The Reverse Skrillex - Bugle 4104

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4104 of The Bugle.

We are recording on the 5th of April 2019.

So this makes this the first bugle since Britain became an independent nation once more on the 29th of March last Friday.

What a week it's been.

Joyous celebrations on the streets.

The first of 100,000 of the people here who are less than 99.94% British have been ceremonially catapulted home.

We've signed trade deals with at least 185 different...

Does this need updating?

I wrote this a couple of months ago.

Hello.

We're still here.

in the pre-Brexit, Britain, which has been delayed until next week and then possibly the end of June now or this time next year.

Who knows?

We just don't know.

She's got to hope for that climate apocalypse.

Keep kicking it down the road.

The world will be over.

Yeah.

We never have to deal with it.

Come on, as always,

as always, finding the silver lining.

They call me Mr.

Blue Sky.

Nish Kumar, welcome back, Nish.

Hello, Andrew.

Hello, Buglers.

It's been a while.

Yeah.

I've been touring the country.

Yeah.

Just, you know.

Taking the temperature of Britain.

And what is that?

Temperature.

Temperature.

Fing livid.

The temperature for the people who are coming out to see me, Andy, suggests Brexit's all over.

You judge it by my audience, including the one man who bought an EU flag that he started waving off right through the kick.

Brexit's all done.

It's all done and dusted.

So I think we might be hitting similar demographics, Arla.

Yeah.

I guess the spiciest meatball was a gentleman in Hull.

Is that the title of your talk show?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The spiciest meatball.

He took some exception to me making the case for a second referendum by screaming democracy.

And I sort of, you know, I don't take those things lightly, so I sort of took the time to explain to him that I wasn't really in favour of a second referendum for a long time, but with the parliamentary deadlock, I feel like the country's sort of lapsing towards a no-deal Brexit.

And, you know, but I didn't take the decision lightly, but I felt that it was best for the nation.

And that went on for about five minutes.

At the end of the five minutes,

the woman who was sat next to him said, oh, yeah, he left five five minutes ago.

And the

microcosm of the president.

Well, this is the thing I was like,

I take those kinds of things very seriously, but they do love to leave.

It's very difficult to have a sustained conversation with a group of people that have identified themselves by leaving a place.

Matt Ford also joins us.

Second appearance.

Pleasure to be back.

On the bugle, you are our British constitutional and political system expert.

Crykit going to be

able to put unique lights into this.

Right, okay.

I feel like the crusher's on now.

Yeah.

But pleasure to be here.

How's

not quite yet, Brexit, Britain, treating you?

Very well.

I get a mixture on my tour of leavers and remainers.

There was a bloke in Corby the other night who on the front row was probably loving it more than anyone I've ever known.

Right.

And said, oh, I presume you're kind of from the people's vote.

And he said, no, I'm the local chairman of Leave Means Leave.

I said, Why are you enjoying it so much?

He just said, Oh, I just love seeing.

I can laugh at myself, you know.

Yeah.

He was a kind of tonic for the time, I suppose.

Proof that some of them have a sense of humour.

Because that was reassuring.

Yeah, Leave Means Leave, by the way.

Very good advice for a young opening batsman when the ball is swinging around.

Be decisive.

Let it go when you can.

I feel, yeah, we're not stretched out to the global audience yet.

Well, so hello, all buglers from all around the world.

We will be discussing Brexit again

on this show.

I hope you will indulge our British introspection for another few weeks.

We are recording on the 5th of April 2019 which is the anniversary of loads of stuff in history which averages out as okay-ish like all other days in the calendar.

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

This week, well, we're looking at gaming.

The gaming industry is now worth more than movies and music and, would you believe it, podcasting.

What about stand-up comedy?

Never.

They had the BAFTA Gaming Awards this week and we're reviewing some of the new games that have just come out and could be contenders for next year's gaming BAFTAs, including Pigeons of Deprava.

Can a flock of aerial vermin defeat the mighty kingdom of deprava by shitting on people's cars, nibbling the seeds from their back gardens, thus creating social breakdown.

It's very much a parody of Brexit.

Nursing Home Manager 2, a glimpse into a very real dystopian future.

Warlocks v Demon 7, Admin Division, a new angle for the Phantasy War franchise, setting you the unenviable challenge of managing the frontline logistics, supply lines, transport schedules, combat training timetable and pastoral care for 300,000 strong armies of mythical beasts.

And well, this is one I'm sure you guys are very excited about.

Ron and David's Balls and Bowls, an unexpected tie-up between 87-year-old former World Bowls champion David Bryant and 1970s pornographic actor Ron Jeremy.

Graphically realistic crown green gameplay mixed with retro priapism for one of the surprise hits of 2019.

Building up a good head has never been so strategically intriguing.

And Michael Gove's Backstabber 2019.

reboot of the very successful 2016 original.

Look, it's all fun and games with that, but have you ever tried to explain the concept of football manager to someone who has never heard of it?

Because they basically look at you like we looked at you when you were saying all of that bullshit.

Football manager for the uninitiated is a game where for the American listeners, by football, I mean football, because you should learn the proper fing words for things.

Yeah, the clue is the word football man.

Yeah, the word is called football, you fing idiots.

But please give us a trade deal.

It's basically where you play a game as a football manager.

So it is the laziest thing you can possibly do because

you're not even pretending to be someone running around.

You're like sat there in your house pretending to be someone who does the admin of a football club.

It's not a million miles away from Warlocks versus Wizard 7 or whatever.

I'm surprised there haven't been spin-off versions like director of football or physio.

Yeah, yeah, youth team coach.

2019.

Physio is a tedious game.

St.

John's ambulance.

It is kind of fascinating that computer games is worth it.

In fact, it's worth more in Britain than movies and music combined, apparently, which does slightly suggest we are a nation that is much more comfortable with fictional worlds than real ones.

May explain a little bit about what's been going on.

Top story this week and well there is only one place to start this week and it's not with Brexit.

it is with perhaps the most important scientific breakthrough since Isaac Newton discovered gravity and enabled people to stay on the ground for much longer during their lives.

Skrillex,

the

renowned dubstep star, could end malaria.

I mean, what

a great time for the world is.

You must have had to Google every word of that sentence except malaria.

Well, I I mean, it was very exciting.

I mean, this is science coming to the rescue of the world.

Matt, you're our

mosquito-borne diseases correspondent.

Yes.

Just fill us in on something.

I mean, there are quite a lot of gaps in that sentence, to be honest.

I mean, I have to admit, until last night, I thought Skrillex was the sort of thing you filled in the hole in a wall with, or did sort of kitchen work with.

But according to Live Science, a team of international researchers found that female mosquitoes forced to listen to Skrillex, they never do it through choice,

particularly the song Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites on repeat for specifically 10 minutes, were less likely to have sex and feed on unwitting victims than those not exposed to the apparently Grammy-winning track.

I tried this in Factory Conditions.

I've tested it in my flat.

I'm happy to report it's the same effect on humans.

In fact, I didn't even have to play it.

If you haven't heard Skrillex, it's the sort of music that, sort of music a wayward youth would play in a soap opera over a parent describing it as a racket.

Lots of speculation around Skrillex's real name, Nigel Piddleworth, isn't it?

But wouldn't it be great if it was?

And this is nothing new, of course, to fans of bugs and music.

Skrillex is just the latest in a long line of musical artistes whose music has proven to have side effects.

Beethoven is known to improve cognitive function in toddlers.

Enya helps lower the heart rate.

And Slipknot made grown men urinate and masturbate onto each other.

A lot of scientific research got into

the sweet, sweet tang of personal experience from Lucky Ford coming through there.

Was it Beethoven that was particularly effective, Played Into the Womb?

Played into the Womb, yes, but it depends through what

you're talking about.

Beethoven in Utah.

No, they mostly listened to cricket commentary on YouTube, I think.

Though I was exposing them to the greatest hits of Banana Armour from, well, very, very shortly before conception.

I'll digress.

family show.

So Skrillex is a prominent star of

dubstep.

Which I mean

what was your level of awareness of the genre of dubstep?

Well,

very high of course.

A dubstep.

It's when someone charges an off-break, isn't it?

Yeah.

It is a

cricketing manoeuvre.

If you don't know dubstep, it's like 1930s skiffle music crossed with early bach,

but different in every single way.

And Skrillex himself, well, he is named after the cleaning product that had been used in his parents' house when he was conceived.

Or it might be the ancient Latin word for dubstep.

I'm not sure.

Also, the music has proved inspirational and indeed iconic amongst supporters of the campaign to get Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, Italy, and Luxembourg to all leave the EU at the same time.

And well, he's also renowned for his haircut, Skrillex.

Very distinctive, shaved on one side, Yeah.

Long on the other.

So he's kind of done it the same as you, but the other way out.

I've gone top and back.

You've got the old reverse Skrillex.

Reverse Skrillex or

the reverse Saltzman.

But he actually developed his distinctive shaved on one side, long on the other, to give him better ballast and aerodynamism and walking fast around corners because he was often late for appointments.

But it also does mean that if Skrillex is running at you at high speed, he will swing.

and one final skrillx fact uh he's not in contention for the forthcoming world snooker championships he's focusing on dubstep very difficult to uh track skrillex's movement when he's on the subcontinent isn't it andy he tends to move late late yeah

um nish i mean what i mean you you i mean you're of a you know

considerably younger

generation than me.

Yeah, but I mean not philosophically, Andy.

Unfortunately,

my age has not been a barrier to our friendship due to the fact that we've somehow picked up exactly the same cultural references.

What does A Skrillex and B mosquitoes mean to you?

Well mosquitoes have been a constant bane of my life

so but so has Skrillex and I dislike Skrillex's music to such an extent that I am willing to risk malaria.

Christian Aide actually sells Skrillex blankets to keep him out of young children's tents at night.

Yeah, it's the combination apparently of very high and very low frequencies.

Apparently, it's that range that is affecting mosquitoes' behaviour, which does suggest we could achieve the same extent by just having me talk over a Barry White track.

Well,

we should probably play a little bit of Skrillex.

What kind of cheese is that?

That is unpasturable.

That is also the current internal monologue of Theresa May

so yeah so the scientists according to this article

said that in insects low frequency vibrations facilitate sexual interactions which would explain why my collection of weevils start unstoppably humping each other whenever the British Attorney General Jeffrey Cox starts talking about Brexit on the news.

Because he has a I mean he has a voice that insects must

but that is Viagra to an an insect, isn't that?

That's Viagra to a lot of humans, huh?

It affects me on some level.

The highly affected way of speaking, though, isn't it?

He knows what he's doing.

I don't know if we can get a clip of Jeffrey Cox speaking over some Skrillex, Chris.

Thank you.

It shows what a respect our party has for the rule of women.

Female adult mosquitoes were entertained by the Skrillex track and attacked hosts later and less often than those in, and I quote, a dub-step-free environment.

I mean, that is really science-taken.

Do these people not have better experiments to do?

Well, I mean, this is something we come back to on the bugle a lot.

I know.

But you say that, Nish, but malaria, bafflingly, still a massive problem around the world.

That is true.

And Skrillex can delay...

It can delay attack, as you said, by mosquitoes, reduce blood feeding, and disrupt mating.

And so it could not just malaria, but other celebrity diseases, including dengue fever.

Oh yeah, that's a real problem.

And brexitosis, which could be saved by Skrillax.

Well, let me tell you something.

As somebody who did a fair bit of traveling to malaria-affected regions over the last two years, I was- That was the tour.

That was the

rainforest leg.

I didn't know Carlisle was that bad.

But you have to take malaria tablets.

That's a way to stave it off.

And it worked, it was very effective.

But one of the side effects is

you know your buttocks become quite chatty and the noise that they emit is quite toxic and similar to skrill x yeah

oh man is it possible that the reason those malaria tablets are effective is because your anus essentially imitates the music of skrill x and puts mosquitoes off from biting you that's what it is that's i mean i do worry about research like this that once you say music affects organisms, then you're saying rap makes people violent.

Right.

That this has clearly got the seeds of what, you know, when George W.

Bush used to blame Marilyn Manson for people's misbehaviour, this feels like that we're now grounding that nonsense in time.

I mean, to be fair, whenever I hear Skrill X, I do have a compunction towards violence, but the violence is solely punching Skrill X.

I mean, the evidence is further evidence that, well,

the report concluded mosquitoes are skrilled into a deep groove

skriller on the loose we've um we've actually had skrillex in the studio uh off mic for this whole recording and um none of us has been bitten by a mosquito so there's the proof nish has been just bitten by skrillx but apart from that

that's only because i punched him it was it was retaliation respect to the skrillmeister other musicians that have proved successful in preventing mosquitoes getting the horn include the likes of debbbie gibson the children's TV star Numbskull Shitbringer, ace 19th century composer Fran Schuber, but only when souped up with a seriously funked up bass line, and urban grunt jazz, dub wup, bleep bop, Tyros, Brutus, Brutals, and the Scarface Nuns, as well as, of course, 60s rockers, the Dave Clark 5.

Non-Skrillux Mosquito News Now, and Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife, Mackenzie, have just finalised the world's most expensive divorce.

The paper's delivered almost unnaturally quickly by a courier, one assumes.

This is the new world record for Bezos.

Enjoy it while you can, Jeff and Mackenzie, because Britain is coming.

Our forthcoming divorce from Europe is going to blow you out of the fing water, which you've probably own by now.

Because our divorce is not only going to cost us trillions of pounds.

Are we keeping the pound?

Are we going to go back to the groat or the genarius or the pig or whatever?

But it's also going to cost us international credibility, standing, and the future.

So it's very this, enjoy it what you can.

Yeah, f you, Bezos.

Yeah.

You've been owned.

So, Matt, as our constitutional experts.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

By expert, we've of course been the only person who understands any of it.

Oh, Jesus.

I was hearing various things that keep being said, that we're between a rock and a hard place.

That's not actually true.

The latest evidence suggests we are between a rock, a hard place, another rock.

A third really jagged rock, a really very hard and actually quite spiky place, a soft place that is actually a thin mattress stretched precariously over a crevice between two rocks and a hard place made of rocks.

Is there any way out of this?

There is some way out of it.

And it might come from an unusual source.

So there was a lot of...

Skrillex.

Possibly Skrillex.

I was taught this week that Burko, Speaker of the House, has the casting vote.

Of course, he sits as Member of Parliament.

He's elected by his constituents.

So there's a lot of controversy about that.

However, I can reveal on the beginning it was not John Burko who unlocked the parliamentary arithmetic, but Yuri Geller.

Yuri Geller wrote to the Prime Minister an open letter two weeks ago, claiming that he would psychologically block Brexit.

He's claiming that because Parliament voted by a majority of one to prevent a no-deal Brexit, he has succeeded.

The letter he wrote to the Prime Minister said the following: Three years before you became Prime Minister, I predicted your victory when I showed you Winston Churchill's spoon in my Cadillac, which I asked you to touch.

A lot to take up.

Absolutely.

There's a lot in that sentence.

There's a lot in that sentence.

Firstly, Yuri Geller has Winston Churchill's spoon.

Secondly, he has a Cadillac.

Thirdly, Theresa May knows Yuri Geller.

Fourthly, she knows he has a Cadillac.

And fifthly, she got in the back of it and touched his spoon.

But of course,

this is the latest in a long line.

Who can forget when Paul McKenna led to the bailing out of the banks by inviting Gordon Brown into his Pontiac and getting him to touch Clement Atley's Nutri Bullet?

This is the latest in a long line of mystics and hypnotists intervening to save the global economy.

Also in his letter, he claimed he would use the power of his mind to ensure that, quote, Jeremy Corbyn never gets the keys to number 10.

I will ensure they bend out of all proportion to ensure he never takes up residence there.

So I think Yuri has slightly misunderstood the phrase getting the keys to number 10.

Thinking that Corbyn will have to literally let himself in at the end of each working day if he can't get over the threshold that the British Constitution would not allow him to hold the office some private.

But generally someone opens the door, will they?

Yes, there's a bloke behind the door

who sees you coming on a security camera.

So it's all funny, they're really obsolete.

I think Geller has obviously just thought of keys are the, you know, the keys to the world, and he's trying to intervene in whichever way he can.

Elsewhere in Brexit, lad, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council and the name of the protagonist of the ill-advised Adam Sandler remake of The Elephant Man, has responded with the offer of a year-long flex tension.

As I wrote that this morning, I thought, that's going to be Solsby's going to enjoy that.

Has responded to the latest round of Theresa May just bringing back the same withdrawal agreement week after week, but each time in a different font, by saying that he's going to offer us a flex tension, which is a word that even as I say it makes me want to punch myself in the teeth.

But it would give the option for the UK to exit at some point in the next year, which means we could leave at any point in that time, but no later than the date given in the flex tension.

But Theresa May has responded to that by saying the UK will leave on the 30th of June, which is rather like being offered a buy one, get one free and going, No, I would like to buy one and get one.

30th of June.

I mean, that is

towards the end of the group stage of the Cricket World Cup.

And will it not intrude on the Nations League?

What are you

talking about?

That's and that's the day England plays India.

A ledge, Baston.

How symbolic.

How deeply symbolic, given that India may well be about to take over England.

Flexed, I mean,

the language that Brexit has unco-opped has been an absolute catastrophe.

Aside from anything else, the number of portmanteau words and Brex-related terminology.

Brexatious.

That's now in the dictionary, a state of irritability caused by watching live coverage from Parliament.

Brexito, that's a new suggestion.

You see, it's a Mexico plus style deal where we leave the EU, fire ourselves across the Atlantic at high speed, barge Mexico physically out of the way and I'll fix ourselves to the southern border of the USA like a feeding animal on its mother's teeth.

DY by De Brex.

Now this is the in Brexit calculus, the mathematics of Brexit.

DY by De Brex mathematically works out the unexpected derivatives of Brexit by asking why, and the result gives you the current rate of national decline.

So

there's one for maths fans there.

Brext reverts.

We'll touch on this more later, the likes of Marc Francois, who will be shortly appearing on the show in form.

Super califragilistic Brexby Alladocius is the belief that a magical nanny figure will save us all through

her magical powers.

We're very much having a Brexistential crisis

and abstract Brexpressionism,

which is essentially just throwing ideas at a blank canvas and saying that's what you intended to do all along.

Yeah, because even if we get the year-long extension, we're still no closer to resolving any of the key problems, such as our relationship with the single market, customs union, and what happens to the border in Ireland.

So even if we get another year, I don't really see how...

Basically, at this point, we are shunted, which is a portmanteau of my own concoction, meaning shit c ⁇ t.

Also, brextrasensory perception.

The ability to notice benefits of Brexit that ordinary people cannot see.

There's been a lot of that around.

So, I mean, one of the big moves this week was Theresa May reaching out across the political divide, inviting Jeremy Corbyn round for tea to discuss Brexit.

And she's had quite a lot of praise for this, but it seems to me that congratulating Theresa May for finally seeking some kind of bipartisan cooperation is basically the same as saying, well done for doing up your zip nice and quickly to a man who's just spent the last minute urinating into a coffin at a funeral.

Is that okay?

That joke, Andrew, I hate to say it.

It has the ring of personal experience to it.

There was a great quote from a government source last night, and it really highlights the hypocrisy on both the Tory and the Labour side and the challenge of reaching agreement.

And they said, our position is a customs union, but we don't call it that.

Labour's position is not a customs union, but they do call it that.

Right.

Sort of a polite way of saying that they're both full of shit.

Strange times.

But this is the problem.

So what you have is Corbyn will not give many straight answers.

Keir Starmer is clearly very pro-European and desperate to get the Labour Party to a position where they will commit to a second referendum.

And then John MacDonald plays a kind of borderline sweeper slash troll role where he will actively incite the pro-European wing of the party by telling them what they want to hear but absolutely not meaning it and leaving them with no

no um you know nowhere to go other than agree with john macdonnell but know that he's lying.

But I have to say, I've found it very difficult to swallow the Tories' warnings about Corbyn being engaged with extremists in the same week that Jacob Rees-Mogg supportively retweeted a video from the AFD, literally the descendants of the Nazi Party.

And we've come to a point where a member of the Grand Wizards is now retweeting things from the Nazi Party.

And I it really is starting to be difficult to swallow the whole Brexit is not a racist project thing.

And they claimed the things that these grand wizards, I don't know if you covered this on a previous episode, but it's Ian Duncan Smith, Jacob Reese Mark, who are hardcore of the ERG.

Yeah, they refer to themselves as Grand Wizards.

And when it was pointed out to them that that was a term that the KKK used, David Duke, by the way, in terms of copyright, is livid.

He said they're ruining the good progressive name of the KKK.

They claimed they didn't know that it was from the KKK, which makes it even more...

Ludicrous.

How would you come up with Grand Wizards if you hadn't heard it before?

You're either a racist or a

and possibly both.

Well, it was either we got down to the bottom three.

It was either

amazing guys, top dudes or grand wizards.

I had those.

If you're part of a campaign which has been accused of manipulating reality in order to achieve its end, to call yourself the Grand Wizards does not quell that complaint.

Yeah, quite aside from it being

a term associated with the Klu Klox Klan.

You're either Merlin or a racist.

Either way, it doesn't really give a great deal of confidence to the majority of British people, I hope.

There's some breaking news.

This just coming through, apparently, emergency measures are being put in place by the government to reactivate the Queen Mother.

She's now 118 years old.

It's thought that to help create national unity, the renowned royal will be reactivated and deployed to the regions that were most split on Brexit.

Three hands like this really dumbly.

So what's been interesting with Brexit is that it's brought to public attention members of parliament who weren't particularly high profile.

Yes.

And foremost amongst them over the past few weeks has been Mark Francois.

Oh my god.

Who is former Defence Minister?

Yes.

Yeah.

He is the MP for Feral Bleating.

It's a lovely rural constituency in Cantangershire, which includes the picaresque villages of frothing, Lower Bicker, and Quibbling by the Sea.

He is the whip of the ERG, Jacob Rees-Mogg's ERG, which is

European research group.

And in terms of political titles,

this is right up there with the Democratic

Republicist career, right?

Yes, they kind of learned from the tobacco lobby,

like the Lung Foundation to justify putting chemicals into our cigarettes.

What exactly, what level of research is going on?

Very little.

Very little.

Most of their research seems to involve bloating their mouths off on national television.

In fact, it was largely inactive until relatively recently.

So it's been around a long time, and they didn't really do anything until around the time.

I think either just before or just after the referendum.

So they kind of lay dormant like a kind of disease and then were reactivated by the changing conditions.

But Francois, his letter to the Prime Minister to cause a confidence vote was one of the the funniest of the lot.

And he started using this phrase now.

He says, I'm a patriotic man.

I was a member of the TA during the Cold War.

And you think, hang on, not a real army and not a real war.

It's like saying I served in the scouts during the COLA War.

He started peddling this line.

And if you watch him, for buglers who haven't seen him yet, he's often on TV tearing up paper.

I don't know if you've got this yet.

He will either tear up a letter from the Commission or an obscure piece of European legislation.

He's working his way up to a yellow pages

for his Christmas party, but

he's been really emboldened by this period.

He's essentially a satchel of ham that's been brought to life by a witch's curse.

His Wikipedia page was,

I believe the term is niche Kumar.

Absolutely Kumar.

Mark Pramson's Wikipedia page got absolutely the full Kumar treatment.

It appeared yesterday on his Wikipedia page.

He died on the 4th of April 2019 after exploding with rage in the House of Commons with anecdotal evidence reporting that his giblets ended up strewn all over the house.

I was on Wikipedia for a good half hour last night.

I took a screencast.

Oh, it's brilliant.

Anyway, it's only fair to hear what the man himself thinks.

And luckily,

we have excerpts from his forthcoming diary of the Brexit campaign.

And this is from, in fact, this week that he's very generously allowed us to use as part of our serialization of the Marc Francois diaries.

31st of March.

I saw a child playing on the swings in the local park.

I ran over to intervene.

Stop attempting a coup against the British people, I screamed, hurling the child off the swing into a British head.

I don't think 17.4 million people voted for you to play around on the swings like a Spanish child would do, you little shit, I yelled as the weeping infant ran to its so-called mother.

I tore up some paper.

1st of April.

Wrote a letter to myself congratulating myself for standing up for and to the British people and asking for a signed photo.

7 p.m.

Ordered a takeaway just so I could tell the delivery driver that I'd had a meal in 2016, so why is he bringing me food now?

I was about to eat my soup with a spoon when I remembered that we haven't Brexited yet because of all the commies and traitors.

So spoons aren't legal again yet.

They're banned because of Europe, or at least that's what I heard from myself when talking to myself in the mirror last week.

So I had to put my face in the soup and slurp it up like a Portuguese or Bulgarian person would.

Oh, freedom cannot come soon enough.

2nd of April.

Met Jacob and the guys for practice.

Good session.

Repeating our key phrases such as, just want us to get on with it, 17.4 million, will of the people, fk the future, and 17.4 million.

3rd of April.

I won an award.

Blow hard of the month from Grand Standing Today.

4th of April.

My new set of makeup has arrived just in time for next week's T V appearances.

Not sure which shade of foundation to go with.

Crimson strop, beetroot combustio, petulant ruby, sunset blather, toddler tantrum serise, or rouge de la encon d'ésance.

I want to look at mine most livid.

I'm being interviewed about Lego.

4th of April.

I just want Margaret to love me.

I can't believe she's gone.

So I had a little insight into the man.

American news now.

And well,

we've slightly missed this

story for the last couple of weeks

due to what's been going on over here.

But the Mueller report is

quite interesting times in

America.

Well we have no idea because

it's not being released.

We're just being told that it doesn't find the president guilty of anything, but don't look at it, which is sort of not really how crime works.

Like you can't sort of turn up and be like, oh yeah, I do have an alibi.

It's my friend Dave, and he says I wasn't there.

Can we talk to Dave?

Oh, of course not.

Dave's dead.

I killed him.

I mean.

and the version we're being given is the Attorney General's version.

Obviously,

obvious concerns about Republican member Trump appointee and politically absolutely not neutral Attorney General William Barr getting to set the agenda around the Muller report.

It's important to remember in his previous life as Attorney General to George Bush Sr., his most notable achievement was pardoning senior members of the Reagan administration who'd illegally helped sell arms to Iran, using the money to fund the controls in Nicaragua.

In short, he's ideally placed to handle this impartial.

But his position allows him to get the first word in and frame the politics around the Muller Report.

His letter is effectively like a film trailer, but a film trailer featuring reviews of the film by the people who made it.

A complete exoneration.

I loved it.

Six stars.

Donald Trump.

This is amazing.

I can't believe I haven't been arrested.

Donald Trump Jr.

Not really my thing.

Baz Bamming Boy, Dead Email.

British readers might be surprised to, if you've read the letter, you might be surprised to say that the organisation accused of spreading disinformation responsible for social media operations during the election was the IRA.

Sadly, not the,

sadly, it turns out to be the Internet Research Agency, and not, as we're all hoping for, of course, the Islington Residents Association, although given who the local MPs don't rule it out.

The most fascinating report is the section on obstruction of justice, and that's where there is hope for us who believe that Trump may be guilty of something.

The letter says the special counsel did not draw a conclusion one way or the other as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.

Instead, for each of the relevant actions, the report sets out evidence on both sides and leaves unresolved what the special counsel views as difficult issues of law and fact concerning whether the president's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction.

And then it says, the special counsel states that while this report does not conclude the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Right.

And does not exonerate him is the best possible spin they can put on it.

And that, I mean, if you ran that through a political political de-spinning machine, it would come out as, for the love of God, burn everything, we're going to jail.

Well, that's it, because I mean,

no smoke without fire.

Obviously, the foundation of all justice systems.

Absolutely.

But, I mean, in this case, there's no smoke because all that's left is ash.

Because they did set fire to everything.

I love the phrase as well.

He set aside difficult issues of law and fact.

The difficult issue being that the president has broken the law and that's a fact.

He has said, to give him credit, the Attorney General, he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report, but needs time to scrub out confidential information.

How much time does it take to scrub out 398 pages?

Well, how many helpers have you got?

Trump has said it's a witch hunt.

He doesn't entirely help himself by spending so much time chucking frogs into a bubbling cauldron whilst wearing a big black hat and saying, lock her up.

But I don't know.

I still can't quite envisage him

ever being impeached.

I'm not sure I even want him to be impeached.

As a Donald Trump impersonator, I need him not to be.

I've already got my Trump 2020 campaign that said,

I'd rather he was turned into a heron.

The New York Times and the, I think out in the Washington Post this morning are running stories from anonymous officials who worked on the Mueller report expressing frustration that they haven't actually released what they consider to be evidence of his wrongdoing.

And Trump has responded by saying that the New York Times had no legitimate sources.

In fact, they probably had no sources at all.

Which is a bit hard to take, coming from a man who this week claimed wind farms cause cancer.

It's a bit difficult to take from someone who, if you printed out the entire quantity of his spoken output in the last three years,

it would cause the biggest meltdown in Wikipedia's citation-needed function.

Also,

not only that, he also claimed that his dad was born in Germany.

I forgot that was this.

F it out.

Which turned out to be...

Well, I mean, it is a fact, albeit a false fact.

It's an alternative fact.

Yeah.

But he's also claimed his mother was a professional combat snowboarder in the Zambian army.

And in fact, his German father played for West Germany in the 1954 Football World Cup final, scoring the equalising second goal in the unjustifiable 3-2 victory over Hungary.

A goal mistakenly attributed to the great Ford Helmut Hahn by most records of the game.

Wasn't that scored by Donald Trump's dad?

There we go.

Is he trying to be like, my dad was born in Germany, and no one who's ever done anything bad has been born in Germany?

Part of it is a strategy to distract.

And another part of it is just he knows that,

and this is the real struggle with him.

There is something hugely entertaining about finding out what he's just.

The thing the other week about the lakes.

Where was he in?

What lake was he talking about?

They are the biggest lakes, by the way.

They're record deepness.

They are.

And even the people who run the lakes said they're not.

They had to tweet, we're really sorry, these do not hold any records.

These lakes.

We're so embarrassed that he'd use them.

But that's just part of his brand, is just constantly making out things are better than they are.

That was his whole business was based on that.

You're going to get the best deal.

These are the best houses you can buy, by the way.

But this guy's the top dude.

And it's just that constant over-flattery and constant salesmanship.

And he's transplanted that into the White House.

Oddly, talking about written versus spoken, he didn't have to give any verbal evidence to the Mueller inquiry.

He was allowed to only give written evidence, which means he doesn't know what evidence he's given to the Mueller inquiry.

There's no way they're going to let him submit his own evidence.

I can well imagine being in Robert Mueller's position and imagining having to interview that scatter-brained, obvious career criminal and just thinking, I cannot handle having to listen to him talk in circles for hours and hours and hours.

Let's get someone else to write the thoughts for you.

And now it's time for countries Britain will be seeking to develop closer ties with after Brexit, threatening to stone gay people to death news now.

What a sentence.

So

Brunei

has passed a law that will allow it, theoretically, to stone gay people to death.

In 2019.

This is 2019.

This is 2019.

AD long-term analogy.

Clarify that.

Nish, you're our Brunei legal expert.

Brunei, of course, renowned principally for having a leader so wealthy that he could afford to buy all the tickets to next week's Satirist for Hire shows at the Solo Theatre Wednesday the 10th and Thursday the 11th of April.

Then the Bugle Live in Brighton on Friday the 12th.

Then my

couple of shows at the Underbelly in London in May and June, and of course my entire Edinburgh fringe run of a new show, Control Z,

plus various other shows up there, and buy all those tickets and still have trillions.

Still have trillions at the bank.

Well, look,

various celebrities have organised a boycott of a string of hotels owned by the Sultan.

But when you look at the boycott, I mean, certainly the ones in this country, the Dorchester 45 Park Lane,

and in America, the Hotel Bella and the Beverly Hills Hotel, they're not the, It's quite difficult to boycott hotels that 99% of the population don't go to anyway.

Here's my suggestion:

save up an absolutely rancid deuce

and drop it in the toilets in the lobbies of all of those hotels.

That is your solution to everything.

That is my solution to everything.

I'd suggest you go out for a heavy evening's drinking, finish it off with a kebab, the next morning get up, strong black coffee and a carrot juice, and head off to 45 Park Lane.

Wow, that's a great idea.

And

if they're not going to let you use the toilets, don't be afraid to drop the hammer in the lobby.

That's such a good idea.

It's right in the middle of the lobby.

Unless the policy changes, it's very difficult to boycott these hotels that no one goes to anyway, but they've all got toilets in the lobby.

Shit away.

Yeah, do it in a Viva Vendetta mask.

They'll never find you.

Statistically, everyone's got one anyway these days.

I'm kind of grateful that they only own those high-end because I've been obviously boycotting these hotels for years.

It's a good job they don't own like IBIS because that was really forced me into a very difficult position.

Well Matt, you've already been conducting your own dirty protest against the IBIS chain

the last six months of touring.

Yes, I have.

The breakfast, well there's no breakfast there.

It's just not good enough.

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

Next week, the show will be coming live from Brighton, 12th of April.

Do get your tickets online.

I was thinking Brunei.

Matt,

anything you'd like?

You're on tour currently?

I'm on tour.

I've just added a date at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Saturday, the 25th of May, of my tour, Brexit through the gift shop.

So come along.

Nish, anything to plug?

Yeah, well,

I don't know.

My tour's finished.

But I think I am doing some festival dates.

So I'll be at the McCunneth Comedy Festival and the Wells Comedy Festival doing the last sort of go-around of these, and then I'll do a few of them in Edinburgh.

Just Google.

You've all got Google.

Before we leave, well, thanks, Anish and Matt, for

coming on the show.

And thanks to all of you who have contributed to the Bugle through our renewed voluntary subscription scheme.

There are various options.

You go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

You can choose one of the options.

You'll make up your own one-off or regular donation sum.

Those who have chosen the

higher levels of subscription, part of the deal was that you have a lie told about you on the bugle.

I did a batch a couple of weeks ago.

That's a great idea.

So strap yourselves in.

We have the next batch of 15 lies about bugle subscribers.

Chris, music please.

Tim Wilkinson likes to guess how old benches are and then tell the people who are sitting on those benches whether or not he thinks they are older or younger than the bench.

Nick Walker thinks that constitutionally the president or prime minister of any country should always be a non-swimmer to limit their means of escape from the country in the event of impeachment.

Someone who names themselves only f ⁇ k you Chris owns six toothbrushes, one for each weekday and one to cover weekends and he has them re-bristled monthly.

Dagmar Makara is so warm-hearted that if someone draws a face on an apple, he cannot bring himself to eat it.

Ken Roberts, meanwhile, would like to see dueling reintroduced to top-level politics, proper ones too, at dawn in the woods.

Deganta Das thinks everyone should have to sit their final school exams every three years.

If they've dropped below an acceptable standard, they would have to go back to school.

Tuca Lehovry, and I've absolutely no idea how that is supposed to be pronounced.

It had some weird accents on it.

So I hope it's close enough.

Anyway, Tuca is an influential figure in the global campaign to legalise sneezing, which was of course outlawed until 1996.

Jesse Weha was locked in an industrial fridge for six weeks at school as part of a dissertation about the Norwegian polar explorer Fritjof Nansen, whilst Sarah Stilwell turned down an offer from NASA to become the first person to really land on the moon because she had a piano lesson.

Brian Fitzsimmons tried to breed his cat with his neighbour's dog to see if he could create the perfect hybrid pet.

He ended up with a guinea pig, a court case and a Nobel Prize for Biology.

And Damian Lunney believes all global problems could be solved by giving a free garden trowel to everyone.

Gardening is therapeutic, thinks Damien, and we could all grow our own food wherever we happen to be at the time.

Ian Young believes that ghosts should be made illegal.

Legislation is the only language they understand, he says.

And Tracy DeVito sometimes introduces herself as the 1968 Olympic long jump champion Bob Beeman, just to see how people react.

David Tully, every mealtime, eats all his food in alphabetical order in an effort to bring some sense and structure to this ridiculous universe.

And finally, Kelly McKenzie thinks a space rocket made of aubergines is a logistical possibility within 30 years if they genetically modify the renowned vegetable to give it a heat-proof shell.

Thank you to all of those people for subscribing,

joining the voluntary subscription scheme.

If you want to join them and indeed have a lie told about you on this show, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click donate.

Until next week, may the bullshit be with you.

Goodbye.

Bye.

So.

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.