Termites and Populists – Bugle 4088

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Bugler!

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Sue LeFat.

This is the Bugle, audio newspaper for this quite visibly visual world with me, Andy Zoltzmann.

And this week, I'm talking to you live from london we are once again in the st paul's studio this week right here in sprinting distance to the domey shelter of the almighty lord just in case the brexpocalypse comes early and i'm joined today by the woman who is to the bugle what discussions about whether you would rather catapult jacob rees mogg or eric trump into space are to the world in other words far more frequent than was the case even two years ago it's alice friser hello andy hello buglers how's things how's auntieing oh it's so good I have to say I looked after her the other day to let my brother and his wife go and watch the new Harry Potter movie and I think my experience was much more realistic than theirs.

We are recording on Thursday the 22nd of November.

Yesterday, the 21st of November marked 100 years since women were given the right to stand for Parliament in Britain.

And so we ask, has it worked?

I mean Brexit.

You know Brexit didn't happen when there were only men in Parliament, did it?

Interestingly, the legislation, Alice, gave women over the age of 21 the right to stand for election as an MP, but they weren't able to vote until they were 30.

I mean, that is pretty good.

I mean, that's what I want in my life.

I just want to be given power without any responsibility.

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

This week, a travel section on the United Arab Emirates.

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Put all your concerns to one side.

Seriously, because if you think about anything, you'll be arrested and jailed.

They've got people all over that.

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Free audio origami.

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is a necked

waterfowl into this.

The swan is a long-necked waterfowl often seen on rivers.

Top story this week, termite news.

Alice, you are the bugles

and

termite correspondent.

I am indeed.

And there's an incredible amount of termite news.

As with all termite news, you start looking and then you uncover more and more and more until you have to move out of your house.

Dr.

Martin, an entomologist at the University of Salford in England, has discovered a termite city.

It's built by Syntermes dirus, I think that's right, among the largest termite species at about half an inch long.

And there are about 20 million mounds.

And they're spread across an area as large as Britain, making it the biggest metropolis ever discovered.

This is an ancient civilization.

The youngest mound is about 690 years old, and the oldest is at least 3,820 years old, which is about the age of the Great Pyramids in Giza in Egypt.

So

basically, termites are way more futuristic than we will ever be.

There is no inter-mound conflict.

They seem to all be from the same family, and they're doing it right, Andy.

Right.

Because

I mean, human civilization, I think we can all agree, is going through a bit of a moment right now.

Yeah.

So maybe there are lessons to be learned from.

I mean, the termites are far more enduringly successful species than humans.

I mean, we're doing all right.

I'm at top of the rankings right now, but it could be just a momentary, it could be like black bonrovers winning the Premier League.

We need to take a heavily chewed leaf out of the Book of the Termites and get out of it together, Andy.

The Book of the Termites, that's my favourite bit of the Old Testament, by the way.

Yeah, so this termite city, the size of Britain, and but the problem that comes with dangers.

The property prices in in these centrally located termite maps are f ⁇ ing ridiculous, especially if you're a working class termite doing a manual job, sorry, a mandible job.

It takes you, I mean, the commute is a shitting nightmare.

I mean, if you're a termite living in a city the size of Britain, you've got a life expectancy of around one year and you live on the outskirts, you will literally never get to work.

I haven't done the mat on that, but I assume it's true.

I mean, given that I now know that there is a termite city the the size of Britain existing in Brazil, I feel much less guilty about when I find a termite telling it to go back to where it came from.

Right, God, you've been staying in Britain too long, haven't you?

Brexit has seeped into your Australian assumptions.

Oh come on, we've been really good at racism for a long time, Andy.

But I think, you know, speaking as a Britain, I think we relate to the termite in this country.

It's a very British insect in a lot of ways.

It's uh the natural colonisers.

They have a horrifically unhealthy diet and the queen lives for way longer than the ordinary plants.

It's uncanny, isn't it?

Absolutely uncanny.

Also, you do communicate through a series of complex scents.

Yep, that's the British way.

Just smelling each other and getting messages around that way.

Chips.

Pickled eels.

In more termite news now, a discovery among termite colonies in Japan suggests that in termite colonies males can be discarded from societies in which they once played an active role.

Now this, Andy, is a terrible example of the unforeseen consequences of feminist rhetoric.

It is not enough that we've got a feminised society, soft playgrounds, boys aren't allowed to punch each other in the face in the classroom anymore.

Now we have to impose our feminist principles on the termites too.

Thanks, Ms.

Pankhurst, you horrible suffragette slag.

I bet you didn't think this...

That's my...

Absolutely my favourite Bob Dylan song.

I bet you didn't think this would happen when you decided to encourage your followers followers to fight the king's horse.

This is a terrible thing for male termites who probably built the termite mounds in the first place.

We know that statistically speaking, male termites are more logical and powerful than female termites, and now I just can't support these pussy hat-wearing man-hating rad feminist mites.

What's next?

Stop eating wood because it reminds you of penis?

I mean, probably not.

They have tiny rudimentary brains and they don't understand why they do anything.

That's termites, not feminists.

Obviously.

obviously, I am a feminist, Andy.

I've just been struggling with some of the extreme ends of the feminist movement at the moment.

I feel like you know, you say you're a feminist, and then you immediately get associated with like the ones who are on Twitter saying horrible things.

I feel like the kind of very loud, angry feminists are like the erect nipples on the body of feminism.

Right.

Like, you want to ignore them, but you can't.

Yeah, I mean, that's a

good way of of putting it, I guess, in a lot of ways.

Yeah, so I mean they they found four tha they 4,200 termites without a single male termite.

And it's possible they just excavated the termite hen party to end all termite hen parties.

Or maybe they would have just found one harrowed-looking male termite in the middle in the remnants of the police outfit.

It's possible all the boy termites are playing Dungeons and Dragons.

We just don't know.

But termites in many ways, they've laid down the blueprint for human society.

I think they're a species species we should look up to, not just because they've lasted for since the dinosaurs.

Yeah.

But also,

there's a lot of similarities.

Advanced cities, advanced social structures, the willingness to destroy absolutely everything in their path to get done what they want to get done.

These are our heroes and our role models.

And just one quick termite fact before we move on.

The popular spread marmite is made of a combination of crushed termite kidneys and the rendered down remnants of marsupials

or martyrs, one of the two, I forget.

It's Australian variable Vegemite by contrast, your national dish.

Yeah, tell me about it.

Is named after the ancient tribe, the Vegemites, who were wiped out by the Babylonians in the year 2x cubed BC, I think, for an extra two marks.

What is X?

I've actually eaten termites.

Have you?

Yeah, they taste like carrots.

Are you sure you didn't eat a carrot?

I mean,

carrots don't tend to cool up your fingers whilst you try to eat them often.

But you ate live termites.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, and what was the occasion of this?

I was on holiday and we were on a forest tour.

Are you a secret agent?

Yes.

And all secret agents, famously, have to eat termites as part of the music.

Of your triathlon training or something.

It was.

I guess if you get peckish on the...

If you're cycling.

If you get lost in the woods and there's just a termite city, what are you going to eat?

What if the termites been taking steroids?

You could fail a drug.

That would be an an interesting excuse wouldn't it for a sport i ate a contaminated termite shitload of doped up termites

so just just sorry i didn't let you get to the end of your story of why the fk you ate a termite we were just on a a forest walk and the guide just grabbed a stick and he and he stuck it in what turned out to be a termite mound and said who wants to eat termites and this dickhead was the first to put his hand up right and ate them off the stick as they sort of you know just ate them off my fingers yeah and they were tasty yeah And apparently, they taste like carrots because

they're high in keratin, as are carrots.

Right.

That's the future of food, isn't it?

I'm prepared to be shouted down and be told that's absolute bullshit in terms of the keratin.

Are you 100% sure he wasn't with you?

No, I'm not.

He did stick a stick in the ground and make me eat termites.

I mean, that explains why you can't sustain human body weight and you just collapse if I put a foot on you.

Well, this is a very exciting development for food: the non-vegan carrot

In more undermining the foundations of civilization news, Trump.

Yes, another exciting week for the leader of the Free World.

He issued a statement on Saudi Arabia relating to the extrajudicial murder of a journalist.

Now, look.

It was interesting, this statement.

We all know that international politics is a complex game of morally ambiguous, ethically expedient, cheaty poker.

And it's not so much the passive validation of the orchestrated murder of a dissenting journalist that bugs me with Donald Trump's statement.

It is the ridiculously excessive use of exclamation marks in a presidential statement about a murder.

That does not sit well with me.

That to me is the sign that truly civilization is doomed and rightly so.

The number of exclamation marks makes the statement look a little bit like one of those gossipy epistolatory novels from the time of Jane Austen when they're trying to characterize an idiot.

But he released this statement, which was about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, trying to get ahead, I think, of the CIA as a statement about the cause of the murder.

The CIA has reportedly concluded it was ordered by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But in it, Trump basically acknowledges that Khashoggi was murdered with bone sores and the sanction of the state, but this is entirely mitigated by the fact that the nation in in which the atrocity occurred also happens to have a lot of oil.

He just straight up has said that, that if America doesn't retain good relations with Saudi Arabia, they'll go off and make an oil deal with China or Russia.

That is putting the and the and the ik into realpolitik

and the

a

into betraying the fundamental principles for which your nation purports to stand.

I don't want to be too negative about this, Andy.

If you put aside the questions of humanity, honour, dignity, and the rights of U.S.

citizens abroad, which he definitely has, it's quite reassuring on a number of levels.

Yeah, it's admirably honest in a number of ways.

It's refreshingly honest.

He's clear about what his financial allies can get away with, which is not just murder, but really gross avant-garde gang murder with a gruesome medieval torture twist.

Well, that's it.

I've put some thought into it.

Yeah, no matter what you do, Trump is not going to leave you.

It's not like you're one of his wives who got slightly older than you were when he married you.

It's really reassuring from the perspective of those of us who wonder sometimes how much we'd have to f up before our family stopped loving us.

Right,

I thought it was from the point of view of those who one day dream of being the next Mrs.

Trump.

I mean, it's good.

If you're Trump's kids, you don't have to worry about getting caught doing drugs or dismembering someone alive in an embassy.

It's like, dad, dad, dad, I have something to tell you.

First of all, I have a lot of oil.

Secondly, I love you.

Third, I murdered someone.

The statement begins: America first, exclamation mark.

mark.

Again, don't read it in a 1930s German accent.

The world is a very dangerous place.

Exclamation mark.

It is, as memorably, the line with the stripy tail hanging out of its mouth said to the baby zebra.

Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an, quote, enemy of the state, in quote, marks, but my decision is in no way based on that.

I mean, that is an enemy of the state.

That's alarmingly mid-20th century language, that, and he seems completely fine with that he said after my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year the kingdom agreed to spend and invest 450 billion dollars in the United States now there there we go as Oscar Wince Bernard Wilde Shaw Churchill himself said

we've already discovered what kind of nation you are America now we are just haggling over the price and over this I think this was the exclamation mark that really got to me he said it could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event maybe he he did, and maybe he didn't.

Exclamation mark.

Look at some kind of slapstick comedy of mistaken identity.

No exclamation marks when you are talking about a murder.

Please, out of all the things you've done, Mr.

Trump, I've found my breaking point.

I mean, this is a really, I mean, this is an astonishing statement.

And Fred Ryan, who was the publisher of the Washington Post, which employed the journalist in question, he called the whole statement a betrayal of long-established American values of respect for human rights and the expectation of trust and honesty in our strategic relationships.

Which, yeah, obviously, but come on, how many times can you accuse someone of betraying everything he's meant to stand for before it starts to lose its punch?

Like, you know, it's a bit, it's like the announcement of Jimmy Carr as the face of a new panel show.

It just doesn't have the kick it used to have.

And it is, as you say, it's nothing new.

to see Trump unzip his presidential trouser, uncoil the penis of political provocation and split a firm jet jet of mendacious madness into the much-betrayed eye of American values.

But I just...

Saul's show, Andy.

I just...

But I think he could take the honesty even further.

I wish he'd gone a little further and laid down his policy on exactly how many political opponents he thinks the Saudis should kill and maybe the trade value of each kill on a sliding scale.

So maybe the first five

slayings of political opponents of the Saudi royal family are free of any economic consequence.

Then say it's like two billion off the value of the next trade trade deal, each of the next 10 kills, then $5 billion off until the value of all U.S.

Saudi trade deals is below $25 billion a year, at which point America can then afford to have an ethic.

That I would respect.

In other Trump news, Thanksgiving today, as we record, and in accordance with the great tradition of America, Donald Trump pardoned a turkey.

It's one of the great

American traditions.

And yeah,

I mean, it is a week for forgiveness.

It is very much.

If you can forgive an entire nation for the extrajudicial murder of a journalist, you can forgive a turkey.

But what is never talked about on these occasions is exactly what the turkey goes through on such horrific occasions, almost

like a sort of mock execution type when it's building up to Thanksgiving and then suddenly reprieved.

I mean, it must take a psychological toll.

It's like me going for my visa renewal.

Very similar.

Stop going to visa renewals in abattoirs.

Anyway, to find out, we are delighted and honored to be joined by the turkey.

That was pardoned by President Trump this week.

Terry, thank you very much for joining us.

It is a pleasure, Andy.

Love the show.

Thanks, Terry.

Now, it's been a very interesting time for you recently, a difficult time in many ways.

Yes, Andy, I am not going to lie to you.

The run-up to Thanksgiving in America is, shall we say, an awkward time of the Turkey year.

I mean, have you spent much time living with a load of turkeys?

No, no, I haven't, Terry.

I did have an old colleague who did a kind of a bit of acting and appeared in two or three turkeys, but I've not actually lived with turkeys.

Well, Andy, let me tell you, turkeys are fing annoying.

Can you say fing on this show?

By all means.

Fing f ⁇ Donald fing Trump.

I've shat pellets with more of a moral compass than that peanut-faced loon.

Okay, Terry, can we focus a bit?

So when the President pardoned you, how did that make you feel?

I'm thinking if he is on my side, what the f must I have done?

Not nice.

Not nice at all.

So do you think in this day and age, Terry, the president really should be issuing pardons to turkeys?

I mean, it still makes more sense than issuing a presidential pardon to a convicted human person, but it still looks bad.

When your president is displaying more humanity towards something that is not human than he does to things that are human, well, America, you need to take a long, hard bath with yourself as a nation.

Also, I was guilty as charged.

Guilty of what?

Of being a turkey.

It is a capital offence at this time of year.

The law's the law.

Actually, I don't know if that is still the case, but anyway, do you want to fill my wattle?

I'm fine, thanks, Terry.

None taken.

And a quick word for you, Brits.

I feel for you.

I voted for Christmas.

With hindsight, maybe it was a mistake as a turkey.

But well, the campaign was so persuasive.

I know what you're going through.

Um, okay, Terry, but before we go, uh, Alex, have you got any questions for Terry the Turkey?

Uh yeah, Terry the Turkey, I have a question.

Um, how do you feel about the birds aren't real conspiracy theory?

This is just unsubstantiated rumor, fake news.

Obviously, there is nothing in it.

Of course, we are real.

If you prick us, do we not shit on your car windscreen?

Enemy human detected.

Australian blood skeptic, Alice, Rebecca, Balthasara, Quetza, Coascalinette, Navratiloba, Fraser, Horn, Killer, Flamingo, Agent, Chip Malfunction, Emergency, Layon A, Layon A, Layon A.

Ah, Ah, better out than in.

Andy, it's been a pleasure coming on the show.

Terry, thank you very much for joining us.

Wow, Andy.

Wow.

Sometimes you see bullshit that rises like the dawn and it dazzles your eyes.

It's just nice on a show at least you sometimes get to meet the

real history makers and beat Maria at the centre of

very much the bird scaramucci.

I mean, not to buy into the birds aren't real conspiracy theory, but

I have a weird feeling that that bird wasn't real.

It was certainly an angrier turkey than the one you spoke to one Christmas recently.

I've forgotten I'd done that.

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Quick Brexit update now.

And well there was an attempted coup against Theresa May, our Lord and Saviour,

which appears to have failed,

led by Jacob Reese Mogg, in which a group of old grey white men, the great underrepresented minority in British politics traditionally,

attempted to unseat Theresa May and basically completely failed.

Essentially, they wanted to drag Britain back to where it belongs, the past.

We're more comfortable there, it just suits us.

The present brings us out in a rash decision and the future is just not our thing in many, many ways.

Jacob Rhys Mogg, the head conspirator,

he's very much the most convincing evidence yet produced that time travel will at some point be developed.

He's essentially come here from the 1920s and he's now doing desperately doing everything he can to get us back there.

And if he has to take the whole nation with him to achieve that, so be it.

Europe in general, Alice, is taking this slightly historically curious drift towards the far right and populism.

Now, populism in 20th century Europe had, I think it's fair to say, a bit of an up and down time.

It didn't all go

well.

Yes.

I don't think I'm out of line in saying that.

No, Andy, I think you're probably in line there.

But

despite its brief unpopularity towards the beginning of this century, it seems to be coming back in vogue like nip waistcoats

and I don't know what those are.

A nip waistcoat.

Nip nip waist waist, like a waltz, never mind.

Just, it was a thought.

Anyway,

like monocles and curly moustaches.

What's happened is there's been a survey, and the survey has revealed that one in four Europeans is voting for a populist party now.

It's almost like we're living in a post-Freudian society where every individual feels that rather than achieving satisfaction by fulfilling their roles and duties within a society, they have to actualise themselves through the indulgence of id-driven fear to anger transference.

Like, on one hand, it is easy to be annoyed that people are choosing to support politicians who are providing overtly simple answers to complex questions in a world of information overload.

But really, it's a lot easier to understand if you think of it as a response to profound economic and emotional disruptions that can result in a group's loss of self-esteem.

You know, remember when Twitter appeared and we thought it was just a phase?

On one hand, it is awful that the anti-immigrant rhetoric is being bolstered by increasingly dog whistle racism, but you know, you have to forgive vulnerable groups that are attempting to deal with a traumatic sense of disorder by utilising maladaptive defence mechanisms like denial and projection.

I spoke to a therapist on the bus.

Look, I think our options are a complete breakdown of social order and pandemic civil war or promoting the development of supportive mentoring relationships, relationships, improved parenting skills, and educational approaches that focus on emotional development.

Well, which one of those two options is going to make better films?

Regrettably acquired throat injury news now.

Oh, I would have gone for knob-knotting news.

Potato, potato.

We are in the studio on Cock Lane here, near St.

Paul's Cathedral, and appropriate enough.

There was a story about

a man being described as a hero.

In fact,

a hero, a legend, a martyr, and an idol.

Yeah.

For what exactly?

For going viral on social media by posting his selfie from the hospital where he was admitted after rupturing his

thorax.

No.

Epiglottish.

No, he ruptured his air passage.

He ruptured the air passage in his throat by giving fellatio very enthusiastically to a 10.5-inch penis.

What's that in centimetres?

Ink.

For our younger listeners.

No one measures penises in centimetres, Andy's.

Andy,

it's inches or

foot-long subs.

Is it not time to

decimalise the male member?

I don't know exactly what the length was.

He estimated it and he called it in his post a Hulk-sized dick.

Hulk-sized, okay.

Hulk-sized.

People are generally in awe of this, that he not only did he manage to suck this dick to completion,

go home, and only realize that there was something wrong the next morning, but that he was very open about his struggle to overcome the size of his own throat

in his enthusiasm.

There's a lot of advice in the comments sections about how to avoid ending up with a quote lung full of hot jizz.

But other than that, it seems to be mostly pro

cocksucking induced injury.

It was 26.6%.

That's coincidentally the test bowling average of the Great England fast bowler, Johnson.

I mean, I do worry about the

lowering of the bar of heroism in society.

This man could be described as a hero.

This is an admiring tweet, legend, a martyr, and an idol.

You'd thought, you know, maybe who could that be about?

Could it be about Jesus Christ,

Joan of Arc?

I've also offers a bit of a weird middle name.

Martin Luther King, Spartacus, Bodicea, or a man who'd ruptured his throat or radically flugelhorning a 10-inch pineid.

I just think we're losing perspective on what true heroism is about.

I agree, Andy, and I also think that it's more of a boast than it is a heroic act

to have engaged with such a large, beautiful appendage.

I think he should have.

I mean, I guess unless it protected the

bystanders from

the long full of arches.

I just don't know.

No, I mean, I think he would be more heroic if he had engaged with an unattractive or jigsaw-shaped

appendage.

Right.

But I mean the currency of the legend, I mean the word, obviously, legend has, the value of the term legend has collapsed like a 1920s German mark.

And I mean Hercules must be non-existently spinning in his mythological grave thinking that, oh, I had to do 12 seriously fing difficult labours, including cleaning out enough shit to start a war from some shitty stables.

You people wouldn't know a real legend if it chopped the heads off a hydra in your kitchen and then chopped them off again in time before working out a more viable long-term solution.

Yeah, I mean, Xena Warrior Princess was forged in the heat of battle, not forged in the heat of a lung full of hot juice.

I just keep saying a lung full of hot juice because it makes you flinch every time.

I'm not comfortable with it, Andy, but you're even less comfortable with it.

Lung.

I don't think the word lung belongs there.

And a martyr.

I don't remember seeing anything quite like this story on any of the medieval frescoes I've seen in Italian churches, but maybe I'm looking at them from the wrong angle.

I mean, you haven't seen the lactation of St.

Bernard then.

No, I have not.

It's an absolute classic.

Google it.

After you suggested we cover this story, I've already googled things I did not want to Google.

An idol as well for getting himself hospitalised by the thrumpel stiltskling of a balarmingly engorged transition from this.

I mean, come on!

Choose your words more carefully, people.

Fallatio, of course,

named after a particularly fruity character in one of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays.

From Alas Fallatio, I knew him well.

His little performed blue period.

Actually, that's not the quote.

Right.

Cut that out.

I don't want to sound like I'm misquoting Shakespeare.

Kilogram news and, well, it's bad news for Kilogram fans.

The Kilogram, as you know it, has been fired.

The popular unit of mass, one of the most popular meshes for the past 100 plus years, is having a makeover.

Since the 19th century, the precise definition of the kilodram has been based on a lump of metal in France weighing a kilogram, appropriately enough.

But that's not good enough for today's pedant scientists.

And they're having to update it with some complex shit that I couldn't understand.

I don't like the kilogram being changed because I don't know when I proposed to my wife, I recited a poem that I'd written for her entitled, My Love is Like a Kilogram.

And those words now seem meaningless.

What is a kilogram?

No, now it's referring to a universal constant, Andy.

This is great news.

Scientists have voted to change the reference weight for the kilogram to this fundamental constant of the universe.

Democracy works.

It is important news because actually the lump of metal in the vault in Paris changes fractionally over time as the molecules degrade, which means that previous kilogram-based kilograms were subject to this change.

On the other hand, they didn't change much and who cares?

But the point is,

this is great news for everybody everybody who is weight obsessed.

Right.

I don't mean worried about getting fat.

I mean literally obsessed with weight.

This is the biggest weight news since Weight Watchers changed their name to WW.

Weight is now a fiat currency, entirely imaginary.

We don't have to worry about it anymore.

F body positivity, weight is truly just an imaginary number.

Throw your scales away.

They won't even fall down.

Gravity doesn't matter anymore.

It's a positive side.

I mean, on the other hand, it could be terrible news because arguably it was the movement of money away from the the gold standard to a fiat currency that led eventually to the financial crisis.

What if we have a weight crisis?

What if we all end up with weight inflation like

Violet Beauregard in Willy Wonka?

We'll just float away.

I'm against it.

Shocking.

The General Conference on Weights and Measures has

absolutely wild.

That from May next year, the International System of Units, the SI,

well they've they've said that the speed of light in a vacuum is now going to be two hundred and ninety nine million seven hundred and ninety two thousand four hundred and fifty eight meters per second.

I'm not happy with that.

I didn't vote for that.

This is exactly the kind of expertise that explains why people voted for Brexit.

If you don't show up at the voting poll booth to determine the weight of a kilogram, you don't get to complain about it.

Apparently the Boltzmann constant, K, is now one point three eight zero six times 10 to the power of minus 23 joules per kilogram.

Boltzmann, Zoltzmann, to swap that anyway.

I mean, it's our new definitions of the second, which of course used to be the time it takes to say nice hippopotamus.

Then it was redefined, I think, in the 1930s to the time it takes to do something that takes five minutes divided by 300.

And then it became 100 times the time between the theme music for the archers coming on the radio and me switching the radio.

The meter,

that's been redefined.

Used to be the distance that Napoleon could spit from a seated position

or the height of 28 worms doing a motorcycle pyramid.

That obviously

seven tiers.

The kilogram used to be measured by nipping down in the supermarket and buying a kilogram of grapes, a kilogram of flour, and a kilogram of mince, weighing them and taking an average of the three, often skewed by someone nicking one of the grapes.

And the Kelvin,

that used to be the amount of heat generated by an old man called Kelvin sitting at a bus stop.

Your emails now, and this came in from Ezra Gray on the subject: can someone explain this shirt?

And Ezra writes, I was looking to gauge the sincerity of Hillary 2020 merchandise and came across this and sends a link

to a t-shirt which has Hillary 2020 on with one L and the face of someone who is emphatically not Hillary Clinton.

Now, Alice, I don't know if you are familiar with the work of the 1980s West Indian Test batsman Larry Gomes.

No.

But his first name

was in fact Hillary with one L

and that is his face.

So what we've got here is a pun

involving global politics and 1980s cricket.

I mean, this is absolutely your wheelhouse, Andy.

Well, I think it's not only my wheelhouse.

I don't think I need to do anything else with my life now.

I think I've been exposed to,

not through any of my own doing, but the logical end point of everything I hold dear.

Yeah, at this point, you're going to go throw away all of your clothes, buy a thousand of these t-shirts and wear one on top and then one on each leg.

And also, in fact, Larry Gomes should very much be a poster boy for modern politics because he wasn't a glory seeker.

He was the glue in that West Indian batting line.

He had the flamboyance of Gordon Greenwich, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd

around him.

Back then, they didn't even know how to use emails.

Well, no, silky skills of Wikikeeper Jeffrey Dujan, and of course the battery of terrifying fast bowlers.

Larry Gomes rather prosaic defensive batsman, but did a valuable role in that side.

And is that not what humanity needs right now someone who's just going to get down with the difficult stuff and grind it out for the usa i'm backing larry gomes for president of the usa oh wow celebrity endorsement that's right and i want as his running mates the defensive england batsman chris tavearet i'm i want the gomes taveray ticket to save america and you might scoff at that and you know i know they weren't technically born in america but i didn't stop barack obama who was born in mizlamistan as we know

But surely, you know, it's got to be preferable to have two 1980s Test cricketers has got to be preferable to Trump Pence, surely.

Andy, I'm on his Wikipedia page, and it properly calls him out.

I've never seen such a brutal Wikipedia page.

His stroke range was very limited, favoring the twitch to leg, the odd cover drive, some slides down the gully, and then my favourite bit, and a sort of hook.

That's his official page.

Yeah.

Did a valuable job for that West Indies side.

There's another email here from a man called Stephen, and it contains a link to a story in The Guardian about what is called Stinkgate,

in which the world of professional darts was rocked by two players accusing each other of repeatedly farting during a match.

I mean, that is taking sledging to a next level.

It is.

It was Gary Anderson and the appropriate name Wesley Harms.

And I mean it is rock darts to its very foundations.

I mean that's there's only so much scope for cheating in darts.

So I guess the

covert

nasally disharmonious exflagration

could be

one way of getting some cheeky advantage on your

sorry for the used word cheeky there.

Advantage on your

on your on your opponent um harms who's from uh

from holland responded to uh anderson's accusation he says if he thinks i farted he is one thousand and ten percent wrong

one thousand and ten percent i think that is the biggest sporting percentage I can remember.

I remember Kevin Keegan talked about a thousand percent commitment rate when he was manager of the England football team.

And the great

investigative journal Viz,

Viz magazine, ran an article in which FIFA had to impose a standard 250% maximum commitment rate just to get the market under control.

It's a very funny article.

But 1,010%.

1,010%.

I mean,

he's not short on hyperbole harms.

He said, I swear on my children's lives that it was not my fault.

Right.

And also, this just for you know, I had a bad stomach on stage once before and admitted it.

Yeah.

Therefore,

he's not going to lie about farting on stage now.

That's proof.

And so he in return blamed Anderson, who also denied it, saying it was eggs, rotten eggs, but not from me.

Right.

Every time I walked past, there was a waft.

So that's why I was thinking it was him.

Right.

It definitely wasn't me.

Okay.

And we're very close to getting into, you know, whoever smelled it, dealt it territory.

I mean, you don't want that in top-level sports.

Has anyone contemplated that that there might be a third man on the grassy knoll?

The arcy knoll.

Chris, family just.

Sorry.

That concludes this week's bugle.

Do not forget to buy yourself and all your friends, relatives, and enemies, colleagues, tickets.

to the Soho Show from the 18th of December to the roughly 5th or 6th of January.

Andy Zoltzmann's 2018, The Certifile Fireball History.

Also starring Alice Fraser, of whom you may have heard.

Do come along.

We promise it will be largely funny.

Oh, yes, and my trilogy is coming up on 100,000 downloads.

So if you've been thinking of listening to it, download it and put me over an arbitrary number that won't make me any more money, but will make me happy.

Whereas buying tickets to my Soho Show will make both of us a little bit more money.

So do that.

Like it's not an either-or.

The trilogy is free.

Focus on the commercial operation.

If I were doing that, I would have stayed a lawyer.

Thank you very much for listening.

See you all in Soho from the 18th of December.

We'll be back next week with Tom Ballard and Anuvad Pal.

Until then, buglers, 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.