses

a vision for post-brexit britain

it does feel like uh the comparison to toot and carmen has uh really only been made by people directly involved in the thing it's a bit like when my agent describes me as the british john oliver it's really a comparison that's not accurate in any way and it's only really being made by people with a vested interest in it being true.

They're certainly talking up the finds, including an exceptionally large ashwood coffin with an elaborate lid, which alone would have weighed 160 kilograms.

Why are we focusing on the coffin size?

Coffins should only be as big as they need to be, I think.

It's enough to just fit the body and then the other body that you're using the first body to hide.

They also found drinking vessels.

Of course, of course.

Some things will never change here in Britain.

Down in, what?

Down in one.

Do not ever chant that at a funeral.

Apparently, the size of the coffin and the placement of the items within the coffin suggested that the prince was about five foot six inches, which means, among other things, he would never get a date on Tinder.

In other ancient archaeology news, a piece of stone henge has been missing for 60 years, has been returned.

It was 108 centimeters long and about an inch in diameter.

And it's been returned by a 90-year-old man who's owned it since it was...

He was working on the excavations in the late 1950s.

And they took some samples out of some of the sarsen stones.

They sort of drilled holes and took some sample.

And he ended up in his office.

And when he moved to America, he just took it, but took it with him and says while clearing out his stuff I should probably give this

bit of henge back

so if you have visited Stonehenge recently been slightly underwhelmed by it it's because it wasn't all there essentially but missing a small cylinder of stone that now archaeology is very exciting because they can now study this stone and work out where the sarsen stones came from because they're not quite sure they know the blue stones came from Wales but the larger sarsen stones they're not sure I just seriously seriously hope it doesn't turn out that they're from the Acropolis again.

That is going to start getting very, very awkward.

And apparently initial results from

analysis suggest that the Sarsons may have come from several different locations, which suggests that Stonehenge could have been the start of the great British tradition of shopping around for a bargain.

Possibly even just sending off for a free sample massive standing stone from a load of different suppliers and just kind of playing the system that way, getting a whole henge out of it.

Maybe they picked it up on a henge run to Calais.

Hop on the ferry, grab a bit of henge, back you come.

We've all done terrible things on a henge night.

Sport now, and well, it's been an absolutely sensational week in football,

the renowned sport.

Four English clubs have made it into the finals of the two main European football competitions.

When I say four English clubs to be more accurate, four England-located clubs.

Anyway, but it just incredible performance by the England clubs.

Liverpool came from three goals down to beat Barcelona, Spurs, needed three goals to overcome IAX in the last 35 minutes of managing.

And it just shows what you can achieve.

when you really believe and are backed by a stupendous, logic-splattering, morality-melting amount of money.

It just shows what we can achieve in this country as an independent nation if we rely heavily on high-quality people from overseas and the iniquities of the financial world.

Get in the back of the net, Profit.

Andy, Andy, it's a fine British tradition taking good things from other countries and claiming them as your own.

Yeah, let's pop Vincent Company in the British Museum where he belongs.

Yeah, I mean, it was a very exciting week, two very late comebacks from Liverpool and Tottenham.

And, you know, of course, when anything like this happens, I think we all know what's going to happen is a politician is going to make a toe-curling and embarrassing public attempt to connect their policies with what's happened in the football.

And Theresa May was straight in there.

She claimed it was possible, based on the Liverpool result, to make a Liverpool-style comeback in Europe, referring to the Brexit withdrawal process and completely overlooking the point that the ultimate sum total of everything is that Liverpool have remained in Europe this week.

You fing moron.

Sweet Jesus.

You cannot play football in kitten heels, Theresa May.

I'm not judging anyone else, but kitten heels have both the inconvenience of wearing high heels with none of the sexiness you need to rethink your footwear.

Liverpool beat Barcelona, who are slightly faded force.

They still have the wonderful Lionel Muscle, but it did look rather like

playing a Roman Empire Select 11 around about 350 AD.

They still had some skills, but they're really not what they were.

A little bit slow in midfield.

And you know Luis Juarez has fked a horse.

But he called it a senator while he was doing it.

And a lot of people said after, I mean, it was incredibly dramatic.

It was a great game.

Phenomenal game for football.

Two, I mean, phenomenal pieces of sporting drama.

And a lot of people said, only football can do that, which roughly translates as, sport is great, but I only watch football.

And it was a bit of inconsistency because we don't hear those same comments.

You know, only football can do that after, for example, A, a grindingly tedious nil-born draw between two mid-table teams having to sit back and take the point.

Only football can do that.

Only no other sport can give you that.

You don't get those only football comments after 10,000 people chant racist abuse.

Only football can do that.

Or after an entire collection of new major buildings and associated infrastructure is built in a desert by slave labor.

Only football.

Only football.

Maybe Pharaohs and possibly a stretch of the Olympics, but only football.

One story to emerge after the incredible sporting drama was a competition blooper by the online retailer Zavi

who told,

they ran a competition

offering a pair of tickets and an all-expenses paid trip to Madrid to the Champions League final to one lucky winner.

And they scored what I believe is considered a public correlations own goal by crushing people's hopes and and dreams by accidentally emailing everyone who'd entered the competition telling them that they had won.

Now, crushing people's hopes and dreams doesn't always work commercially, although it is, of course, the basic philosophy of the insurance industry.

With the key difference that that involves threatening to crush people's hopes and dreams unless they give you money.

But so they'd accidentally emailed every, I mean, it's typical of modern society, maybe everyone's got to be a winner.

But instead,

instead of tickets to the Champions League final, one of the biggest games in the history of English football, Liverpool versus Spurs in Madrid, I don't know, a weekend of a lifetime.

Instead, those people have won a 15% discount voucher to use on the Zavi website.

Now, bear in mind the cost of tickets, flights, and accommodation would be, at a conservative estimate, about £4,000.

To get the value of that back...

to the financial value of the prize you thought you got, you would have to spend £27,000

on the Xavi website.

And the emotional value, of course, doesn't come into it.

It's hard to replicate.

I'm not sure you'd get quite the same adrenaline rush from opening a thousand copies of Detective Pikachu on

Blu-ray that you'd get from watching your team compete in the biggest match in its history andor one of the biggest matches in its history.

Delete, according to the club supported.

Andy, this is the worst miscarriage of ticket pricing since I saw mine on a scalping website for $260.

Even I wouldn't pay that.

Zavi, of of course,

this online retailer named, I assume, after the Hebrew word Zav,

which means, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know this, a state of ritual impurity arising from abnormal discharge from the male sexual organ.

Is that true?

That is a fact.

Look it up.

Your internet searches.

What do you mean internet searches?

That's my Jewish heritage, Nish.

The Hebrew, it never leaves you, does it?

Never leaves you.

Unlike your foreskin.

Unlike Zav, which anyway,

Zav,

so it's Zavi comes from the Hebrew word Zav, and VI, which is the abbreviation for viscosity index.

Those two really don't go on together.

But in many ways, you can say, well, this is Zavi of heroically just illustrating what sport is supposed to be about.

You know, these moments of soaring ecstasy followed by a crushing sense of the inevitability of failure.

And 15% off Batman returns on DVD

um but anyway uh in the spirit of prize giving we can tell you buglers that you are all winners of this week's Bugle star prize which is free episodes of the bugle for the last 11 and a half years

free episodes of the bugle for the next 500 years the right to go online to buy tickets to my forthcoming underbelly show on the 18th of May and the Bugle live on the 22nd of June featuring Nish and Alice I can't remember if I asked you to do that one as well oh god I absolutely love your booking policy awesome isn't it

Yeah, I'm up for it.

What's the date?

Bingo, there we go.

Consider yourself booked.

And Edinburgh Festival shows featuring me and the many Bugle co-hosts

including Political Animal and Bugle Live.

Nishi's shows in America.

The rest of Alice's Australian store.

You've won that, the right to buy tickets to all of those shows.

You've also won Bugles the not very exclusive opportunity to voluntarily subscribe to the Bugle by clicking the donate button on the Bugle website and choosing either one of our feature recurring contributions or making up your own regular chip-in to the Bugle or a one-off virtual banknote shoved into our metaphorical trouser pocket to help this keep the show alive, free, independent, and devoid of adverts.

Plus, you win a free seven-meter-high solid marble statue of Nish Kumar, subject to availability, elegantly sculpted in the style of Michelangelo's david.

I'm just hearing those have now sold out.

Even got the right angle in the penis.

Plus, you win three tickets to the European Cup final in Madrid, the 1957 European one between Rail Madrid and Fiorentina.

But you've got to pay for your own travel and accommodation.

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

We, I think, have run out of time to do lies about subscribers this week.

So we'll do a bumper lot of, a double lot of lies about our premium subscribers next week.

Also, we will have a look at America, which we've skirted around this week.

What is going on with America?

Plus trade wars.

Lots of fun or dicking around with the future of of the planet, or both.

Uh, so more on those next week.

In the meantime, Nish, uh, delight to have you on.

Love you, as always, enjoy America.

Fingers crossed, visa pending.

They wouldn't let me call the shows visa pending, which is what I did want to call them initially.

Uh, Alice, uh, enjoy the rest of your time down in the uh, the wrong half of the planet.

Thank you, I will.

I like that you said it was a pleasure to have Nish, but not a pleasure to have me eat a dick.

We all know you've been running down emus, Fraser.

We know what you lot like.

We've got to find the entertainment where you can in Perse.

Until next time, it's been a pleasure having you all listen to us.

There, take that, Alice.

Yeah,

way down the list this week.

Rich, delight to have you.

Thanks very much, Andy.

I always appreciate you giving me a little call out.

Yeah, and it's lovely.

Lovely to have had Chris not here this week as well.

He's broken his other hip celebrating the Spurs win.

Thank you for listening Buglers.

Until next time, 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.