Have we invaded Bhutan? – Bugle 4090

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4090 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a world now about to enter its 38,000th consecutive year of being visual.

I am Andy Zoltzmann and you can call me the human cannonball because, like a cannonball, I've been overtaken by more modern, newer versions of myself that operate way more efficiently, have a much wider reach, and don't weigh as much.

It is the 7th of December, not for the first time, and we are here in London.

And I'm delighted to say I'm joined by,

well, someone who's not been on this show for quite a long time.

Welcome back after an exciting year to Helen Zoltzmann.

Thank you, Andy.

Happy Hanukkah.

I suppose it is.

According to my Google calendar of Jewish holidays that I do not observe.

Have you been hanging your eight stockings on your special candlestick?

Been setting fire to them, that's what you're supposed to do.

You've had quite an exciting time, Sinjula.

Well, I think the last show we did together was

in the States in May.

Since when, you have been on a globe-trotting brush with death.

Yes.

That's how I like to do it.

Take it far away from home so no one can visit.

So you spent, what, six, eight weeks in a Tasmanian hospital?

Only three weeks in a Tasmanian hospital, Andy.

It did feel long.

Yeah.

I learned a lot about my roommate's urine.

Oh, right.

Colin.

He was in there with an ice skating injury.

85, still ripped.

Right.

The nurse is like, wow, you're 85.

And he was like, yeah, I chop a lot of wood.

So that is the secret of staying young.

85.

Yeah.

And joining us with his trademark, Whisper of the number 85, 45.

85.

I'm so well known for.

In London, all the way from the USA, it's Hari Kondibolu.

How are you, Andy?

Hello, Helen.

How are you?

Hi, Hari.

Do you think it was rougher to be in Tasmanian hospital for three weeks or to get the online feedback to your documentary?

Oh, I would have taken the hospital

at this point.

Same.

Yeah.

Fewer death threats in the hospital, I know.

That's probably not the appropriate place for it.

Yeah.

So, despite you not being one of God's chosen people, and like Helen and I,

welcome.

And

how's London treating you?

London has been rainy and cold.

You are welcome.

It has been exactly as advertised.

You've seen a lot of infant chimney sweeps around doing the full Dickens Christmas bit.

Oh, yeah, the whole thing.

The whole thing.

It's very embarrassing for the nation.

That's what we voted for.

If only we had a sense of shame.

It's been okay.

I've been performing at Soho Theater.

I'm halfway done with the run.

I don't like your reviewers.

I think the system of reviewing stand-up is stupid and it's for dummies.

Right.

How else would you do it?

Just have like a big thermometer on stage during the gig that goes up and down according to how well a joke does.

I would rather people, you know,

I'm less scientific about it.

People laugh, oh, this feels good.

They didn't laugh at that.

They're stupid.

And then you feel good at the end of it.

Right.

I'd like to go down the statistical route as a semi-professional cricket statistician.

I'd, you know, like the percentage of jokes that hit, then the depth, the depth with which the joke hits, the volume, tone, length of each laugh.

Yeah, you could do a multi-dimensional graph with that.

But what do you do when it's a long setup and it's a huge bill?

Don't you lose statistically out of that?

Well, it is very hard to measure that.

It's like measuring the true worth of a test match innings.

Trad stats don't always do it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing.

Anyway, this is Bugle 4090 getting closer and closer to that historic 10,000th episode mark.

And we are recording on Friday the 7th of December on this day in 1732, hopping distance from where we are recording here in London.

The Royal Opera House opened in Covent Garden, now home of the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet.

It sparked in 1732 an instant 27% rise in reported incidences of unwarranted warbling, a 19% upsurge in vocalised overreaction to personal misfortune, and paved the way for the political failures of Brexit.

because the Royal Opera House has also provoked a 78% decline in the ability and willingness of people to discuss matters calmly, maturely and sensibly without making a song and dance about everything.

Thank you.

On the 10th of December in 1317,

just 701 short years ago, the new shopping banquet happened in Sweden, at which King Berger of Sweden seized his two brothers Valdemar and Erik and threw them in a dungeon and starved them to death.

Hashtag awkward family Christmas.

His name was King Burger?

Yep.

It was King Burger.

I mean, has that family sued the restaurant at all?

His legacy lives on.

Was King Berger of Sweden?

Yep.

And he killed, ironically,

starved his brothers to death.

Oh my God.

That was an unhappy meal.

on the 10th of december 1768 so 250 years ago the first edition of the encyclopædia britannica was published all knowledge in the world squidged into just three books uh there were 40 pages devoted to diseases of horses but no information about children which

to me that remains the correct way to go about things and uh three pages about midwifery that were so scandalously factual that king george iii demanded they were ripped out of all copies of the book And apparently, according to the original encyclopedia, Vermicelli is an aphrodisiac.

I don't know how that stood up to scientific research.

When you were delivering your son, did you look up how to do it in the encyclopedia?

I did not.

No.

Well, I mean, midwifery is not the kind of thing that you can learn to do.

It's one of those things you've either got it or you haven't.

And I found out that day.

Like perfect pitch.

Ten years ago next week, I just found out I've got it.

Wait, so you mean like there's you're born with that knowledge?

So if you're a five-year-old and you're born with it, you could deliver children.

Yeah, I could.

So the fact they don't get to is age discrimination more than anything else.

Well, it is, yeah.

Or is it child labor laws?

Oh, yeah, you're right.

We never think about this.

We always think about kids in factories, but not the talented children that could deliver other children.

Yeah, but the world is full of injustice.

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

This week we look at humanity's cyborg future.

Are you human?

Yes, that's unimpressive these days.

You're getting close to being obsolete, no offense.

Because the cyborgs are coming, and in this section in the bin this week, we review the latest electro-computech hack modifications to your objectively anachronistically outdated human body,

including the Olfactatronic ConkTech 2.1.

a chip in your nose that instantly tells you exactly what that lovely stroke not lovely smell is from freshly baked panamanian penguin cakes to the sweet petroleum musk of a horny motorbike.

Ding, an instant message sent to your brain with thinkable internet links to where you can buy those precious scents on the dark net.

Not only that, but it's also well known that smell can provoke powerful feelings of nostalgia and memory.

And even if that smell means absolutely nothing to you personally and prompts no emotional associations with your own life, a secondary memory faker chip in your prefrontal cortex in your brain will crank into action and load up someone else's memory from its online database of millions of recollections.

Are you bored of not being able to toast bread with your own body?

Well that tedium is going to be a thing of the past if you have heating elements implanted in the back of your previously untoasty hand.

The back of the hand traditionally one of the least useful parts of the body at least since parental disciplining procedures evolved through the 20th century.

But now toast anything ranging in size from a crumpet to a muffin on your body chef hand grill powered by the natural electricity of your nervous system and or personality.

Waterproof gauntlets, advice for rainy days, not recommended for intimate use.

And the sit-safe arse alarm using a technology pioneered for reversing cars, a simple set of cameras and sensors implanted in your Batox can warn you if you're about to sit on something or someone that you don't want to sit on.

With built-in chair and bench recognition technology, the sit-safe arse alarm will bleep only if your intended seat contains an extraneous object or person.

Save time looking around for an empty seat on trains, buses, and tubes.

Now simply shuffle along until you find a spot where the alarm doesn't go off and bingo, somewhere free to sit.

That section on sideboards in the bin

this is where the bugle plays right

top story this week uh well brexit again and and still

and uh what a week it's been in uh in the world of brexit we've been doing some uh national open cast soul searching here in britain and not entirely liking what we've been digging up um Helen, you were out of the country for

nine months?

No, longer than that.

Yeah.

A year?

Not long enough, evidently.

And you have returned to

even more chaos than you left.

Yeah, it's really quite impressive the way they keep outdoing themselves to make a bad situation more bad.

But it's, I suppose, good that they're exceptional at something.

It's a little bit more complicated for me because as a person with Indian heritage, I really do enjoy British failure and suffering.

So there's that part of me.

But as an American citizen, I don't really have a high ground to stand on when it comes to choices, right?

But it does seem very bizarre to begin with the fact that the UK would leave the EU because they were barely in it to begin with, considering that you had your own currency and you didn't sign on to the Schengen Agreement, so you controlled your own immigration.

So you were barely in it.

So essentially, this news is like Nightcrawler leaving the X-Men.

Right.

Like, oh, no, not Nightcrawler.

What are we going to do without Nightcrawler?

Who is is going to crawl at night now like it's not so it's not that big a thing so that already it was weird but so are you saying we are taking back control of things that we already had control of yes i mean that's my expert outsider analysis also it seemed like an incredibly good deal like it not only like were you barely in it you still had the advantages of it it's almost like being in an open relationship where only you are allowed to have sex with other people and then somehow for some reason one day you're like I'm feeling smothered.

I am an autonomous being, and I will live by my own rules.

And then you break up with the person, and the next day, for some reason, you wake up and you're like, I am very lonely now.

Is there someone to trade with or snuggle?

Where were you with all these similes before the vote in June 2016?

It's been a thrilling week in Parliament.

The government was defeated in not one, not two, not three, not four, but three votes.

Did I already say three?

For three, it was three.

Three votes in a day.

That's the first time a government's lost three votes in a day since the 1970s.

They also found in contempt of parliament

for the first time ever.

Not just in contempt of every human being.

No, that's just a basic state of political existence for all governments.

But in contempt of parliament.

And it's quite interesting.

insight into how a parliament works that this resulted from a what's called a humble address

and if I may quote from the humble address the humble address will be presented to her majesty that she will be graciously pleased to give directions that the following papers be laid before Parliament any legal advice in full including that provided by the Attorney General on the proposed withdrawal blah blah blah blah blah I do you think the Queen is graciously pleased by this or I don't think she gives a f?

No, I think she does have that look about her to be honest.

She is well over this.

Yeah.

She's like, I'm what, 92, 91, 92 i'm not gonna have to live with this

well i mean you say that but you know we keep singing that national anthem she's gonna stay alive forever god is not gonna let her slip off the perch

wait so whether or not the nation suffers she's still queen right yeah and she gets to keep everything yeah absolutely that's the rules all the crowns so she doesn't need to care at all

this is completely this is other people suffering yeah yeah

it's a great system

you guys in america you you should give it a go someday.

Or maybe she's thinking...

Been there, done that.

Well, England went and fed a lot of other countries, and now it's time to come home and f itself.

A bit of quality meat on them, I guess.

The Queen responded with the tradition passed down from history with the words, f's sake, what now you meddling shitheads and watching the fing horse racing.

If you wanted me to actually do something, you might have to think about that before that you chop the noggin off my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great uncle Charlie.

Nachos, please, I've got a pony on the 340 at Haydock.

There's a five-day debate in Parliament currently underway.

You like things that last five days

cricket.

It is very much like a test match.

How would you advise them to keep the interest going for such a long time?

I think the key is to have regular intervals for meals and drinks.

So you want two hours debating, 40 minutes off for the lunch interval, two hours debating, 20 minutes for tea, and then two hours plus an extra half hour if you debate slowly.

Should they all dress the same?

Yeah, I think everyone should be dressed in white and applaud politely.

And wear pads.

And occasionally abuse each other out of range of the microphones.

Absolutely wear pads and genital protectors.

And hats for the sun.

Also, they should be drinking, and that way it's more entertaining the longer it goes.

I think we'd probably have a far more lucid, high-quality of debate if there was compulsory drinking in Parliament.

I think that was the foundation of ancient Greek democracy, I'm pretty sure.

Theresa May, looking as ever, as happy as a pig in a pork pie, but at least for the pig, it's over.

Do you feel at all sorry for her, Helen, after the year that she's had?

Yes and no.

I think it would be hard for anyone to really succeed in the position she's been in.

However, I do think she has done a worse job than she needed to and has also been consistently terrible throughout her political career and inhumane.

So I suppose I've convinced myself that the answer to your earlier question is no.

Right.

Do you?

I don't feel sorry for her, but she has got that look.

It's very similar to the look of a dog that knows you've just made her last appointment with the vet.

She just seems to know what's coming.

Some kind of instinct.

I don't know.

I think that would be a sweet release.

It's more like a dog that is being adopted by a family with a really annoying and sadistic child.

And the dog is only like eight, so there could be several years of this left.

The debate has been

hotly contested.

And the nation is essentially split.

And the options are to please 50% of the people, to please the other 50% of the people, or to please neither the 50% nor the other 50%.

And option C seems to be essentially what the government is going to get through Parliament.

That is the fair choice.

There's been some very heartfelt speeches from various MPs.

Harmonicus Gravely Strange, the Conservative MP for West Snutterbridge,

said that he was a descendant of someone who died at the Battle of Hastings.

And he said, we must respect the votes of the now dead.

And people who are now a voting age, or will at some point be a voting age in the future, have only themselves to blame for not faking some ID and voting on Brexit when they have the chance.

Fair call.

Paul Chetta Cudlick, the Liberal MP for Illingworth Raymond, said Britain should not rush into it.

We should have a 20-year rolling second referendum where people's average view on the EU is calculated on a minute-by-minute basis, culminating in a result in the year 2039.

Ken Bagatell, Labour MP for Glarch, said that we should pretend to leave and hope that no one looked at it too closely.

That's the Hong Kong option, I believe it's known.

And James Bexley Sidcup, the Conservative MP for Broken Chargers, stood in Parliament and sang his new song, Maggie, Maggie, Please Come Back.

Hastings has a kind of pudding, right?

The Hastings pudding.

Is that a thing?

I'm thinking of hasty pudding that

Harvard has a thing.

Oh, I thought.

Sort of like a corn porridge.

Okay,

I thought maybe Hastings had a pudding.

You're right.

I was thinking of hasty puddings.

We only have dawdling puddings here.

Dawdling puddings, I don't think he's also a parliamentary constituency.

Won't someone, Andy, think of our home county, Kent?

Because today in the news, there were plaintive articles saying that a no-deal Brexit could cause major disruption across Kent

because of all of the piles and piles of lorries that are stuck in Kent, unable just to saunter over to the continent anymore.

And they're saying rubbish won't be collected, children won't be able to take exams, people won't be able to register for weddings, bodies won't make it to the morgue in Kent.

Only Kent.

Just Kent.

Kent's going to become the most exciting place in the world.

Some kind of dystopian, very stationary, mad max future.

It's got the castle's for it.

I mean,

body's not reaching.

I mean, also, takeaway deliveries could be delayed by up to 15 minutes in some parts of the country.

That puts in position.

That's a nightmare and noodles will grow mushy.

Yeah.

And people could easily die in operating theatres because their new lung is stuck on the M20.

So

tough times ahead for

Kent.

That's not all that could happen.

The stock market could fall

in Kent by anything between 0% and 50,000%.

Train services could collapse into absolute chaos, thus improving by 15%.

A shortage of medical and care staff could lead to the government having to conscript clever dogs to be emergency heroes like Lassie.

Works in Peter Pan.

Yep.

And TV detectives could get 45% worse at solving fictional crimes.

The Queen could get 8% shorter.

There will be an infestation of warthogs.

And Britain will be struck from the list of potential venues for the second coming of Christ.

So.

It was was still on the list?

It's a long list.

So the possible scenarios are no deal, shit deal, renegotiate less shit deal, renegotiate even shitter deal, attempt to renegotiate less shit deal but come back with the same shit deal, an awkward smile, waving a little union jack flag.

A second referendum with two or three options.

A second referendum with 300 options, one for each plausible variation of leave or remain.

A second referendum with no options at all.

I quite like this one.

It's just a blank piece of paper

which you can just write whatever you want.

I mean it won't solve anything, but it'll be essentially what we've got now.

Civil War.

We shouldn't write that off.

Because it's worked quite well in the past.

Wars of the Roses

culminated in 1485.

Just 100 years later, plus a bit Shakespeare.

Who would the Civil War be with?

The different nations of the United Kingdom?

Oh, it's just a massive piling.

Everyone just

buying into each other.

Not armed, just like a fist fight, a British fist fight.

Throughout the country.

Yep.

Okay.

Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales could stay in the EU but leave the UK and be replaced by Ecuador, Togo and Bhutan.

So we'd keep the four-nation union.

I think we'd all be in favour of that.

Bhutan is annually called the happiest place on earth.

That ranking would go down if it joined the UK.

Yeah.

We can drag any nation down with our pessimism and natural cynicism.

That's what the Empire was all about.

We saw a happy world and we thought, no.

Our greatest export.

Has Britain ever had a crack at Bhutan?

At Bhutan?

Yeah, or is it too mountainous and we don't have the skills or the altitude abilities?

I don't know.

I can answer that in minutes.

Yeah.

Chris is on the Bhutan research.

It was invaded by the British.

Of course, because it's a place in the world.

What were we trying to get from them?

1865 Treaty of Sincere after its defeat by the British Empire.

Blah blah blah.

British protectorate.

blah, blah, blah, separatist groups, blah, blah, blah.

Britain not there anymore.

A dance as old as time itself.

In American News, Mike Pence addressed a crowd during World AIDS Day and once again, as seems to be the administration's policy, did not mention the LBTQ community, which has the most people affected by the disease.

But to be fair, fair, he went with the, if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all policy, which is a sharp break from the president's be an asshole at all times policy.

So that takes courage to make that.

Are we seeing a split

in the Trump administration?

Yeah, it's between cowardness and mean-spiritedness.

Right.

That's a huge break.

Yeah.

Did he know it was World AIDS Day or was it just his daily address in which he didn't mention LGBTQ plus people?

As much as his rhetoric is different than the president's rhetoric, it follows a larger strategy.

The administration is using a strategy where if they don't acknowledge something, that means it doesn't exist.

Oh, we've all done that.

Right.

Right.

Like with the environment.

There is no issue with global warming.

So because of that, there is no issue with it because we said there was no issue with it.

We didn't even address it.

That's a very simple solution.

Very simple.

So that means that the LGBT community is not dealing with HIV AIDS.

Then they've cured it.

Right.

Because

they're not affected by it.

God, that's a genius.

Yeah.

That's so much simpler than medical science.

Yeah, it's well here's the thing.

Scientists do not support this with their fake news and fake logic and fake experiments and research.

They would strongly disagree.

Right.

But I mean, Pence

giving a speech on World AIDS Day, given his track record of not being entirely inclusive or supportive of gay rights and related issues.

To me, that was rather like getting Ronald MacDonald to give the keynote speech at a slow food conference or Jack Ruby to give an address on the critical importance of allowing due legal process in criminal cases.

It was bizarre at best, awkward and unhelpful.

Scott Schutz of the LGBTQ advocacy group Lambda Legals HIV project called Mike's.

Actually, I'll do this as a multiple choice, Helen.

Can you guess what Scott Schotch called this said about Pence's speech?

Did he describe it as A, insightful, sensitive, tolerant, open-minded, and above all, deeply rooted in scientific knowledge and research?

B laugh out loud, funny, genuine belly laughs from start to finish, five stars.

C oddly sexy, or D, short-sighted and biased.

I'm gonna go B.

Incorrect.

Incorrect was short-sighted and biased.

Classic Pence.

Christmas news now and Christmas has been cancelled and reinstated by a school in Yorkshire, Lady Lumley School in Pickering, told pupils that Christmas was off

because the true meaning of Christmas had, quotes, been buried under an avalanche of commercialisation.

Isn't that the true meaning of Christmas?

Well, yes.

Snow of commercialization.

Yeah, absolutely.

And also, it's not Christmas that has been buried under an avalanche of commercialization.

It's the entire planet.

And that's of which Christmas is clearly part.

Well, also, what is the true meaning of Christmas, given that it's a pagan festival co-opted by Christians?

It's also an individual's birthday party where everyone else gets presents.

Oh, vexing.

Very upsetting.

Luckily, he's so generous-spirited, he doesn't mind.

And also, I mean, it's buried under an avalanche of commercialization, yes, but also you could express that as saying made made a fk of a lot more fun

because, you know,

before the avalanche of commercialization, just spend the entire day in church praying and stuff, eat a roast hedgehog or whatever was scraped off the road and then die in hospital of typhoid.

Now, presents all the way.

Surely that's a huge improvement for Christmas.

In terms of Christmas as a gateway piece of religion for drawing people in, surely that's

yeah, I mean that's going to get kids going to get kids involved.

Probably people with calendars, yeah, gifts.

Actually, it's the classic Christian strategy, isn't it?

I mean, in Africa, it's you want food, take this book.

It's pretty much the same line, yeah.

Just because you get people involved, get impressionable young people hooked on religion, you get a lot of presents, happy songs, everyone being nice, donkey midwife, and magic reindeer, and granny getting drunk and falling asleep in a fruitcake.

Are you in?

Hell yeah, good.

Now, Easter.

Nail him up, nail him up, nail him up.

Repent, you evil sinner, or you'll burn in hell.

Eat an egg, eat an egg, eat an egg.

I thought the school was actually onto something, though, because the teacher said there'll be no cards, no parties, no gifts, and no Christmas tree unless the students wrote a persuasive argument about where they should celebrate Christmas.

And I think

being made to question this fairly ubiquitous holiday is quite a good idea, isn't it?

Right.

It is.

Also, you have to ask, in terms of commercialisation, who started it.

And clearly, it was the three wise men pitching up with their gold, BitFlash, frankincense, new age aromatherapy bullshit, and whatever the third one was.

Some controversy over the term myrrh in the Bible.

Current school of biblical thought is that the gospel stenographer St.

Linda was sitting in the corner of the manger typing up the minutes of the holy birth.

And just as wise man number three

was telling them what he'd brought them as a present, baby Jesus did his first ever puke, a micro-messianic chunder forever commemorating the word the.

Archaeologists digging up the manger think the actual gift was a breast pump, ironically.

And of course, there is nothing more Christian than the commercialisation of Christmas speaking as a Jew.

Yorkshire has a pudding, right?

Yorkshire does have a pudding.

Thank you.

Past the citizenship test.

Is this the most notable thing to happen in Yorkshire since the creation of the pudding?

Since...

War of the Roses.

Yeah.

I don't know.

When do the Yorkshire pudding?

Well, it's a...

Do you know what it is, Hori?

No.

It's a batter pudding.

It's a kind of like pancake mixture that you put in the oven when you're making a roast meat,

say, and it kind of puffs up and you fill it with gravy.

And

you can make it a dessert as well if you so wish.

You look a little upset.

Yeah, how do you make it a dessert?

You just fill it in with like frosting?

I guess or fruit, maybe stewed fruit, jam.

Jam.

Gravy and jam.

It's the complete all-in-one meal.

And have you thought about having a pudding news section of the bugle?

Next time you're on, Harry.

Okay, great.

I like the idea of doing Yorkshire traditions with Hari.

Next week, dripping.

The week after that, Philip Larkin.

And the week after that, defensive opening batting.

Are you just dazzled by the plethora of ways in which Britain uses the word pudding?

Yes.

It's so strange because pudding has just meant dessert my whole life.

And now all of a sudden you're telling me it could be something as disgusting as a meatbowl.

Oh, no, it could be far worse than that.

It could be,

yeah, it can be a blood sausage, it can be a kind of beefy thing that has a pastry made with the kidney fat of animals.

Man, this is like when I found out about the pie.

So disappointed because the pie always meant like this beautiful, like delicious, sweet thing at the end of dinner.

And again, another, there's no need for me eating it, but yeah.

Just open your mind, open your crust to other options.

Luckily, Christmas was eventually reinstated for the children of Lady Lumley School, but with no Santa, instead, to keep it real religiously, they had someone's mate's dad come into school dressed as King Herod and slay all the boys.

Just the first-born ones, so you would have been all right.

I think the one Herod, didn't he do all the under-twos?

Oh, yeah, no, you're right.

Yeah, I don't think he was a first-borner, yeah, he was an under-twoer.

Well, you're 44, so you'd be all right.

In other Christmas news, a teacher in New Jersey has been sacked for telling children that Santa Claus doesn't exist.

Yeah, well, people are fired for telling the truth now.

No one likes experts.

Truth is the enemy of freedom.

Testify.

This teacher apparently told the children that Santa wasn't real and that parents just buy presents and put them under the tree.

She told the children that reindeer cannot fly and that elves don't exist.

Prove it.

She went on to say that Tooth Fairy isn't real.

And the same goes for the Easter bunny.

I mean,

I mean, if they're upset about finding that out, wait until they find out that their entire democracy is a sham.

Yeah.

Looks on their faces.

And the world they're going to be adults in is melting.

Also, this is an unfortunate position the children are in.

They have to now show gratitude for their parents buying them gifts and giving them money.

That is something they did not have to worry about previously.

No, absolutely.

As a parent of...

So

in in our family, we got one present from Father Christmas.

This is how I discovered, I say discover, this is how my suspicion is not proved yet, that I'd started to believe that Father Christmas did not exist.

Because we used to get one present from Father Christmas on the top of our stockings, and I went to a friend's house and she had loads of presents.

I said, who's that from?

She said, that's from Father Christmas.

Where was that one from?

That's from Father Christmas.

All the presents were from Father Christmas.

Meanwhile, five-year-old Sherlock Holmes that I was, I started to piece it all together.

The whole edifice of Western capitalism came crushing down before my eyes.

You didn't figure out that Father Christmas was a bigot?

I mean, it is possible he was anti-Semitic.

I guess there was.

He's always got that card up his large red sleeve.

Yeah.

What are the ethics about lying to children?

What's your rubric on this, Andy, as the possessor of children?

I tell them nothing but the pure unvarnished truth, Helen, as you very well know.

I know that they really seem to have trouble understanding what is reality and what isn't because you've raised them.

That's a good skill to have, though, isn't it?

To not know what's real and what's not.

That helps you navigate the modern world.

Just to assume that nothing can be fully trusted because you have a father who is an inveterate bullshitter.

I've set them up for life.

Sure.

I have told my daughter that Baby Jesus and that wasn't real, but can't bring myself to tell her the Santa side of things.

Well, she gets a bit more benefit from Santa because there's a material gain.

Whereas, what's Baby Jesus ever done for her apart from die for her sins?

There was also a slight inconsistency, Hari, in the American education system, but it seems that you're not allowed to debunk Santa, but you are allowed to bunk creationism.

That is correct.

Right.

Yes.

This makes complete sense to me, yes.

My father-in-law does a lot of Santa gigs because he looks exactly like Santa,

but his business card says the Santa Dave, because I think he wants it just to be clear that he is an ambassador for the Santa myth.

Right.

Rather than

actual Santa, the Santa.

There's also a lot of fonts on his business cards.

I mean, do we know that Santa Claus's real name is not Dave?

And that he has, you know,

his real name is kind of Nicholas, isn't it?

St.

Nicholas.

Because I don't think Hulk Hogan's real name was Hulk, was it?

Prove it.

No, it was Terry.

Went with Hulk.

Good idea.

Is his surname really Hogan?

No, I believe it.

Balea.

Balea.

Did you look that up, Chris, or did you also know it?

No, I was a wrestling wrestling fan in the 80s.

Yeah, I'm a casual wrestling fan.

I felt bad that I knew it, though.

Did you feel bad?

Doesn't look like it feels bad.

No, I feel pretty chuffed, actually.

He looks pretty chuffed.

Terry the wrestler.

It doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Anyway, so there it is.

You can't tell children about

the tooth fairy.

The government can tell everyone in America to believe in the oil and coal fairy, but the tooth fairy is out.

And you can't stick it to the sacred Christian cow that is the Easter bunny.

And the origin of the Easter bunny is quite interesting.

Apparently Jesus on the cross did bunny ears with his fingers behind the head of a Roman centurion, which was pretty much his only available form of protest given the,

you know,

naily-naily hand-hand thing.

And then he laid an egg.

He did lay an egg.

Maybe I should learn about Christianity from another source.

I'm starting to question some of these things that you are saying.

I'm not sure how true they are.

Jesus laying an egg

proved that he didn't.

He could do miracles.

Last week, we launched the Bugle DrabVent calendar.

A drab thing for every day of

December,

up to and including the 24th.

We're picking it up now with your DrabVent calendar entry for the 10th of December.

10th of December.

A packet of stale cheese biscuits found open but mostly uneaten in a cupboard, now four years past their best before date, the top one slightly nibbled.

11th of December.

A newspaper advertisement for orthopaedic socks cut out with scissors with the order section filled out but never sent.

12th of December.

Dennis and Marjorie from down the road.

13th of December.

A carriage on a commuter train on a wet January morning stopped outside a disused warehouse, running 14 minutes late.

14th of December, a lone grey sock in a hedge.

15th of December, a video cassette of highlights of the 1997 Seniors Golf Tour.

There will be more from the Dragvent calendar if I can be asked to do it next week.

Saw an advent calendar in a supermarket in Streatham that each day you get a different screwdriver head.

and by Christmas you've got a full socket set

that's what Jesus would have wanted it was a carpenter

other news now and

how old are you Harry 36 and how old do you would you like to be considered legally I'm 36 okay right because as our age transformation correspondent a man in Holland has attempted to have his age legally reduced from, what, 69 to 49?

Yes, I believe that's right.

Right.

69, good age.

Yep.

But yeah, I mean, I think his hope is that they would lessen his age 20 years, but I don't think he took into account that the courts could do nothing for his face or his potential poor penile functions.

seemed to be key in this.

He wanted to be younger so that he could date younger women on Tinder.

Yes, which, first of all, what better way to start a relationship than with an elaborate lie sanctioned by the courts?

I mean, also, creepiness is not a measurable thing.

It's a feeling.

He is creepy.

Right.

There's nothing you can do about that.

But he doesn't self-identify as creepy.

Therefore, he does not want us to see him as creepy.

He self-identifies as a young god.

Right.

I can have all the girls I want, but not after I tell them I'm 69.

Right.

When did gods need the legal system to stop time?

That's a good point.

The Greek gods didn't think about that.

No.

Breaking the law all over the place.

Yeah, I mean, they were really not.

I don't think they were necessarily role models that you should look up to romantically.

The Greek gods don't.

They're not respectful at dating.

Truly appalling individuals.

Also, he's saying that gender is

something that one could change, so why couldn't he change his age?

And the difference is that

for many trans people, they actually believe they've been in the body for much of their life.

And for this man, like, there is no way that when he was 21, he was like, I am one.

I am one years old.

Mommy, mommy, can I have a nipple, mummy?

Can I have a...

This is a sociology lecture, sir.

Mommy, I'd like a nipple, mummy.

Like, that's ridiculous.

Of course, like, he's a liar.

Like, if it's not something he has.

I spend a lot of time with one-year-olds.

Do they not say that?

Mummy, I'd like a nipple, mummy.

Not necessarily in those words.

The court said that he is at liberty to feel 20 years younger and to act accordingly.

Which is kind of the response my mum would have given if I had ever asked her for something.

Manage your own emotions, dear.

I would like to consider

legally considered 66 years old so I can get a free seat on a bus.

Also, you could much more easily become the oldest person in the world.

You could hit a good like 150 and just, you know, because you

made your age 80 years older.

Records are record, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's legal.

A 150-year-old man on Tinder would be very funny.

I reckon a lot of people would just to see.

Yeah, yeah.

He would

do well.

I can't believe everything still works for 150/slash 36.

He's ejaculating sawdust.

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

Hari, you are on at the Soho Theatre until the 16th?

The 16th, and then I'm in Copenhagen and then Amsterdam, then

Antwerp.

Full European tour.

I begin at Soho Theatre on the 18th of December, running through to the 5th of January with a few days off for things like Christmas and New Year.

Do come along to that.

We will also feature Alice Fraser.

Helen, anything to plug?

I've got a giga SF Sketch Fest on January the 25th.

There you go.

Consider that plugged.

Thank you for listening, buglers.

By next time we record, we might have an entire new government.

We might have voted to join South America.

Who knows?

These are exciting times.

What are we going to get for Christmas?

A complete catastrophic collapse of British democracy.

What we always wanted.

Until next time, goodbye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please, come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.