Bugle 4073 – Baby Jails

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and thank you for listening.

Let's get that one in early this week.

Bye.

Sorry, that was premature.

Anyway, welcome, Pat Smith, to issue 4073 of The Bugle, the factually unbecomfortable podcast that has been jabbing sticks at the Twitching Corps of News since 2007.

I am Andy Zoltzmann, the de facto fourth musketeer, according to the French novelist Alexandre Dumas himself.

Albeit that I was rightly fired before the novel began to be written for being no good at sword fighting and wary of horses.

So I never made the book, let alone the cartoon dog version on the TV.

Another opportunity missed.

I am here in London and joining me today, well, the third millennium has been officially declared the International Millennium of Women.

Interesting follow-up to the last few millenniums, which were both officially and unofficially the International Millennium of Men, the International Millennium of Manliness, the International Millennium of Patriarchies, and the International Millennium of the Willy.

I can't remember in which order they came.

Anyway, this millennium, the International Millennium of Women, momentous occasion for our species.

And to mark this, I'm joined by the Bugle's official correspondent from the female hemisphere, Alice Fraser.

Hello from Flatlands.

Family show, Alice.

Father's show.

Welcome.

How are you?

I'm very well, Andy.

I'm very happy and well, and it all seems to be going absolutely well.

I haven't read the news.

That is clearly, as we've probably discussed in this program before, the absolute only path to happiness in the modern world.

It really is.

Yeah.

I've been similarly incubated from reality this week

in my secondary job as a cricket statistician on the radio which I mentioned primary in your heart

absolutely it's primary in my diary at the moment as well and

so I've been doing radio for the BBC and saw England set the world record highest score in a men's one-day international cricket match against the once mighty but now fallen Australia and I think I can see tears welling up in your eyes I tuned out about 30 seconds ago but I just kept the expression of interest on my face out of self-defense.

How come all the Australians I get in the show don't give a shit about drinking?

Which is sometimes good and sometimes annoying.

I like playing it, Andy.

I like playing the game.

Use that as a gateway into the real stuff of watching it and thinking about numbers.

Also joining us today, alongside Chris, in the tech truck.

We have a massive tech truck.

It's alongside mine and Alice's trailers behind the security fencing and a moat.

We have a guest producer this week.

It's guest producer Mark.

Hello, Mark.

Hello, Andy.

Hello.

Hello, Alice.

Hello.

Mark bids to be guest producer in the fundraising, the Radiotopia fundraising drive last year.

Welcome to he's keeping Chris on a tight leash.

Through the window, there.

I can see a look of terror in Chris's eyes.

I don't know what's going on right now, and I'm really, really nervous.

I haven't seen that look of fear in his eyes since he did the shark triathlon.

To be fair, the sharks only have an advantage in one leg of the triathlon.

Often by that, they've built up an insurmountable lead.

On this day in 1633, the 22nd of June, the Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the sun was the center of the universe rather than the earth.

Turns out they were both wrong.

It's actually somewhere else entirely.

It's over there, somewhere miles away.

But was Galileo right that the earth actually revolves around the sun rather than the other way around?

I guess we'll never know in this post-factual age, but fair play to Double G for raising the question.

Personally, I don't give a shit.

What is in it for me?

Is it going to save me money?

Well, they can both revolve the f ⁇ around it who the f they like.

Sorry, I'm a product of my political times.

On this day in 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire, Alice.

River caught fire in America.

Ah.

Yeah.

That brings to mind the quote of a far north Queenslander nearby some fracking where he lit his tap on fire and went, oh yeah, yeah, it's not supposed to do that.

Well, America realised that water wasn't really supposed to do that.

It drew attention to the problem of water pollution

and was a major factor in the kicking off of the environmental movement in America.

Of course, we now know that the Burning River was a hoax perpetrated by a combination of the Chinese government and the renewable energy industry.

But, you know, at the time it seemed authentic.

1986 on this day, the famous Hand of God goal was scored by Diego Maradona in the quarterfinal of the 1986 FIFA World World Cup between England and Argentina

and just minutes later scored the greatest goal in the world for fing cheat

sake which also means that it's exactly 32 years since an 11-year-old boy in Tunbridge Wells learned the true meaning of injustice

tomorrow the 23rd of June is the second anniversary of the day Britain voted in the Brexit referendum and if you don't want to know the final result of that referendum please look away away now and put your fingers in your ears for the next hundred years.

And remember, in the meantime, just believe.

And if that doesn't make you feel better, believe harder and less Spanishly.

For our overseas buglers, if you wish to negotiate a trade deal with Brexit-Britannia, please send your initial negotiating position into Hello Buglers at the Bugle podcast and mark your email if I know.

Tomorrow.

I mean, you say that as a joke, Andy, but there were bugle socks in North Korea, so

you just never know.

On the 24th of June 1374, so

on Sunday,

let's do some maths here.

600 and

44 years ago, roughly, a sudden outbreak of dancing mania caused people in the streets of

in Germany to hallucinate,

begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably and dance until they collapsed from exhaustion.

Ah, that's the facts on which

that documentary with Kevin Bacon is based, right?

Right.

I'll take your word for that.

Which one is that?

I don't know.

Is this the bread thing?

No, it's the one where he got.

No, it's not got nothing to do with bread.

Footloose.

Foot loose.

There we go.

Sorry, I'm slightly out of the loop on my 80s films.

I was too busy crying about the World Cup quarterfinal in 1986.

But at the end of all that, Ludwig and Helga were voted off.

On this day in 1916, Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a million-dollar contract.

A huge day in the history of film.

102 years ago

on Sunday.

We have exclusive footage from the press conference which the silent movie star Pickford held after signing her deal.

Mary, Mike Spag Daily Star, what have we got to say about suggestions that male stars, including your future husband Douglas Fairbanks, are paid much more than you are?

Mary, you certainly looked a bit cross there, but do you think that within a decade or two we will see equality between the genders in the movie world?

Well Mary that was certainly a look of sad resignation but how do you think you will cope with the pressures of becoming the first million dollar actress?

Mary it's very interesting that you should have held up a black board with white lettering painted on it saying oh my but is there any facial expression ideally combined with some kind of hand gesture that you could do for your many fans who look after you as a role model?

Mary, Mary, can you look mildly excited for us in a subtly erotic way?

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

This week, slightly late, the Bugle Solstice Special, including a free audio henge.

We've had stone henges, wood henges, paper hinges, and scissor hinges, I think, as well.

And we add to your henge collection now with the free Bugle Audio Henge.

Print this show out in 18-points aerial font.

Lay it on the ground on midsummer night, and at dawn, the sun's rays will shine in a direct line through every single vowel.

Also, this week, a free lobster in association with the International Shelters Association.

Please collect from the seabed 500 meters below the surface off the the coast of Newfoundland.

The bugle cannot be held responsible for you or your lobster drowning each other.

That section in the bin.

Yeah, yesterday was the summer solstice.

It goes so fast.

Time flies when you're having sun.

Boom!

I think we can probably end this show right here.

Please.

Well, the intros are getting longer.

Top story this week, as chosen by guest producer Mark, Melania's coat.

Perhaps the greatest moment in the history of

presidential luxurial fashion.

Melania Trump wearing a coat with a slogan on the back saying, I really don't care, do

ah.

Is it up?

How do you pronounce that?

It's modern a spelling of you as well.

Is that progress?

I mean, this is this is cuz.

I mean, I don't generally wear slogans

on my clothing.

I wear them sometimes on my face and they often say I love cricket

particularly when I was at work yesterday.

Work.

But this is possibly the most striking slogan on the back of a First Lady's coat since Grace Coolidge wore a knee-length Macintosh with the words let's say fair, a possible sly dig at her husband Calvin's laissez-faire politics.

Maybe even since Frances Cleveland's notorious are you a Grover Groover slogan on her duffel coat that was seen on the 1888 presidential campaign train.

Maybe even

since Lucretia Garfield donned her famous you dig me kagool in June 1881, possibly an apparent endorsement of a proposal to turn the state of Maine abbreviation ME into the center of US coal mining.

Possibly not.

We just don't know.

I mean you could even see it as the most notable coat phrase since Martha Washington's double-breasted Brunswick jacket, emblazoned in gold lame thread with the words, amend these, with arrows pointing directly at

let's not judge women by that.

The question is, Alice, what did Melania Trump, the world's most prominent hostage,

actually mean by those words?

Look, I don't know if she can read, Andy.

I mean, look, I just know I don't know anything about her.

I think this is probably the most politically statement-y coat since way, way back many centuries ago, not long after the Bible began.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to see beyond that.

I mean, her spokes, uh, her spokeswoman said, It's a jacket, there was no hidden message.

No, because it was written in words.

Yeah, I mean, it was very much not hidden, it was very much on a jacket on the wife of a president, and not just any president, but a president who likes to communicate primarily through short, badly spelled, and poorly punctuated messages.

And a wife whose main method of communicating with the outside world has been through looks of panic in her eyes.

So, saying it's just a jacket in these circumstances is

similar to a news anchor saying it's just normal human skin, like a bit of someone's regulation face after unzipping his trousers and making his penis read the stock market news whilst doing a funny voice.

Yeah, I don't know with Melania Trump, it's such a difficult thing because either she is a fucking idiot.

Let's not rule that out.

And the terrible victim of some sort of awful Stockholm syndrome, which is...

Let's not rule that out either.

Or else she's just a really awful person.

Like, those are your two options.

Let's not rule any of those three options out.

I mean, she could be a bit of everything.

There was no hidden message, as I said.

That's

I mean, that's daddy's fair.

It was very much unhidden

on her coat.

I mean, the hidden message was the one scrawled in marker pen on the inside lining of the coat saying, for f's sake, please help me.

But, I mean, is it possible that she was, she didn't know about it, that she was the victim of a ride-by graffitiing by a sprayed can-wielding cyclist?

I mean, maybe she's being bullied, Andy.

Maybe this is the kick me of international politics.

Maybe

Kim Jong-un sneaked in and rode it on her back.

It's possible.

I mean,

what is it that she's not caring about currently?

I mean,

I really don't care.

I mean, she didn't.

Because she was going to visit some child asylum grants in one of America's

charming reception centers.

Baby prisons, I think they call them.

Baby prisons.

The must-have accessory for any new parent wanting to move to America.

Did she not care about them?

Was it a core message of the need for more political apathy?

that history has shown as one of the most powerful forces in politics, that if you can apathise a sufficient quantity of your electorate away from the polling station, it's so much easier to win.

Was this the first gambit in the 2020 president, or even her own bid for the presidency

in 2024?

It's a genuine question.

Right.

Maybe it's the genuine question of a curious alien life form trying to figure out what human emotions are.

That is a question she's been wrestling with for many years.

She's data from Star Trek.

Please explain your human emotions.

Her husband,

Donald, claimed that this was, after Melania's spokesman said there was no message,

husband Don stepped up to the plate and said, There was a message because she was referring to the fake news media, which, according to Donald, the acting president, sorry, the Achtung president of the USA.

Either is about right.

Melania has learned how dishonest they are and she truly no longer cares.

This is, I mean, it's a heart-rending.

The heart-rending tells you no longer care about fake news.

Why does that leave humanity?

Off Twitter.

That might be a step forward.

Now, I'm absolutely not up to the minute with the latest developments in fashion, Alice.

Fashion and I made a not particularly amicable agreement to go our separate ways several decades ago now, around about the time that I stopped wearing nappies, which were very trendy at the time for people in my age bracket and demographic.

I mean, I don't really fully understand the t-shirt slogan, although I suppose it saves you having to say your five-word philosophies of life out loud to every single passer-by passerby on the street, which I guess could get could get wearing.

But uh when you're a major public figure and you feel the need to use uh the back of your fing jacket to communicate,

questions will rightly be asked.

In baby jails news now, Trump has declared his intention to end the inhumane separation of immigrant families, a policy that ended up in mass outcry after the creation of what are being called tender age facilities, a.k.a.

baby jails

I love babies, they are adorable.

It's their only survival mechanism is being so adorable, you can't put them in the bin.

But that is why this policy is so inexplicable.

How detached do you have to be to from reality to think baby jail is a good idea?

Babies need hugs and love and someone to puke on.

They don't need tiny prison tattoos.

And a bucket to puke in.

This is a a bizarre, a biz bizarre story.

And

Trump has uh well, he's

ridden to the rescue of his own dark fetid soul by rowing back on his own policy I'm not sure that gets him many credit points to be honest behind this also Mike Pence man of the year yet again from the influential magazine the Christian hypocrite

Jeff Sessions or to give him his actual full name Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

and the Jefferson and Beauregard

those two names have passed down through two generations of the sessions family both confederate war heroes.

So they've stuck with that through several generations, the Sessions.

Anyway, let's not judge him on his family names.

He's even been criticised by members of his own church for using the Bible to justify caging children.

He quoted Romans 13.

Romans 13, of course, sounds to me like a disappointing effort in a game of Empire v.

Empire snooker, when the Romans ran out of position after putting red, black, and red, had a run-up to Bolt to take the green, but then left themselves poorly positioned for the next red, which, although bottable, left them with no angle to get on another colour, leading to an ill-advised long put on a tricky pink end of break, letting the Assyrians in with the red spread and an opportunity to clinch the frame in one visit.

Romans, 13.

I mean, Andy

tied a long train journey.

Political satire does not equal imaginary snooker games.

Why did you not tell me that 15 years ago?

My career could have been so different.

There was this bizarre policy to to separate children from their parents, which, as a parent,

I know is not generally a good idea in terms of not ending up with screaming children.

And particularly if you then put those children in, as you describe it, a baby cage.

I mean, the tears will flow.

I mean, no one likes a property.

And not the cool little ones that you tattoo on your face, like property tears.

It suits you very well, Alec.

But he's sort of benevolently moving to end this state of affairs that he directly brought about himself while demanding congratulations and blaming all the bad stuff on the Democrats.

We have always been at war with Oceania.

Like.

I used to think you watched the news to find out what was going on in the world, but now I watch it to find out what side I meant to be on of an argument I didn't know existed yesterday, but is now fundamental to my self-conception and moral status that I need to argue for on Twitter while I'm on the bus today.

So it's been replaced with this new, sort of vaguely worded executive order to slam up families together.

Or maybe

are they going to sew them together end to end?

We don't know at this early stage.

Or maybe strat them together and catapult them back to Latin and Mexico or wherever they come from.

More than 2,000 children were separated from their parents as a result of the so-called zero tolerance policy.

Zero tolerance for immigration and basic human decency and simple manners, really.

And I mean, it looks bad for now, but let's try and find the positives in this, Alice.

Think of the joyous emotions when just a few of those 2,000-plus children are reunited with their parents.

Surely those inspiring, heart-lifting moments are worth the slightly gilly-addish awkwardness of seeing screaming children locked in cages.

Sure.

We'll get back to that one.

This is looking on the bright side in the way that you refuse to put a piece of paper in front of your eyes when you're looking at the sun during an eclipse.

Also, it helps us appreciate our own lives and our own offsprings more.

Because, as they say, freedom is never truly appreciated until it has been taken from someone else's child and shown on telly in a cage.

And of course.

Yeah, I heard that one as freedom is never truly appreciated until it's shat on by cs.

That's

my favourite male fragrance as well.

Shaton.

Famous German fragrateer.

What do you call someone who makes fragrances?

Perfumier.

Good point.

I was going to say something very unacceptable then.

The right to put babies in baby prisons.

What do they call them?

Baby jails.

Tenderage care facilities.

Was enshrined in the US Constitution in the little-known Amendment 4.5b, subclause 2, the right to lock children in a cage, point at them, jab them with a a stick, and chant, where's your mummy gone?

Where's your mummy gone?

You know, if it's right for America in the 1790s.

Maybe this is just Trump trying to facilitate the reintroduction of the very popular 90s phrase, who's your daddy?

Which is never more arousing than when it's being screamed at you by a soldier.

I'll take your word for that.

And maybe he's just, because he's gone back on his policy, and we know how he worked.

Maybe he's realised that it is increasingly, in the modern world, hard to monetise crying children in cages because

human tastes for circus entertainment have shifted over the years.

The problem uh politically I guess, Alice, is that ripping children away from their parents and putting them in cages might be fun, but it it has a tendency to produce what media wonks might describe as bad visuals

and and we saw this with when Trump explained why he was going back on it, he said, I didn't like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.

So the idea of families being separated was evidently fine.

But it took the actual sight of crying children to make him realize that maybe families might not like it.

It might upset them.

And more importantly, it might upset him to see it.

It might upset him and his supporter base.

And more than half of Trump's supporter base were opposed to this.

this policy and that's quite an impressive act of political gymnastics for him to alienate his own uh supporter

Evidently, it was a bit too much of an imaginative leap

for Trump to imagine that this might be upsetting.

He had to actually see it and feel it.

I mean, he is to empathy what Julius Caesar was to 1980s hip-hop,

not even aware of its existence, although it would be very interesting to see what happened if he gave it a go.

And to be fair to Trump as well, from his own personal background, he had no way of knowing that people might actually like their own families.

Even love them rather than viewing them as just expedient persons.

He probably thought he was doing them a favour.

I wanted to get rid of all of my families.

Space Force News Now.

The United States Space Force is a proposed sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces intended to have control over military operations in outer space.

And that is on the table, a Trump initiative.

And it confirms my idea that America has lost sight of the difference between what makes good television and what makes a good world.

Is there a difference?

Is there really a difference?

Oh man, let's do a crossover with North Korea.

It'd be great.

Like goths in far north Queensland who think they can pull off ankle-length black coats and a knife collection because Neo wore them in The Matrix, forgetting that Neo isn't real, the Matrix isn't real and it's too hot to do anything that looks cool in Queensland because nothing is cool there.

I don't think this is a great idea.

Just because Harry Dresden, wizard detective, can pull it off doesn't mean you can.

I mean, the man has arcane knowledge and a heart of gold.

Why the White Council can't get on board with that is beyond me.

You've completely lost me, Alice.

Well, is it I mean this is a fascinating idea that

a country which is consistently talking about how they've been overstretched and that they shouldn't be the policemen of the world have decided that they now want to be the policemen of outer space.

Well, I mean it's only a matter of time now before Trump starts complaining about the aliens not putting in their fair share of money into the American Space Force.

And it's been called by PBS News Hour, it has been called

premature but inevitable.

In extremely ominous news now,

the United States is set up.

Basically everything in this show could have come under that.

The United States is set to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council, calling it anti-Israel.

You know Israel.

I'm aware of it.

Country Institute after World War II on a piece of land sacred to three religions.

It's a social experiment in how quickly an oppressed group can lose the moral high ground.

The point is that they are withdrawing from the UN, and it is a nice thing to know how long the lessons of two world wars last.

Right?

The trade-off, if you want to know the maths, is about 60 to 100 million lives for people to realize that frustrating administrative bureaucracy is better than going with your gut on nation-state policy.

Yeah, but it's best to be sure of that, isn't it?

You have to do the experiment properly.

If it had been only 50 million lives, then how would we have known for sure?

Well, this is the problem.

We don't know exactly how many lives.

It sort of depends on if you factor in deaths by diseases and famines caused by the war and how much you deny the Holocaust.

Oh, right.

You know, you've got your, what do you mean, six million Jews?

It was only four million tops.

And then you've also got the ovens were only for pizzas.

Like, it depends on where you fall on that spectrum as to how many lives you think were lost, but it sort of figures out to about the lifetime of a human being before everything goes to shit again.

Right.

Oh, I mean, that is really, I mean, you say ominous news.

I mean,

ominous, massively depressing.

I'm sure there's many other human rights councils America will be only too happy to join.

Maybe the

North Korean

Human Rights Council.

They can have a.

I mean, the the point is, I'm sure there might be some good reasons to withdraw from the UN, but when you take in timing, context, and recent play dates, it does look a lot like telegraphing some sort of gestural intention towards perpetrating or condoning unacceptable human rights abuses.

Just

sort of.

Yeah.

Kind of.

We're fed.

Yes.

I guess particularly when at the same time you're putting babies in baby jail.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you combine the two factors,

it does smell a little fascist-y.

Yes.

Well, isn't it lucky I've spent most of the last two weeks watching cricket instead?

World Cup news and well the World Cup is fully underway.

An absolute festival of cheating, time-wasting, tactical negativity, annoying fouls, complaining, looking at replays, complaining about replays, complaining about people looking at replays, saying the word nil and more time wasting.

The beautiful game.

Humanity's favourite pastime.

The big story, Alice, of course, is that England, for the first time in living memory, were not total and utter shit in a World Cup match.

They even won their opening match 2-1.

Take that, Tunisia, you post-Carthaginian has-beens.

Hannibal couldn't hack it at the top level.

And even if you are still apparently using his elephants in your central defence, you've copped another defeat to a mighty European power.

Are we still European?

Who gives a shit?

Despite all the advantages Tunisian football has over the English game in terms of proximity to large deserts, location on an equator spanning continents, a smaller player pool to choose from, thus making it easier to work out the ones who are good and the ones who are shit, and not being hamstrung by the general sense of the declining globo, socio-political power and influence of predominantly white European countries, which must surely weigh heavy on the England boys, we overcame the odds to heroically, as a nation, collectively nod in a chancy winner at the back post in injury time to make everyone forget about everything.

This is proof Brexit is working and

the first step towards a better world for this pluggy nation.

In World Cup commentary news, Simon Kellner has published an opinion piece entitled Female World Cup Pundits Are a Step Forward for Diversity, but Not for the Quality of Coverage, in which he says, My only question, and I pose it nervously, is why did our major TV channels feel the need to have a female presence on their World Cup panels?

He goes on to say, the fact is that the World Cup is competed for exclusively by men, which is how it should be.

The second bit is a bit I added that.

It's not to say that only men have a right to comment on professional football, but my intuition is the TV bosses sought to have women on the panel for reasons of appearance rather than to satisfy a latent demand to hear their opinions.

And isn't that tokenism in and of itself?

I mean, I have better better arguments against this position, Andy, but it's so incredibly weasel and annoying that I can't marshal any of them.

It's not just tokenism, gender.

Your face is tokenism, Simon.

Shove it in your smug hole, you flats racist.

Right, I mean, I've got,

I mean, I do, I have some sympathy in the sense that, as someone who occasionally watches football on television, what I want from pundits is complacent, unresearched views based on on playing experience, unencumbered by having actually watched the game in any detail.

And what the female pundits have tended to bring is research and analysis and an attempt to provide genuine insight for the viewer.

And that is that is emphatically not what sports punditry is supposed to be.

I mean, this is the problem, Andy.

In order to get a position in a male-dominated area, you have to be kind of better than your equals at your level,

which means that equality, what equality will will look like, Andy, is women being shit.

Like the more shit women are in positions of power, the more we know it's working.

Right.

I don't know.

I think the underlying argument of his argument is women don't like balls, even the ones that say they like balls are only pretending, which does check out.

In other sports news, Boris Becker, the former

Wimbledon champion, has been involved in a rather bizarre story.

He's claimed that he has diplomatic immunity from

bankruptcy proceedings because he's the official sporting attaché to the Central African Republic.

I mean, that is not a sentence.

Anyone expect...

I mean, I will remember watching Becker win Wimbledon at the prodigious age of 17 with a remarkable display of athletic tennis that catapulted the entire sport into a new age in terms of the way it was played, thinking, I bet at some point he's going to become a sporting attaché to the Central African Republic.

And I can imagine that as a nation, the Central African Republic, of course, starved of top-level success in the elite echelons of international sport, would have been thinking to themselves that what they really needed was a three-time Wimbledon champion to turn around their fortunes by being an attaché.

And of course, in the Central African Republic, kids speak of little else apart from the evolution of men's grass court tennis in the 1980s from a game of touch to a game of power.

The clash of stars, exemplified, of course, as any child on the streets of Bangui will tell you by the back-to-back-to-back trilogy of Boris Beckovy's Stefan Edberg finals.

Who is Edberg sporting attaché for?

That's what I want to know.

Belize.

Yeah, I mean, he played a beautiful Sir Volley game, albeit with a lack of personal charisma.

I just cannot hear the phrase diplomatic immunity without thinking of lethal weapon 2.

Diplomatic immunity.

has just been revoked due to some kind of footfall.

Your correspondence now, and we've had more physical correspondence.

Another postcard has arrived.

This is the future of communications.

Stop writing to my place of work.

It's freaking my colleagues out.

Keep writing to

oh, I'll tell you what we haven't done for our guest producer, Mark.

F you, Mark.

you.

Write a passage.

The whole reason I did it.

There you go.

We had a postcard from Jay Benjamin Berry in Texas for the World Cup Golden Boots Spermatozoa contest.

We'll announce the full results in a few weeks.

So do bombard Chris with more postcards.

This email came in from Martin, a long-time listener, first-time emailer.

Hello, Andy, and delete as appropriate.

Stroke Alice.

I can delete the rest.

And

you can retrospectively bleep out the

I always try.

I recently saw an article saying that WWE will hold the first super showdown on Saturday, October the 6th, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

And coincidentally, the day before the Bugle Live Show at the Lowry Theatre in Salford.

Do come along.

Do you think that wrestling events sh should be held in cricket grounds?

Or is this just a a crossover event the sporting world has been waiting for?

Wrestlo cricket.

I mean it's I mean the game is trying all manner of innovations to popularize itself, even though it's already massively popular in large parts of the world.

And I mean the English cricketing authorities have taken the 2020 format which has proved ludicrously, almost destructively popular and thought, oh let's see if we can f that up.

I mean maybe this is their effort to restore the prestige of the the five day game Alex.

I mean clearly, this has been weighing heavily on you.

Full contact, no holds barred, weapons included, death match, thunderdome cricket.

Right.

I'm all for it.

You have the

full attention of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Just a full face mask, a lycra bodysuit, and a box.

Right.

That's what, and then people just like smashing each other in the wherever's.

Yep,

12 men enter, one man leaves, that kind of thing

um

dear andy this comes from uh jf velasco in atlanta georgia uh

as you're probably brackets only mexican listener and after the historic win by ltree

um

against the german squad i solemnly request a mexican pun run to celebrate the victory of my proud nation over the current world champions and what happened with the world cup bugle merch you guys are leaving a lot of money on the table

Well, I mean, we were in talks with FIFA to become the official merch providers for the World Cup, but they've decided to go with someone who actually ever makes merch.

Someday,

Mexican pun a Mexican pun run.

I'll have to return to this

at a future time, but

there's got to be something you can do with Guadalajara, hasn't it?

Fajita.

Come on, what else is Mexican?

Helena.

Corona?

I mean, brainstorming Mexican things will just make you sad racist.

Some brain.

Well, as Donald Trump has proved over the last couple of years,

we will return to Mexican puns at some point.

Do keep your remotes coming in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

There are some Bugle live shows imminent in Britain, the 10th of July at the Underbelly in London,

the 15th and 22nd of August in Edinburgh, and more later later in the year, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click on the live link.

You can see me doing Satirist for Hire at the Soho Theatre in London from the 18th to the 21st of July.

There's also a World Cup Satirist for Hire special on the 5th of July at

the Underbelly.

And Alice, you are doing your trilogy show here in London.

Yes, I am on the 1st of July at the Leicester Square Theatre.

Three hours of comedy.

If you want to come and see it, it's at 5 p.m.

1st of July in London.

If you're in Sydney, come and see Arrational Fear at Giant Dwarf on the 29th of June.

If you are asking how I am get from Sydney in the 29th of June to London on the 1st of July, ready to perform three hours of comedy, I say f you don't judge my incredibly disorganised life choices.

Listen to tea with Alice, listen to troll play, make sure you look after your friends and make sure they get home safely at night.

And you can also see both me and Alice in Edinburgh.

I'll be doing from the 16th to the 27th of August.

You're doing the whole festival.

Doing the whole festival.

From the

beginning to the end.

To the beginning of the end of August.

All details on the internet.

And various other stars of the bugle will also be there.

Anivab's doing the full run.

Mish.

Nish.

Nish is there doing new materials.

A work in progress like the lazy fingers.

And yes, I'll be there with right questions, wrong answers, updated from

the Melbourne run this year.

Thank you very much for listening, listening, Buglers, and uh thanks also to our guest producer Mark, who has uh run a tight shit there through the multiple double glazing.

I'm gone.

Chris is now fully obsolete.

You Mark,

thank you, Alice.

Thanks, Alice, as always.

Uh, we will be back next week.

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.