Octopuses on drugs: Bugle 4081

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers!

Alright, be that way then.

And welcome to this, issue 4081 of The Bugle, for the week beginning Monday, the 24th of September, 2018.

I am Andy Zoltzmann, and and without wishing to blow my own trumpets I no longer own a trumpet and have no wish to own or use one.

Joining me here in London are the mixed doubles partnership that has created

struggle to make the latter stages of Grand Slam tennis tournaments.

For never say never from the female and southern hemispheres of this world, it's Alice Fraser.

Hello buglers, hello Andy.

And on behalf of the North and men, it's Nish Kubar.

Hello Alice.

Hello Buglers.

Hello Drew.

Drew?

Yeah I'm just something I'm trying.

Right.

I thought on the train over, I was like, maybe I'll start calling Zaltzman Drew from now on.

Oh, as an abbreviation of that name.

Of Andrew.

That's a great idea.

It just feels like...

It's a fact that it's made of angling.

Oh, sorry, I thought it was like a Brexit-type

word for dreadful Jew.

It's booth!

Alright.

It's absolutely

this nickname.

I don't say this lightly.

I think this is the best idea I've ever had.

I mean, you are a dreadful Jew and it was Yom Kippur just the other day, and I didn't get an apology from you.

Well, I mean, yeah,

there's nothing tongue in the place.

Where's the atonement?

You wouldn't believe how much time I spent atoning.

If by atoning, you mean looking up a Christian system.

I mean, there is no amount of time you could say that I would not believe.

The only way you could say an amount of time I wouldn't believe is if you said an amount of time that's more than a week.

I'm still working on that.

So this is the bugle for the 24th of September, which means we are recording today.

I mean, I don't need to say anything more than that.

21st of September.

On this day in the year 1170, the kingdom of Dublin fell to Norman invaders, which is ironic because very shortly the bugle, which as we speak is being recorded in the very city where Norman King William the Conqueror was coronated in 1066, will also be invading Dublin to do a live bugle show on the 8th of October at the Sugar Club featuring Alice and David O'Doherty.

And that, of course, follows our show with me and Alice in the Lowry in Salford on the 7th of October.

On this day in 1780, the notorious turncoat Benedict Arnold handed

plans to the West Point military facility to the British, which is also ironic.

Because at the time, the British already had lots of maps and plans anyway, including maps of India, where by coincidence, I will be doing shows on the 1st of October in Bangalore and the 2nd of October in Mumbai.

Plus, on the 30th of September, a radio recording in Kolkata at the Calcutta Club with Anuvab.

Are you going to be in Bangalore on the 1st of October?

Yep.

I wonder if my parents might be there then.

Oh, really?

Well, Andy, I mean, if you need a hand-shifting ticket, to give you some context, when I did a gig in Bangalore in 2014, there were 100 people in the audience, and I was either directly or by marriage related to 30 of them.

I've got some serious pulling power in Bengaluru.

So, more details on those Indian shows, the gig in Bangalore, stroke Bengaluru, is with the wonderful Kunal Camera at the Comedy Club on the 2nd of October in Mumbai at the Cuckoo Club with Anuvab and Anibandas Gupta.

And more, I will tweet details or look them up on the internet.

Use your initiative for heaven's sake, people.

I mean, that's very good.

I tend to know where I am on any given night performing by somebody tweeting that I'm going to be there that night.

Me going, oh good, I better get a train ticket.

Yes, I had in Mumbai,

I had an incident where I was reminded of something that I had to do.

It was the morning after the Cricket World Cup final in 2011

and some young Indians driving a car through the streets of Mumbai pulled up next to me, wound the window down and said, go home, white man.

And it reminded me that i actually had a flight booked the very next morning

andy what's your policy on bringing me back uh pal bhajis from mumbai

what's your policy i don't think i'm going to get out to india until the end of the year right what's your policy

i'll give it a go i'll give it a go i mean how many do you want i mean i want quite a few and the one that i like is really greasy really

how attached are you to clean clothes uh well i mean it's brexit isn't it you know you don't attach anything anymore

everything is open for negotiation.

Also a big week for me.

Last week I, two weeks ago, I was on the British television panel show Mark the Week and I made some jokes that continually and repeatedly use the phrase white people.

What can I say?

When you've got a catchphrase, you've got to use it.

Unfortunately, that led to what can only be described as a tsunami of complaints,

largely sort of going along the lines of, well, how would it be if this was the other way around?

To which you sort of patiently have to say to people, well, it kind kind of has been the other way around for about 2,000 years.

And what they're describing is essentially the development of Western civilization.

But it got so bad that I was featured on the BBC complaints programme, Points of View.

I'm an edgy comedian.

I'm Croydon's Lenny Bruce.

That's the kind of stuff I do now.

Big f ⁇ .

Well, look, we can all be on TV except the other people in this room that aren't you.

Yeah, I mean, my protest against this, I will be refusing to appear on Mock the World

for

13 years of its existence so far.

Anyway, look forward to my edgy new future.

On this day,

in 1645, Louis Joliet, the Canadian explorer, was born, which is also ironic because I will be doing a gig in Toronto, in Canada, on the 20th of October at the Royal Details, also on the internet on this day in 19 BC Virgil the Roman celebrity poet who never went to Newport

became Virgil that dead guy

he popped his Roman clogs on this day 19 BC Virgil of course the author of the Aeneid which was the story of a woman called Enid

a cleaning lady from the Trojan War trying to find a new job after the palace she used to look after and try got smashed up by a rogue horse or something also author of the Georgics, an epic poem about farming.

Try getting that published today, you dead Roman bastard.

And also author of the Etclogs.

Pay attention, I studied Latin at university, a very moving poem about a magic dog who loved eating wooden Dutch shoes, hence the name Et Clogs.

I did drift off towards the end of term 1 of 12.

On this date, in

1327, King Edward II had his clogs involuntarily popped

by repute by having a red-hot metal poker shoved up the place up which you probably least as a king want a red hot metal poker shoved.

His last words according to influential medieval chronicler Ian of Nantwich were

mate, would it have killed you to put some f ⁇ ing Vaseline on it?

Ow.

And I mean ow.

Edward II renowned as one of Britain's shitest monarchs

described as being lazy and incompetent, liable to outbursts of temper over unimportant issues, yet indecisive when it came to major issues.

Oh, no, hang on.

Now that's my online dating profile.

But anyway, at least, a member of the royal family I can actually relate to.

Andy, you have just come up with the latest format for a BBC Daytime Quiz show.

Britain's shitest monarchs.

I thought maybe that's the new dating show, Data Dead Monarch

by Ouija Board.

I think I might have found my perfect match.

As always, some sections of the bugle are going straight in the bin.

This week, a food section, including how to cook an emoji.

If cucumbers were sausages, would onions be kosher.

And we review the latest ethical cheese graters.

And in the latest of our How Would You Like It series of features, a bereaved turkey makes for a very fractious and very feathery Christmas dinner.

Also in the bin, our partner publication, Historical Revision, is a monthly, including classic articles this week, including Bubonic Plague, Fact or Fiction.

New evidence that it was in fact a fake disease

that people pretended to have in order to get some time off work.

Did Roald Amundsen actually reach the South Pole, or was he in fact playing professional golf in Florida?

The Renaissance stole my husband, the untold story of Kathy Da Vinci.

And as we approach the historic 327th anniversary of the beginning of the Salem witch trials, we investigate whether with witchcraft now at an all-time low in Massachusetts, most of the defendants were in fact probably guilty.

And if anything, the authorities did not go far enough.

Top story this week, Brextra, Brextra, read all about it.

The clock is ticking.

And as we speak, Theresa May has resigned herself to the facts.

No easy answers

to the Brexit conundrum.

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma in a gimp outfit, locked in a coffin in the back of a lorry in a disused canal.

I ask this every week.

What the the f is going on?

I mean, I have no idea what's going on.

But basically, in summary, the best I can glean out of the whole situation is that Theresa May has had her worst week since last week and all the other weeks.

She was at a conference in Salzburg with the other EU leaders, and her performance was the most embarrassing thing done by a British person abroad this year.

And bear in mind, earlier this year, I shat myself on a mountain in Peru.

Donald Tusk, the European Council President and the man whose name most sounds like one from an elephant's fake ID, rejected the Prime Minister's checkers.

Little Donny Tusk.

Good, I had Donald Tusk who despite his name is the head of the European Council rather than an eccentric elephant trainer in an 1890s circus.

So great minds think alike.

I was going to go with something about how he was named after a great Australian cricketer and a fleetwood macout.

Decided not to go down that path.

I like the idea that this week we're going to go full rash of on

every joke.

Oh, that is going to be a lot of fun.

Anyway, the Taskmaster General has rejected the Prime Minister's Checkers plan and suggested that Brexit talks may stall entirely over the British government's failure to resolve the Irish border question.

And the question now being asked is, who could possibly have seen this coming?

And the answer is absolutely every f ⁇ ing person with anything approaching the merest flicker of common sense.

Sadly, none of those people have any place in our current government, stuffed as it is with yes men and people who look like they're going to a Halloween party dressed as a Victorian ghost every single day of the year and have gone full method with the costume.

Yeah, Nish, the clock is ticking on Brexit, and like many clocks, it just seems to be going around and around, repeating a lot of the same information on different days.

Move on clocks.

When are we going to have a new hour that just isn't just a bullshit reboot of yesterday's series of hours?

It's fing Brexit is Brexit o'clock.

Wait, is it Brexit is Brexit a.m.

or Brexit is Brexit p.m.

Basically, everything has hinged on the fact that no one has ever resolved the Irish problem.

Like, it's the EU has suggested that Northern Ireland remains part of the single market in the customs union, so that there's no need for a hard border.

Theresa May said that this would sort of dislocate the UK.

Part of the problem for Theresa May is that her government is being propped up by the gaggle of homophobes and lunatics that constitute the Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 MPs are required by her to keep the government upright.

I mean, I say upright, it's standing at best with all the confidence of a shit-faced bambi.

But they obviously don't want

United Ireland and so she's kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place but stuck in the same way that someone is stuck if they voluntarily decided to buy a house between the rock and the hard place.

Well they said it couldn't be done.

They said it shouldn't be done.

They said it can't be done.

But we are plowing ahead with it anyway because we are Britain.

And if we voted to use a sledgehammer to crack ourselves in the nuts, there is no one that can stop us.

Six weeks, Six months to go now.

Nish announced this week marks exactly six months to go until I think the plan is we shut our eyes on the 29th of March 2019, count to 100 and when we open them again it will be 56 BC

and we will take back control.

F you Julius, you Toba wearing twerp.

The crew has played for itself.

Well as the word as the old saying goes Nish,

A week is a long time in politics.

Sure.

But six months is fall when you're trying to negotiate one of the most complicated agreements in history.

From this meeting in Salzburg, it does seem that Theresa May's cunning strategic masterstroke of having no cunning strategic masterstroke is no longer looking like the cunning strategic masterstroke that it first appeared.

And Europe has been really insensitive to our feelings as a nation, complaining, criticising.

There have been almost daily punishment bleatings from a range of top European figures.

Tusk

said that Theresa May's proposed economic partnership with the EU won't work.

Again, no one said anything about things finging working.

This is not what we voted on.

We did not vote to work.

No, no, no, that's no one ever said anything about things having.

It's like saying this heaven shit sounds a bit implausible.

It's about belief.

It's not about reality or logistics.

Emmanuel Macron, Monsieur Middleground himself,

accused Brexiters of

being liars.

And so this is even more true since they left the day after the vote so as not to have to deal with it.

So,

I mean, were they liars or were they just abandoning ship after Titanicking it snout first into the iceberg?

Oh, that sentence hasn't finished either.

Andy, in a weird way, you have really committed to complete satire.

Because what could be a more complete satire of Brexit than embarking on a course of action that you have completely forgotten to finish in any way, shape or form?

I've got a great plan for a joke.

To be absolutely fair to Theresa May, who constantly has the facial expression of someone who's walked through one of my dial farts, she is under pressure from a lot of competing wigs of her party.

Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary from the Labour Party, has accused her of being under the influence of the ERG, which is a sort of hard-right group within the Conservative Party led by Victorian ghost Jacob Reese Mogg.

And

Keir Starmer said it's the ERG tail wagging the dog.

And it's actually a lot worse than that because it turns out that the tail is alarmingly racist and the dog is essentially a canine Doctor Strangelove.

And also, we should just point out that just before we started recording at two o'clock on Friday, Theresa May was due to give a speech about a kind of response to the Salzburg conference.

That speech was then delayed by 15 minutes.

It was meant to start at 1.45.

It started at 2 o'clock as we started recording because there was a power failure in number 10.

And at this point, you've got to think, if you're Theresa May, everything's against you like everything is against you if the if you were being trapped by metaphors you might just think you know what this shit I'm out of here

well there I mean there have been some talk about plots to unseat her there was a leaked Tory dossier apparently running the rule of potential replacement prime ministers

to replace Theresa May either this afternoon or at some point in the future, most likely when she is taken to the vet to be humanely destroyed on the 30th of March next year.

And this dossier, look to the pros and cons of the candidates.

I've got a leaked version of the leaked shopper here.

Boris Johnson, prose.

Not as bad as Bashar al-Assad.

Now, that is from his Tinder profile.

Cons.

I cannot read that on a family show.

Jacob Reese Mogg, prose, has never slayed a basket full of puppies live on national television.

Only in the privacy of his own home.

Another pro, completely unqualified to be Prime Minister.

That's what the Tories are looking for.

And also a pro for the Tories.

He will shore up the electorally crucial dead vote.

Also in the running, a moulding loaf of bread.

The pros being it's less divisive than the human candidates had been tipped.

Cons may become yet another Tory leader to crumble at an election.

And Benjamin Disraeli via Legion Board.

Pros.

He's been dead for 137 years.

That's got to play well with the electorate.

electorate.

He's experienced, a proven winner after romping home in the 1874 general election, of course.

He has no baggage with the EU, and he's more in touch with today's young people than Jacob Reese Mogg.

Also, a keen fan of the British Empire.

So the perfect man to lead the forthcoming resumption.

Yeah, absolutely.

Unlikely to be accused of anti-Semitism.

Well, I mean, that is one of the comments he is a little bit too Jewish.

So he may,

although very, very loud, but he may struggle to challenge the Labour stronghold on that key anti-Semitic mug.

There's also been quite a lot of talk about

the backstop plan.

Sure.

Which I find as a cricket fan

grates on me.

It grates on me when I hear backstop.

Well, because backstop, for non-cricket fans, backstop was a fielder that was stood behind the wicket keeper.

Yeah.

to stop balls that went past the wicket keeper.

And this is a position that was essentially rendered obsolete by progress almost 150 years ago.

And we are now relying on this

for our future.

That would be on Theresa May's Tinder profile.

Theresa May, to be fair, rendered obsolete by progress.

Just the idea of Theresa May having a Tinder profile is, I think, the most alarming thing anyone has ever said on the project.

Well, I'll go one further.

Imagine Boris Johnson having a Tinder profile.

That's, I mean, I don't think I'll ever be able to summon an erection again.

I like the idea that you summon them, but is there

witchcraft involved?

I couldn't think of the appropriate phrase.

Conjure.

Release.

Deploy.

At all times, it's just gaffed to you in the thigh, and you just rip it off.

That's what Henry VIII used to do, wasn't it?

Yeah, before.

What, deploy the erection?

Summon my erection.

The whole purpose of the print was to get back.

Oh, dear.

And the hard border, as well, for those who don't know the jargon, was an influential 1980s and 90s Australian cricket captain and ushered in a new age of uncompromising win-it-all costs cricket.

I would like to note that we are 41 minutes in and still not through the first

the former head of the European Central Bank has said Brexit will have a bigger economic impact on the UK than it will on the European Union, which just makes it seem like that classic thing in a break-up where you trash your ex-boyfriend's car and then realise the insurance contract is in your name.

But I don't think people mind that particularly because, I mean, as long as it is also damaging Europe, then that will go down very well with the British voters.

This is.

Yeah, but it's, I mean, in the same way that a kamikaze pilot damages the ship,

like ultimately, you've still come off worse.

Yeah, but the last thought that goes through your mind is the ship's absolutely getting it.

Speaking of getting it,

Sexual assault news now.

The nomination process of Trump's candidate to the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, has reached a media frenzy crescendo in the last week with publicity around allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanagh sexually assaulted her at a high school party in the 1980s.

Kavanaugh denies the charges, but in an exciting twist, instead of agreeing that he didn't do it, his defenders are saying that even if he did do it, it was ages ago.

It's not such a big deal.

He's only accused of holding her down and putting his hand over her mouth while he took her clothes off and not anything really bad.

Everyone should just calm down because young men and teenage boys are just kind of rapey anyway.

Bill Shine, Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Communications who resigned from Fox News over sexual harassment allegations told CNN, we stand behind Judge Kavanaugh 100%.

It is an odd move.

They all seem to be relying on the classic criminal defence of we can't start holding people accountable for things they did in the past.

Not for lack of proof or because a change in the legislation has occurred, but because if you start holding people to account for terrible things they did in the past, none of us are safe from being held to account for the terrible things we did in the past.

The thing to remember about a rape or sexual accusation, a sexual harassment accusation, is timing is vital.

You have to remember if it happened in the past, it's in the past, and back then rape was actually fine and it was different because women weren't people yet.

And if it happened recently, you don't want to ruin someone's future, so you can only really legitimately accuse someone of rape or sexual assault while it's actually happening, unless they have a career to think of.

Or in the future.

Or in the future.

I mean, that's in many ways worse.

Are you suggesting some sort of minority report-style system?

Well, I mean, there has been some extremely strange logic.

You call it a minority report, but it is 51% of the population.

Yeah, also, I don't want to get involved in it.

Given the current climate in American politics, I've got no interest in enforcing anything called a minority report.

Andy, I've got terrible news for you, but reality is catching up with your bullshit

because a South Carolina Republican, Ralph Norman, opened an election debate on Thursday by making a joke about the Kavanaugh accusations, which, to begin with, is a bold gambit.

And also the joke that he, I mean, God, this is, the joke that he said was he said he was going to be late.

He was nearly late because he was going to have to be called back to Washington because Ruth Beta Ginsburg has come out and said that she was groped by Abraham Lincoln.

So like this is how seriously Republicans are taking rape allegations.

They consider them to be as serious as Abraham Lincoln being a time-travelling sex pest.

I mean, you think, again, you think that this is a joke, but Kavanagh's friend, a top conservative lawyer, he has said that it wasn't Kavanaugh, and he knows because there was a guy in the same class who looked a lot like Kavanaugh.

And he's guessing that it was more likely to be that guy who's now a teacher.

Genuinely, that is a thing.

I mean, if you've got a situation where they can treat

an accusation of sexual assault like this.

I mean, to be fair, we're way past that.

Trump's president.

I keep forgetting, in a way, that he's president.

Yeah.

But, I mean, where do they go from...

Like, where can they possibly go from here?

Are they going to take the bullet side in the JFK assassination?

Handmaid's Tail.

Handmaid's Tail is a predicted documentary, is not a drama series.

The interesting side politically is that that Kavanaugh's nomination would enshrine a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for a generation, according to experts.

Now,

I'm no expert on the American political system, but this seems not the most sensible way to run a powerful judicial institution as essentially the political plaything for the whims of a president, particularly not when your president is, in layman's terms, a certifiable pig.

Trump has sort of come out and said that he can't.

He sort of defended Kavanaugh, but then also said that he wants to hear, in a very Trumpy way, he sort of said, Oh, well, we should hear what she has to say.

But he also said that he can't imagine it.

Now, given some of the things that Donald Trump has managed to imagine, including Barack Obama's fake birth certificate or the fact that he won the popular vote, it is quite impressive that he's suddenly managed to shut down his imagination at this point.

Well, I mean,

it's one of those things where they kind of need to do a case.

It's a very serious accusation, but everyone seems to have picked a side

already before anything has come out.

There's so much news nowadays, which is pre-news.

Yeah.

It's pretty weird that in a conversation about the Supreme Court, the only thing being ignored is due process.

Like, I mean, I'm no lawyer.

You are, actually, aren't you, Alice?

Yeah.

I mean, as the Bugle's legal expert, where do you stand on the whole trial thing?

Surprisingly, I'm pro-It.

Bugle feature section now.

The benefits of brevity.

It can help.

Let's move on to France news.

Alice, you are our resident correspondent on the lunatic right wing in France.

Yes, French far-right politician Marine Le Pen has been ordered to take psychiatric tests as part of an inquiry into her sharing images of Islamic State group atrocities on Twitter.

Le Pen is under investigation for distributing violent images, including pictures of the killing of American reporter James Foley, in December 2015, and was stripped of her parliamentary immunity in order to be charged with circulating violent messages considered to incite terrorism or seriously harm human dignity.

Le Pen has refused to undergo the psychiatric tests, tweeting pictures of the court order and saying it was, quote, crazy, which is what they just called you, Maureen.

You can't just, I know you are, but what am I to a court order?

I mean, you say that, she just absolutely has.

It's

actually,

This is a really odd story.

I mean, for a start,

I mean, without wishing to judge the context, if you are a political leader and you find yourself being tempted, for whatever reason, to post images of Islamic State atrocities, then either you need to count to 10, calm down and think, is this helping?

or you need preferably to count to zero because you obviously shouldn't fing do that.

Well, you know, Maureen Le Pen translates in English as underwater quill.

Do it really?

No.

Jesus.

What do you think?

Fing hell.

I have an A-level in French.

Fing hell.

I've overcompensated on both of you.

Now I literally believe nothing that comes out of Zoltzmann's mouth.

And for some reason, in order to correct that, I now believe literally everything you say, Edis.

She is.

They've rebranded.

the party from the Front Nationale or National Front to something that is supposedly a little bit less Hitler-y,

and they've called it the Rassemblan Nationale, or National Rally.

I don't think this is solving the problem.

She may as well have called it Hitler-McHitler face.

So, can they force her to take a psychiatric test?

They can't force her to do that, surely.

Well, that's what she said.

She said, I'd like you to see you force me to do it.

But, you know, she's legally obliged to, so the court can.

Really?

Yeah, I mean, it's a court order.

If she doesn't obey, she's in contempt of court or she's

like,

they can do shit to punish her for not doing it.

That's how law works.

It's also like a really terrible sign if someone's like, you need to take a psychiatric test.

And you're like, absolutely not.

That's

it's not a great sign.

You can't make me unless you have mind powers.

Do you have mind powers?

Neither you nor the voices in my head can make me take this psychiatric test.

I think more world leaders should be forced to take some sort of psychiatric evaluation.

And at what level are you setting the required pass mark?

I think, to be honest.

I mean, is it just looking at a Rorschach test

and seeing if the black bits stand out a little too much?

They're coming for me.

Okay.

Okay.

Calm down.

Octopus is on drugs news now.

I love this story so much.

So scientists, now we've had

numerous goes at scientists over the years of the bugle for not prioritising their scientific research

quite as

well as they might for the benefit of humanity.

And we would like to formally apologise after this story.

So scientists have been been feeding drugs to

octopuses.

Yeah, scientists have been giving ecstasy to octopuses as part of a study on what happens if you give a group of scientists ecstasy in octopuses.

No,

apparently, among other findings, octopuses get really huggy and more willing to spend time with male octopuses, who octopuses of both genders generally avoid.

To be fair to that social norm, if my sex pests had eight suction cup-lined, prehensile, boneless arms and pooped out their own faces, I'd avoid them too.

Not that all octopus sex pests are male octopuses, it's just that the standard mating behaviour of the male greater blue-ringed octopus, for example, is to fondle potential mates with a specially adapted sex arm called a hectosilus, which it then thrusts under their mantle to release its sperm.

That is one hell of a deleted scene from Finding Nemo.

A study out of the University of California in 2003 decided that that behaviour, that groping, is actually a way of determining whether the prospective mate is male or female, which is definitive scientific proof that people will always find excuses for uninvited groping.

A fat octopus is now a supreme.

Oh, come on, you're not even allowed to flirt anymore.

Do you know if I get bored, I'll eat my own arms?

Do you want to be responsible for that?

Don't make me shit out the side of my head, Karen.

I cannot wait for a Republican senator to bring up octopuses in the course of the next week as they try to rush Gavana through.

Well, I mean, it's a fantastic thing to know that in a time when science is in crisis, 60% of peer-reviewed studies can't be replicated, and the existence/slash/desirability of fact is in question among the highest echelons of society.

It's really good to know that we have our priorities straight.

The goal of the particular study wasn't just to see if octopuses could get high, spoiler, they can,

but it was also to probe whether octopuses are kind of friendly, able, where they have the capacity for friendship.

And

apparently

that's true.

They have the capacity to get they like feel up the sides of the thing and they touch each other up and it's all it's a real big party.

So they only have but do they have the capacity

for friendship when they are not monged off their nuts?

I'm going to change my text alert to Andy saying monged off my nuts.

Other scientific research

Out of books niche.

On bees.

Leviticus, I think.

Scientists have been doing other research on the effect of drugs on sea creatures.

They've claimed that barracudas on heroin often end up homeless and with no money.

Tunafish on marijuana become paranoid about tins.

And if you give psychedelic drugs to a walrus, it hallucinates that it's a member of the Beatles

and ironically if you feed plankton to a human drug at drug addict it's they start to communicate in haunting echoey noises

oh that's beautiful I mean the next the next phase of the study is to give the octopuses glow sticks and turn all the lights on.

I was gonna say, if they're giving them ecstasy, have they experimented on what happens when you start playing loud rave music?

I think we are gonna apply for a grant in the next six weeks Mish, you and I.

I mean we already know octopuses like the song Born Slippy.

Listen to a lot of aqua.

You do listen to a lot of aqua.

Penis news now.

I've got two pieces of important penis news.

The first piece of penis news.

Mish, everyone thinks their penis news is bigger and older.

Those are words I first heard when i was nine days old

waking up with a strange burning sensation

listen i know that this penis news section might seem a little bit small but it is cold at the moment

the first piece of penis news dc comics have printed a picture of batman's dick

The new panel from the new Batman dabbed number one written by Brian Azzarello with art by Lee Bomeo.

Batman's penis is visible.

Really?

He gets back to the Batcave, removes his bat suit, under which it turns out the whole time Batman has been going full commando

and you see clearly the outline of Batman's penis.

Two quick things here.

Firstly, Batman is packing heat.

And secondly, for people who have been following, writing about how Batman is an inherently conservative superhero, especially in the iteration found in the Christopher Nolan trilogy of films, Batman's penis leans alarmingly to the right.

I mean, that puts a new meaning on the phrase, fighting fear with fear.

DC College have actually said that in the subsequent editions, they're going to be erasing the penis, which is a tremendous shame.

We saw Batman's dick.

You know, I think it really humanises him.

It does.

And I mean, what about his balls?

Are they

visible anytime soon or not?

I mean, I'll show you.

I've actually got it right here.

You could could just see the outline of the dick.

Right.

But no balls.

Okay.

I mean, that is...

Is he circumcised?

Aggressively tapered.

And

it is possible that Batman may be circumcised.

Right.

Well, that would explain an awful lot.

They had to change their

family name to Wayne after they moved from Hungary.

The other piece of Penis news is, I mean, look, there's not much to add to this story.

It's literally just Chips, who is the University of Colorado Buffalo's mascot, who is a buffalo, shot himself in his penis and testicles with a t-shirt cannon.

Nothing more to add.

Google it.

It's absolutely one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life.

He was investigating why the t-shirt cannon wasn't firing.

It turns out he had it the wrong way round.

He shot himself in the groin and had to be stretchered off.

But I think it was quite interesting watching this because it did, and that was a that to me was a very important piece of science, which

is an investigation into the correlation between human sympathy for someone else's injury and whether or not that person is dressed in a mask

because

it didn't seem to be getting a huge amount of sympathy from the assembled assembled masses for

firing a t-shirt at high speed and power into

his buffalo junk.

No, and I mean, judging by the sheer amount of video evidence available, what seemed to happen was it happened, and then people immediately got their cameras out and started filming and being led away.

I mean, there are more angles on this than the Kennedy assassination.

Like, it's absolutely unbelievable.

Well, I mean, you know, I think this is a terrible thing.

We've got anti-mascot discrimination.

Am I not a buffalo?

Do my balls not hurt if you shoot them with a t-shirt cannon?

is the shylock of our age

first they came for the mascot dicks

then they came for the batman dicks on the subject of mascots last last weekend i was um

doing bbc radio coverage of the uh 2020 county cricket finals day and i had to commentate on the mascot race as eight 18 mascots representing each of the county cricket sites ran around an obstacle course at Edgebaston Cricket Ground, baid on by 23,000 drunk people.

And I was pretty much the highlight of my broadcasting career.

I mean,

who won?

It was won by the Fox, the Leicestershire Fox.

I forget his full name, Foxy, possibly.

But there was, I mean, a huge amount of injustice.

Just in terms of the

facility of running in different mascot outfits.

You know, there's some could barely see

or move.

And yet here's the Leicester Fox wearing trainers,

sprinting around.

Look, Andy, I've got no interest.

Unless one of them copped a t-shirt cannon to the onion barges, I've got absolutely no interest.

Well, I think this, I mean, this, the chip the buffalo, has become one of the great metaphors.

There's been a lot of metaphor talk this week, but there's a metaphor for our failing Western world, a person pretending to be something they're not, inflicting unnecessary injury on themselves due to rank incompetence.

I mean, for us in Britain right now, that is a little too close.

A little too close to the boner.

Ladies and gentlemen, Drew.

Your emails now.

James from Edinburgh writes, Dear Andy Christen, whoever is John Standin' this week.

Wow.

I mean, no disrespect to me or Alice, but this podcast has seriously gone down the train.

My wife just bought a cape as a pregnancy jacket.

I, as any true loyal bugler, would, went on a spontaneous pun run, including references to Cape Canaveral, the Cape of Good Hope, and the no capes phrase from the Incredibles.

She then burst into tears and retreated to the living room, claiming that in her emotionally fragile state, puns were too much for her.

That's this automatically.

Andy, I need to get pregnant.

That's the title of my forthcoming film.

Does this automatically gain me golden bugler status?

Making a pregnant woman cry through puns.

No escape.

Good lord.

Yes.

I'm not going to do it.

Nish, if you and I together make one John Oliver, bags being the top half.

Well, there are people on the internet that describe me as John Oliver's butt, so you know

I may as well lean into it.

I mean,

when my wife was pregnant, we were given a NHS punch during pregnancy advice.

Didn't want us to be very, very careful in no uncertain terms.

From Deborah.

I'm an American living in Shenzhen, China.

I'm getting used to people staring at me as I'm a white lady who smiles at strangers, a total weirdo, in other words.

But I don't think I can go back to my local Starbucks, and it's your fault.

I was listening to the Playaway bonus episode and had just sipped a mouthful of coffee when I got to the joke about Nish's erection and Andy's quip about the Kenny Rogers song.

Which one

of either of those jokes?

Nish have you ever managed to do an entire episode without referring to their own joke?

Deborah writes, I spat coffee all down my dress, much to the horror of a line of lovely Chinese people in front of me.

Well, I mean, this is one of the risks, but you know, do spread the bugle in China.

We need more people in China spitting coffee down.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Duibu Chi.

I think that's sorry in Mandarin.

Is it?

I hope so.

I really hope so.

I think that is Sorry in Mandarin.

You need to learn Sorry in many more languages now.

Two key emails coming in to hellobuglers at the Buglepodcast.com.

Well, we've overrun again.

So that concludes

this week's Bugle.

Don't forget to come to the shows in India.

Kolkata on the 30th of September.

Bangalore the 1st of October.

Mumbai the 2nd of October.

I'm in Toronto on the 20th of October.

We're doing bugle live shows in Salford on the 7th of October, Dublin on the 8th of October,

and London on the 14th of November.

Any further questions or plugs?

I've got a tour.

I'm touring.

There's,

I mean, I don't think this is going to go out before then, but there are...

I mean, if you're looking to maybe sort of set up camp, there's going to be plenty of space at the back of my Newport gig.

Ditto, Darlington.

Darlington and Newport have resolutely refused to buy into my vibe.

So

if you do know about sort of 150 people who want to see a show in Darlington next Saturday, send them along.

And otherwise, there are, I've just announced a load of tour dates for January, February, and March.

They're all on my website, nichkomodoco.uk.

And my trilogy is available online.

Three one-hour shows recorded as one three-hour show.

If you listen to it on cans, it's like this cool surround sound thing that hasn't been done for comedy before.

And that doesn't make me any money, but it's nice.

And you'll be able to see Alice featuring in this year's

The Certifiable History Show that I'll be doing at Soho Theatre from the 18th of December until the 6th of January.

Here endeth the plugs.

That's it.

We are done.

We have to go away and think about what is happening to the planet and what seafood next needs to be

given psychotropic substances.

Until next time, Buglers, goodbye.

Bye, everyone.

Bye, Alice.

Bye.

Bye, Nish.

Bye, Andy.

See you, Drew.

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.