Bugle 4063 – The bots have won

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4063 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a world which seems bizarrely comfortable with its own narcissistic, self-destructivizing visuality.

Keep it audio world, it will upset you less.

I am Andy Zaltzman, the the zero-time kosher keeping champion of the UK.

No disgrace, beaten by the better players of the day, hands up.

And I'm joined today by two of Britain's foremost emissaries to the planet Earth.

Two people who have been traveling the world exclusively for the bugle in recent weeks, putting in the groundwork for Empire Part 2, the sequel.

First up, back here in London,

briefly in between trips to basically everywhere, it's Nish Kumar.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers, how are you?

I'm well thanks Nish.

So since you were last on this show you've

been to, you've basically been exploring the world like some kind of 21st century Columbus.

Yeah I've been going around the world and awkwardly observing people doing this things that they do.

I've basically been a member of the royal family

for the last the last three weeks, just walking around places, looking at people, participating in their traditions, doing a really bad job of it and having people be nice to me out of sheer politeness.

Right, so I mean where you've been to

I was in New Zealand first of all and

use yourself in.

Yeah and I went to an event called the Golden Shears.

Three words for you Andy.

Competitive sheep shearing.

Beat that for obscure sports.

Do you know how weird it is to be standing in a shed in the middle of rural New Zealand watching three people race each other to see who can shear a sheep quickest and standing there thinking to yourself, I can't wait to tell Zoltzmann about this.

I'm about to one-up Solzman for obscure sports.

Wasn't that the origin of the Trojan War, wasn't it?

Three goddesses had a sheep-shearing race.

Well, there's a couple of key innovations I think we should bring back to Moresport.

One of them is have the commentators pretty much on the pitch.

They're right there and they're saying things like, oh, he's doing a great job shearing that sheep.

Oh, no, he's really slowed down.

And I just think that would improve more sports if the competitors could hear what commentators were saying well he's really smashing his face in right now this boxing match is a complete waste of everyone's time because one of these guys is going to get absolutely killed I went from there to Tahiti where I engaged in some Polynesian dancing

which I think we've already discussed I did very badly

I really felt very close to William and Harry in that moment.

That's all I'll say about my participation in that.

And then I went to Japan.

Amazing country, andy Japanese culture has improved my life in so many different ways, whether it's the compact disc player, the cinema of Akira Kurosawa or sushi and ramen.

But it turns out the way it really changed my life was when I took a dump in a Japanese toilet.

The rumors are all true.

Whatever you've heard, it's more so.

The seats were heated.

A spray went up my ass to help deal with what I believe scientists refer to as the aftermath.

Oh, it was unbelievable.

What a dump.

I saw God in a Japanese toilet, Andy, and he cleaned my ass for me.

That was a Rihanna song, wasn't it?

Sounds like you've been having an absolute whale of a time, by which I mean you've been being chased by a boat with a large harpoon.

Not all bad, Andy.

Okay?

Yes, there is wailing.

But on the other hand, my cheeks were heated.

And that sounds like another piece of commentary from another obscure sporting event.

Or even possibly England's latest efforts on the Testmatch cricket field.

And join it, more of that later on.

Joining us live by Yoggurt Pot and String via another Yoggurt Pot in orbit above the planet Earth.

They get a clearer signal that way.

All the way from the city which passes as a rather harsh two-word description of Bob Dylan, singer Paw,

it's Helen Zoltman.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Nish.

Hello, Buglers.

Hello, Helen.

I'm still just reeling from the shock that Andy has heard of Rihanna.

Well,

I've got some

millennial writers now working in

my shed.

I was going to go with something to do with Schubert, but anyway.

Helen, you've also been

globe trotting also in Japan.

I mean, were you quite as impressed with the lavatory options as Nish appears to have been?

Yeah, they have toilets there.

They perform all those functions indoors, Andy.

It's incredible.

You should get on it.

Right.

So good.

Sounds awesome.

So,

how have your travels been, Helen?

What have been the highlights?

Oh, well, Andy, I went to a water park today, so that was pretty cool.

Bobbed around in a rubber ring for a while.

Wow.

I mean, that surely makes travelling the world for months on end, as you've been doing, worth it just to get to the world's only only water park

in Singapore.

I've just been traversing the world in a rubber ring.

This is why it's taking so long.

So, I mean, essentially, as we look forward to our glorious post-Brexit future, we are going to need to

find countries to reintegrate into the British fold, shall we say.

I mean, which of the countries that you two have been to do you think we should be looking to conquer first?

Do you think we should have a crack at Japan?

See if we can,

you know, maybe get Japan in Team GB?

I don't want to talk our country down, Andy, which is what I'm accused of doing on a semi-daily basis.

But all I'm saying is, if the Japanese toilets are that high-tech, I don't want to see what their guns can do.

I don't think Japan is going to be...

I don't think we're going to be able to conquer them.

I just feel like if they've got the minds that have worked on toilets that can clean your ass, if they've put that to the sort of military-industrial complex, they may have bullets that can kill our ancestors.

That's all I'm saying.

This is Bugle issue 4063-4063.

Coincidentally, the pin number for the big red button on the desk of the Oval Office.

What a coincidence.

I think that means if the president plays this part of this podcast on speaker, in the Oval Office, he will launch a nuclear strike.

So I better make sure this goes somewhere safe.

This week, we will be talking about a remote, unpopulated area of the South Pacific.

Hopefully we're in the clear.

Better safe than sorry.

We are recording on Friday the 23rd of March 2018 on this day in the year 1775, the birth of the game show

when Patrick Henry one of the founding fathers of the USA, delivered his famous speech, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.

And the first series of Liberty or Death lasted eight years until 1783.

Plenty of winners and losers in a series of increasingly tricky challenges, including full-scale battles, avoiding disease, and elongated periods of encampment, and a gunshtank.

And I've got a transcript from one of the early episodes, and this week on Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, our contestants are Debbie from Long Island, Bronson from Connecticut, and Pam from Delaware.

And only one of them is going home happy tonight.

So let's play round one, freedom or fatality.

And this is the Bugle for the week beginning Monday, the 26th of March, 2018.

On On this day, in 1484, William Caxton, old Percy Printing Press himself, published his translation of Aesop's Fables, the first English translation of the works of Aesop, bringing into the English language such classics as The Fox and the Crow, in which the fox famously cleverly stole a bit of cheese from the crow.

Also The Fox and the Discovery of Lactose Intolerance.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Boy Who Cried Global Warming, very much ahead of his time.

It's all a conspiracy.

The tortoise and the hangover, the cook, the thief, his wife, and her lover, the boy who farted at his auntie's funeral, and the dog who stole the chocolates and left the wrappers on the lawn.

On this day in 1934,

that may or may not be a reference to Helen and my long-departed dog, Tash.

Can't believe she's gone.

It wasn't because of the chocolates.

She survived.

She survived that self-harming bout.

And they say dogs are allergic to chocolate.

She proved them all wrong.

Yeah.

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

This week, our computer game reviews section.

In the bin, are reviews of new releases such as Egg Chef 4, now includes coddling as an option.

Taylor the Turkey's Abattoir Mayhem 2, the latest hit release in the EA agriculture range after the blood-soaked brutality of Turkey the Taylor's Abattoir Mayhem.

Can you direct in the sequel, Taylor, in the more complicated administrative task of running a large business that processes up to 500,000 carcasses per year whilst also maintaining health and safety and animal welfare standards and making a profit in an increasingly financially squeezed industry compromised by the continuing demand for cheap meat products.

It's not as visually or indeed viscerally spectacular as the original, but it's more of an intellectual challenge and Taylor the Turkey is still so very cute.

Plus, also in the bin, a degree.

With the news that the Open University here in Britain may have to cut its budget by 25%, raising concerns about its future viability as an educational establishment, we proudly launch Bugle University.

Listen to the Bugle weekly over the next 15 years and by default you will intellectually osmose a degree in one or more of the following subjects.

Nautical engineering, medieval folk poetry, applied ematochronology or love.

What an unfortunate moment for us to make direct eye contact at this

unfortunate niche

or destiny.

those sections in the bin

top story this week the social network two this time it's the end of western democracy uh Andy it has been a tricky week for Facebook and by extension all of us.

The story centers around Cambridge Analytica, which let's face it is already a great start because Cambridge Analytica already sounds like the name of a corporation in a dystopian sci-fi thriller.

Right, I thought it was some kind of skin condition resulting from you spending too much time in libraries.

I just want to cut in and ask Andy a question.

Andy, as you've never used Facebook, what do you think it is?

Well, I put a post up on there just a year ago.

Yourself?

Well, I'll Chris did it.

I did put a post up a few weeks ago about a gig.

What do you think Facebook is, Andy?

Facebook?

Well, I think it's a direct

prism

into the aching soul of humanity.

It just reveals

the vanity, insecurity, and loneliness within.

Is that right, or am I oversimplifying things?

Pretty close.

Yeah, annoyingly, Helen, he's got us absolutely banged right as the two Facebook users on this podcast.

Although, for a second there, he really did lapse off into sounding like a 21st century Morrissey.

So, look there's a bit of scandal involving Big Data who is surely the least fondly remembered of all WWE wrestlers.

It all started when Christopher Wiley who describes himself as a gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mind f ⁇ tool.

What a Tinder bio.

Holy cow.

If that doesn't clean up on Grinder I don't know what will.

He'd leaked documents to the Guardian and the Observer newspaper to show how the company, Cambridge Analytica, obtained millions of people's Facebook profiles and used them to help possibly subvert US democracy.

Then, like the Transformers film franchise, things went from bad to worse.

On Monday, Channel 4 News broadcast an investigation into Cambridge Analytica using hidden cameras and having posed as various sort of fake dignitaries.

The journalists recorded Cambridge Analytica boasting of dirty tricks, campaigns involving fake news and even honey traps to influence elections.

This heavily implied that they were activities that they'd engaged in previously, despite strenuous denials from the company following the broadcast.

Oh boy,

things are messy as shit.

Some of the recordings that Channel 4 obtained are genuinely extraordinary.

This is Chief Executive Alexander Nix who said what they would do is send some girls around to the candidate's house.

We have lots of history of things, he told the reporter.

He then said we could bring some Ukrainians in on holiday with us.

You know what I'm saying.

And that is a classic phrase.

Bringing some Ukrainians on holiday is an absolutely, we all know what that phrase means.

We know what it means.

It means using sex workers to trick candidates and subsequently into subverting democracy.

Classic phrase.

So essentially, what's happening here is there's some

enormous, uncontrollable entity whose power and complexity goes way beyond anything the human brain can properly comprehend, doing dodgy things we're not entirely comfortable with.

100%.

It's like the entire history of physics all over again.

I'm not happy at all with it.

Facebook,

which hosts such upstanding Facebook pages as the Bugle Facebook page

and the Facebook pages of Nish Kobar and Helen Zoltzmann.

And the Andy Zoltzmann Facebook page, which I think was set up by someone pretending to be Andy Zoltzmann.

Yeah.

I basically bullied them until they admitted themselves.

All right.

But he's a better brother than you.

Sean had some downtime between last week tonight's series, didn't he?

It lost 37 billion in stock market value, apparently, as a result of this scandal, which the Facebook is like you or me swallowing a pound coin.

That we're technically a little bit poorer, but it is really quite embarrassing.

And although in time we will get our money back, that money will now be dirty money and our reputation will be forever tainted.

I feel sorry for whoever it is actually has to wade through the data and decide what to do with it, given how much of Facebook is just basic bitch statuses, like wine o'clock,

pizza, don't mind if I do

you say that Helen but

based on what we know somebody would be able to work out how you would vote in an American election if you posted the status wine o'clock yeah and at what time you post it

7.30 a.m.

And I mean it very much also depends on the caliber of bottle of wine that

you're proudly showing off in your photo.

Yeah, if you're drinking Tesco's own brand at 6 a.m.

There's a good chance that you'll be casting a vote for Ron Paul.

Facebook essentially is,

well, it's an omniscient, omnipresent force peering into every nook and cranny of our souls.

Now, as a Christian nation,

should we not be appreciative of this?

That this is essentially stepping into the aching void that God appears to have left.

In some ways, I think it's actually a step up because Facebook actually pays very slightly more tax than God himself and is also very slightly more likely than God to blow the whistle on institutional abuse scandals that take place under its watch.

Very, very, very slightly.

So mostly.

It's only under severe duress.

Because that's part of the problem is that Facebook apparently had been notified that Cambridge Analytica had illegitimately obtained a load of people's information and they continually denied it.

And it turns out, and this is horrible news for us all, guys, tech billionaires may not have our best interests at heart.

Don't say that.

Say it ain't so, John.

It turns out that we were wrong to put our faith in a man who was played in a film by the same actor who ended up playing Lex Luthor.

That probably should have been the first sign that there was trouble when the casting call for Mark Zuckerberg included the most famous supervillain of all time.

Helen, are you concerned about what this means for the entire future of democracy and freedom?

Oh, Andy, I've given up.

The bots have won.

It's their world now.

I'll just retreat to being a brain in the jar.

It's fine.

I'm not fussy.

Maybe they'll let...

I probably wouldn't mind if I was on the same political side as them.

Oh, that is an interesting point.

I mean, it does sound like you've slightly trying to suck up to our bot overlords already, Helen.

Yeah, if I'd thought to do that a couple of years ago, maybe we wouldn't be Brexiting.

I backed the wrong bots.

I thought the bot overlords are the people who control your Japanese toilets.

The one thing I think we can all agree on is this is a tremendous win for Myspace.

What a coup.

MySpace and Bebo are absolutely clean.

The worst thing MySpace is responsible for is the career of Calvin Harris.

Now, am I a fan of his particular brand of EDM-inflected shit-pop?

No.

Do I prefer him to the subversion of Western democracy?

It's close, but Calvin's one.

You can't throw a term like EDM.

What do you call it?

EDM infused?

Andy's.

Oh, right, you're together.

I'm glad.

I'm glad of that.

Andy's already been operating right at the edge of his knowledge of the 21st century this episode.

Yeah, that's true.

He has mentioned Rihanna, who did in fact collaborate with Calvin Harris on her hit single, Love in a Hopeless Place.

Yeah, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that.

I mean, the fact is we all leave trails of data, and it's all about how, you know, how they are used.

I mean, we here at the Bugle know know all about you, listeners, from the mere fact that you are listening to this.

We can infer that you are A, unbelievably cool.

Seriously, the kind of person other people look up to and think, I just wish I could be like that.

You are B, aged between 3 and 120, with a bit of margin for error at both ends.

You are C, not currently working in an active terror cell.

There is a 98% chance of that being true.

You are D, in a definable social group of some kind.

And you are E, more likely to spend your money on food and drink than on luxury motorcycles.

I mean, there are no secrets anymore.

I mean, that's how easy it is to mine into people's.

You're the Cambridge Analytica of podcasters, Andy.

Cambridge Analytica have claimed that there's been no wrongdoing, which unfortunately seems to directly contradict things they were recorded saying and doing.

Cambridge Analytica's head of their political.

That's not just semantics.

It's details, details, details.

Mark Turdbull is the head of Cambridge Analytica's political division, claimed that one of the services he could offer would be to pose as a wealthy developer looking to exchange campaign finance for land.

And he then described himself as being, quote, a master of disguise.

And nothing says, I am engaged in wrongdoing more than describing yourself as a master of disguise.

You're never going to hear someone be like, I'm an excellent employee in the charity sector because I am a master of disguise.

Cambridge Analytica Analytica then accused Channel 4 of setting out to entrap staff by initiating a conversation about unethical practices before going on to describe how they had obtained that data from the POTS Facebook page and had been able to conclusively determine that it was in fact black.

But I mean, are we also, I mean, does it does it work, this votal manipulation?

Are we really so easily manipulatable as a species that we can be persuaded by obvious behavioural prompts trying to make us vote one way or the other or buy clothes we don't need or even to buy tickets to my forthcoming shows

including on sale from Monday three bugle live shows in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle in May, the week after the Radiotopia Live East Coast tour, not forgetting of course my dates in the southern hemisphere in April and early May.

Are we really that easily persuadable by little nudges?

I do hope not.

I do hope so.

I hope not.

Is this a terrible time for it to be revealed that Andy has hired Cambridge Analytica to promote his upcoming live dates?

The problem problem is, is that these companies know when to manipulate people in the electoral cycle because they know when elections are going to be because these are made public.

So what we need is snap elections called at five minutes' notice.

As Bugle listeners may remember from soon after the Bugle relaunch, the Indian government basically took most of the money in India out of circulation at about five seconds notice.

Why can we not call elections and just make people vote or just turn up to people's houses and say right you're voting in the next 10 seconds and you've got a far more realistic reflection of what people actually believe it's like people loved it when beyoncé surprise dropped a whole album why not an election

i mean it would save us a couple of weeks of really bad television yeah well i mean that is that is a huge benefit i mean imagine

and also the money saving an american campaign people are banging on about the american 2020 elections now.

That's like three years away.

That's a lot of bad television, Nish.

What are you going to do about it?

Yeah, I mean, we basically have a month of low-level gurning as an election campaign, whereas America has an unending quadrennial cycle of screaming in each other's faces until a lone tear drip drops down the cheek of Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore.

I went to an aquarium today and there was a kind of yellow fish that fights by smashing its open mouth into the open mouth of another fish.

So, basically, deep kissing as a form of adversarial combat.

Our debates could be more like that.

Theresa May versus Jeremy Corbyn, under those rules, would be unmissable television.

Either or jousting.

If they want to get Britain back, what do you reckon?

Just get them both on horseback.

Yeah.

With

jousts.

Taking back our country.

I think we should probably move on now to an election that needed no external influence in deciding the result.

The Russian election.

And,

well, Vladimir Putin, fourth win in a row in a presidential election for Big Vlads.

That's the fourth of his seven victories that have been already slated in.

And there's been a lot of debate.

Do you congratulate Vladimir Putin on winning a Russian election?

Donald Trump.

That was Martin sneezing.

Oh my God.

I thought that was just an involuntary reaction you now had when you heard Donald Trump's name, Melanie.

Yeah, that's a bit of my soul dying.

Donald Trump,

despite apparently explicit instructions not to congratulate Vladimir Putin, rang him up and congratulated him.

Well, of course, if you say don't do something, he's going to do it.

How naive are people.

Come on.

This was according to a leak that apparently is very cross about.

That may have come from his inner circle, very high up in his inner circle.

In fact, it may even have come from his evil alter ego that is perched on his shoulder, whispering, tweet it, Donald, tweet it.

And when your shoulder devil is briefing against you, you've got serious problems in an administration.

The way I see it, it's like

it's not when you have a friend.

It's why I see whether or not to congratulate Putin.

It's like when you have a friend who you don't like or trust, but who might one day invade your house unless you keep them sweet, and they invite you to their place and say, I've got a litter full of new puppies, do come round.

And you turn up, and there are the puppies freshly cooked and presented on a dinner plate.

Do you say, I really like your new puppies or not?

It's an awkward situation.

I feel like a real

direct and visceral sympathy for Donald Trump's advisors.

largely for my dealings with you because

this whole congratulating Putin thing is exactly like you and pun runs.

No matter how strongly you're warned by your advisors, brackets me and Helen, to stop, you refuse.

You are the Donald Trump of pun runs, Andy.

I was just in Cambodia, where the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, is the world's longest-serving Prime Minister.

He first Prime Ministered in 1985, and he's been Prime Minister continually since 1998.

Some questions have been asked about how fairly he has been elected to this role again and again.

And there's there's an election coming up there soon.

And he has said, you know, if I don't win, then of course I'll stand down properly.

So what he's done is arrest or exile all of the opposition.

Well, that's just good tactics, isn't it?

All of this week's news from Russia has just made it even worse that we are on the verge of heading over to Russia for a fun football tournament.

And Garen Southgate, the England manager, has come down pretty hard on people who criticise the decision to go to Russia, saying that he's been there, he thought the stadiums were excellent.

And as for the sort of racism, particularly, he said, well, we've got racism in our own country and our own football systems that we need to deal with.

So maybe we should do that before criticising Russia.

And you just think, isn't it possible for us to do both?

And isn't it that kind of one-track thinking that has held us back as a footballing nation?

You can't kick the ball and think about where you're kicking it.

Just boot the f ⁇ ing.

I was so upset when I saw that interview with Southgate because surely, I mean, the point that he's trying to make is there is still institutional racism in English football, which is true, and that is definitely something we should address.

But surely, as a symbolic gesture, it's not helping that we're packing off for a fun summer holiday with Uncle Vlad and his racist f ⁇ ing Armadas.

And, you know, I think that I'm furious with Southgate because he seems like a thoughtful man, and this feels like absolute bollocks.

But maybe also part of it is just that i've never forgiven him for missing that penalty in the semifinal of year in 96 and i'm just looking for any excuse at this point and helen i understand you'll be boycotting the russian world cup by not watching any of it on tele that will show him yeah

take that vlad

you've been schooled uh john mccain said uh he uh criticized Trump as he does basically whenever he wakes up in the morning, whenever he has lunch and when he goes to bed.

He said, an American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.

Which is true, but also we should remember in the past American presidents led the free world by getting the CIA to install dictators after the wrong people had won non-sham elections.

So

times do change and maybe it's time to move on.

A gentleman's election, Andy.

We at the Bugle, we are not going to congratulate Putin on his election victory.

We like the underdogs, so I was really hoping for a giant killing cup upset, but we've really come close.

And also our Moscow download figures are absolutely f terrible so we don't have any skin in the game

Britain news now and

well there's been some news that has shaken this well two bits of news that have shaken this nation to its core yeah

I don't recognize the country I arrived back in yesterday well firstly the new after Brexit when of course we are going to be the greatest nation in the world again because we've been held back from being by the European Union.

We're going to get our British passports back.

Yes.

The blue British passport that we used to just wave at immigration when we were conquering the world.

So I think you'll find we own this place.

Have a look at this.

Well it's coming back.

But the new non-EU post-Brexit hyper-British British passports will be made, it turns out, in France.

Which, I mean, I know it doesn't really mean anything, but at the same time, it feels like it means something.

I think it's like a passport restaging of the whole of Shakespeare's Henry V play.

All of the dramatic monologues.

It's like the passports have marched over there and taken back some fields in northern France.

We found there's been a good range of cultural references today.

We've had Rihanna, Calvin Harris,

someone else from pop music, and

Henry V.

Morris.

Morrison,

than that.

It was the way you lent on the second and third syllables of Brianna's name that really suggests you have no fing clue who she is.

Oh, right.

Banner.

Yeah, well, that feeling is entirely mutual.

The new passports are predicted to make the holders feel between 13 and 16% more British.

Yeah.

But that will now drop, given that they're being made in the EU to only 2 to 3%.

So it's losing a lot of British energy.

That's an absolute disaster.

To compensate, the government has announced that the passports will be battered and deep-fried to make them feel British again.

And we'll have one of those things like you get a musical Christmas card so that when you open it, it says, Rulebrif f in Tanya.

That's what I'm talking about.

It's a real climb down.

I mean, Brexit, a lot of Brexit does seem to be trying to summon up a faux nostalgia for Britain's imperial past.

But

back in those days, our passports were basically a gun.

And now we've downgraded to a blue book produced in France.

It does feel like a really humiliating I mean I've actually renewed my passport now

for the specific aim of not having a stupid blue passport.

Yeah, the Maroon Rebels.

Yeah exactly the Maroon Rebels.

It sounds like the third gang in Westside story who were just trying to get along with everyone.

Isn't it symbolic anyway to have passports once britain is restored as the greatest nation on earth i mean why would you go anywhere well exactly

absolutely right resolutely at home thank god someone has finally talked some sense on this liberal remoniac fest

in other uh britain uh news um prince harry and uh Megan Markle, whose wedding is

imminent.

How?

is it?

I don't know.

Maybe they're calling a snap wedding, like your snap election suggestion.

Yeah.

Tomorrow, why not?

Wake Prince Philip up.

Anyway, they have shaken this nation to its core by announcing that they're having a non-traditional wedding cake.

And basically, and this was announced on the news.

On the BBC, I heard it on the BBC news.

That is the news.

That this cake, a lemon, they're having a lemon and elderflower cake.

It got more news coverage.

It got more news coverage than, amongst other things, the war in Yemen.

Boo.

New stem cell therapy reversing sight loss.

Hooray!

The continuing Rohingya refugee crisis.

Boo.

And my forthcoming shows in Australia and New Zealand.

All details on the internet starting in Melbourne on the 10th of April with live bugle shows on the 16th with Alice Fraser and David O'Doherty and the 23rd with Tom Ballard and Aditi Mittel.

Got more coverage than any of those things.

If only the stem cells had thought to smear themselves over a cake.

But they didn't, and they should market themselves better.

I think it's newsworthy to Britain that this couple have decided to reject the traditional British wedding cake which is a brick of burnt shit with raisins in it.

And they've decided to have a cake which actually tastes nice, symbolising optimism.

How much change can Britain take, Andy?

The passports?

The cakes?

What next?

It's a republic now?

That's what this means.

Andy, Andy.

I can't remember what.

I mean, I'm not really in a position to lecture anyone on having a traditional British wedding cake.

You had a traditional Jewish wedding cake, Andy, of ham.

Yeah.

What was your wedding cake?

It was a leg of ham.

It was a leg of ham with little miniature figures of me and

my

now wife

as made by the great sculptress Helen Zoltzmann.

What were the figures made out of?

Also ham as well.

They were not made of ham.

What were they?

They were kind of some kind of modern.

Fymo, I think.

Yeah, Fymo.

Fymo, there we go.

Oh, look, buff.

And

you melted in the oven.

You said the word buff with the exact same level of confidence that you said Rihanna.

So, yeah, that was not a trad cake.

What was your wedding cake, Helen?

I can't remember.

Oh, just cakes.

You know, just

a lot of cakes.

Eating cakes.

What flavour was it?

There was a corpse of British history.

Yeah.

Lemonas.

That foreign fruit, chocolate, that foreign bean, coffee, also a foreign bean.

Well, I mean, lemon, how can you have a lemon?

You know, you claim to be a member of the British royal family.

Lemon, what kind of European shitrus is this, you swatty-song prince?

Lemons are an immigrant fruit that made their way to Europe with no legal documentation during the time of the Roman Empire, bloody Brussels, albeit the Brussels was at that time in Rome.

It was also the lemon was used early in its career as a fruit, as an ornamental plant in early Islamic gardens.

What is this?

Some kind of sharia law?

What is this?

Sharia cake we're all being forced to eat.

I didn't realize Megan's surname was Al Markala.

I just didn't want the guests to get scurvy.

But they should have wanted the guests to get scurvy, Helen.

That is a good British disease.

The lemon was taken to the Americas by Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors, imperialist scum fruit.

And I want to know, as you say, what is wrong with a good British cake made of raspberries or plums or worms or mud or pebbles or woad or the concept of national decline?

Why lemons?

I'm still really enjoying Helen's image of a brick of burned shit.

And I'm now really enjoying your inevitable participation in the next series of the Great British Baker.

Just watching Paul Hollywood have to try and muster some enthusiasm as he eats a cake of cooked feces.

I would ace that show.

I once made the destruction of the dinosaurs out of brownies.

Really?

Yep.

My kids had a cake baking competition at school, and

they had to do something to do with the environment in cake form.

And my kids made a tectonic fault.

A cake tectonic fault.

Out of ham.

Not out of ham.

That's what I would do on the Great British Bake Off.

Every week, I just turn up with a leg of ham saying, there's no point, you cannot possibly beat this.

Did the cake come out of the oven a bit shit, so you pretended that it was actual

seismic activity rather than just a cake?

It was a deliberate attempt to recreate

an earthquake.

An earth cake.

An earthcake.

You are a constant living affront to your entire cultural heritage.

Well, stop quoting my reviews back at me in this.

Say it before, say it again.

Anyway, for all the crucial role wedding build-up news, tune in to The Bugle, the official podcast of the British monarchy.

Did we ever actually sign that deal?

I'm not sure.

For exclusive coverage of the marriage that will surely unite Britain and the USA, even more than with the proposed union back in the 1960s of Princess Anne and Elvis Presley.

Sports news now.

And well, Helen, since you left your rightful spots squatting in my attic,

we've missed you a huge amount, and particularly because I don't have anyone to talk about sport with at home anymore.

Well, I bought you that fruit dehydrator just so that you would have something to talk to about sports.

How's the dehydrated fruit, by the way?

It's been okay.

We haven't fully mastered it.

We did reasonable work on

a

how hard is it to dehydrate a fruit for f's sake.

You are going to lead the sports section now, which is something that I don't suppose you ever expected to

have to do in your career.

Born to do it, Andy.

This week, desperate measures to stop Manchester United home games from being too quiet.

Jose Mourinho is really wound up by how quiet old Trafford is.

This problem's been around for years.

In 2013, they hired an acoustic consultant A couple of years ago, they added a designated singing section in the stands, like a football match choir.

But those haven't worked.

It's still a very subdued atmosphere.

So now they're talking about printing out chants and handing them to the spectators.

But clean chants.

So I don't think that's going to work.

Well, it worked for the church, didn't it?

That's basically what hymns are, isn't it?

Well, they took all the swears out of hymns and suddenly it all took off.

Helen, I mean, I can tell from

the pain in your voice that you're very concerned about the level of crowd atmosphere at Old Trafford during Man United games.

I just think

maybe that's a hint that football has had its time and people have realised it's not that exciting.

It's just a game, the ball's going to end up somewhere or other.

Whatevs.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's true of life in general, isn't it?

We just breathe and die.

Why don't they just have a lie down on the pitch and wait for the end?

Here's my wishes for for the rest of this year: that Helen gets a job, first of all, on the Great British Bake-Off and makes a wedding cake made of burnt shit, and then gets a job on Sky Sports's Monday Night Football, where all she ever says is, I mean, come on, the ball's going to end up somewhere.

It's just a game.

Who cares?

Well,

it wouldn't be, I mean, that much different from the level of most football punditry.

And if she managed to pull it off without flobbing into someone's car at the same time, it might be a step up.

But I've been trying to think of some other ways that they can reintroduce noise and atmosphere to old Trafford.

And one thing they could do is stick a mic into the Imperial War Museum next door, crank up the sound of that, whatever that is, little videotapes about Spitfires and things, or even into the nearby Salford MS discount outlet, because then you'd have a lot of people screaming about how cheap cardigans are.

Well, it's that kind of lateral thinking that football needs if it's to stay, you know, maintain its place at the head of the sporting food chain.

Evolve or die.

I mean, I believe the technical term is

boner shrinking.

It has been some real

flop-inducing stuff at Old Trafford this season.

Nish, what do you do before you start watching a football match?

Well, it depends on the football match, Andy.

But I'll tell you what, there are certain points during Fergie's era in the late 90s where I was erect for full years.

Also,

if I may, go onto slightly harrowing territory.

Yeah, I think I have to issue a trigger warning for yourself, Andy.

So England have started uh a a two-match test series in New Zealand, and uh at the beginning of which uh they reached a score of 27 for nine before being finally bowled out for fifty-eight.

Now for non-cricket fans amongst you, uh well uh the way to explain that is just by sharing with you some of the newspaper headlines from the British uh British newspaper.

The Guardian's headline was what the fing f was that?

The Telegraph here is holy shit, what in the name of fing shit happened there, England.

The Times, huge pile of shit reported in Auckland.

Got some of the New Zealand papers here.

The New Zealand Scrum just went with.

And the Auckland Daily Ruck went with all black rugby stars not involved as New Zealand cricketers humiliate England.

In terms of quality of performance, if that England batting effort had been a meal in a restaurant, whoever ate it would be dead.

Yeah.

And not in a good way, not in a man that was so tasty, I'm happy to peg out.

Dead in a horrific both ends eruption of allergico-gastroenteritic convulsions.

It was,

it was probably the lowest point in the history of English civilisation, Nish.

Yeah, I mean, for non-obviously, we do have a lot of non-cricket fans that listen to this show.

And to give you some sort of context for it, it's the equivalent in a 100-metre sprint of the starting gun going off and one of the sprinters falling over and shitting their pants and then rolling around in the shit and then crying and then vomiting on the shit.

I can't make it any clearer than that.

I mean, even the stats made me cry, and I love a stat.

That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

Thank you for listening.

Do send your emails into us at hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

Next week, I have Alice Fraser on the show.

And don't forget, the live Bugles coming up in Melbourne on the 16th and 23rd of April.

And those shows are also off the Radiotopia Live Tour, which I will be doing a Bugle Illusionist matchup with Helen

from the 7th to the 13th of May.

There will be some live Bugle dates, 15th, 17th, and 19th of May in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

Keep an eye out for the line-up news on that.

Anything you guys want to plug?

I'm at Giant Dwarf in Sydney on the 5th of June doing a live illusionist with music and stuff.

That'll be nice.

Tickets are on sale.

I'm doing some gigs.

Sell it, Dish.

Sell it off.

Yeah, in May, I'm doing some work-in-progress shows at the Bill Murray to start working up some new stand-up.

And they'll be happening on some dates.

Go to angelcomedy.co.uk if you live in London and you fancy seeing me do some new material.

Roll up, roll up.

Five pounds.

Jesus.

All right, well,

I'll be off writing those shows.

But yeah, other than that,

just

have a great life.

You're plugging the concept of having a great life.

That's very altruistic of you.

Not enough people do it these days.

So sometimes it has to be said.

Helen, thank you for joining us all the way from Singapore.

Nisha, enjoy the rest of your travels.

Buglers will be back next week.

Until then, goodbye.

Bye.

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.