Bugle 4061 – Three Day Heart attacks

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers!

Double the silent treatment, is that how it is now?

I've said, hello, buglers!

Okay, you're not being passive-aggressive at the other end of this microphone.

I am Andy Zoltzmann.

I'm in London, the famous British celebrity city that plays host to such famous tourist attractions as St.

Paul's Cathedral.

Statistically, one of the most successful cathedrals in the world based on the percentage of prayers answered by the Almighty Lord.

It's at 14.89%

currently, which is very high up the list, although St.

Paul himself, of course, never came to London.

But recognisable brand, and it's the city you do what you can.

Also in this city, we have the River Thames, one of the best performing rivers in its length category, the sub-250 mile river class, particularly after the star Russian river, the Volga, was disqualified after turning out to have been more than 2,000 miles too long, as they're nothing the Russians won't cheat at.

They got the 70km long Syrian river, the Yarmouk, to pretend it was the Volga.

Ban them all, I say.

Other attractions in this city include some benches, a hedge, Eric the Pigeon, still pecking away amongst the other pigeons.

Once apparently pecked some seeds out of the hands of one of the Spice Girls, according to rumour, though that is unconfirmed unconfirmed at this stage.

And the British Institute of Low-Level Grumbling About Stuff in General, one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes influence in British politics.

Joining me this week on the Bugle, returning to the Bugle for the first time in 2018, it's welcome back to Tiff Stevenson.

Hi.

Hello, Tiff.

I was waiting to see for the first time since what?

And just the beginning of a new year.

Right.

Yes.

For the first time since,

well, England lost the ashes as well.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It's probably not a massive event in your life.

No, it was.

It was.

I mourned for a couple of days.

I mean, I didn't.

I've had the boyfriend gloating over the fact that Scotland beat England at the rugby, and he doesn't even like rugby.

But just an opportunity to stuck it to the English.

So, yeah, but a pleasure to be here in the snow.

Yes.

I mean, it's been a snow apocalypse here in London.

We've done very well to survive this long.

I like that you avoided Snow Mageddon,

which has been popularised by people looting in Tesco's just in case they get trapped in their house.

Yeah.

Snow Mageddon is how it's been described.

Right.

Well, that's what supermarkets are for in these difficult times.

And joining us for the first time on the bugle.

For the first time since ever.

Since the beginning of time, since the Big Bang started this whole sorry process off.

They're giving the people what they want.

Me.

Fresh from co-hosting the Unbelievable Ashes podcast.

We can talk about the England losing again if you like.

I'm surprised you didn't bring that up with me.

It is.

Well, you've already heard her.

Now find out her name.

It is Felicity Ward.

Hello.

Hello.

It's great to have you all.

Hello.

You do the same hello.

You did the same hello for the Unbelievable Ashes.

Well, it's all about branding, isn't it?

It is.

I love it so much, though.

I don't know why it's funny.

Just you going, hello.

Actually, there's an ad campaign in Australia.

I don't think it's Harvey Norman, but it starts off, goes, Hello,

am I not?

And it sounds a little bit like that.

Maybe you're just making me homesick.

Okay, I mean, I'm really looking for a career in jingles.

Maybe that's

the first time.

I didn't know the hello was important.

I want to do a new one.

Hi, hi, hi.

Right there, yeah.

Yeah, that's branding.

So, we are here on the 2nd of March 2018.

It's the anniversary of the 2nd of March in 1770,

And to commemorate the 301st anniversary of a truly historic moment, it was the first ballet ever performed in England entitled The Loves of Mars and Venus.

Which sounds like a slightly dubious 1970s film.

But it was in fact the first ballet performed in England.

And to commemorate this historic moment in the history of British prancing, we are giving out a free bit of DIY audio ballet.

stand on your tippy toes, waggle your arms around a bit, stick one leg in the air, look sad, fall over slowly,

get back up, slowly, spidy spidy, waggle arms in a leg, jump up and down.

Well done.

This is issue 4061 of the Bugle.

Oh my god.

You talk about it.

Well, no, it's.

I mean, this.

It's a bit cheaty.

Yes, well, we did cheat.

We skipped out from 294 to 4,000.

That's still a lot of records.

Yeah, when we relaunched, we

are recorded.

We just haven't put them out yet.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But if you ever hear any episode numbered between 295 and 3,999, it will be a sign that nuclear war is imminent.

Oh, God.

Are they in like a locked file?

None of your business.

Very snappy off the top.

Okay.

All right.

Wow.

This is the Bugle for the Week beginning Monday, the 5th of March.

And on this date, in 1616,

Nicholas Copernicus' smash-hit book on the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, which also sounds like a dodgy 1970s film, well, that was added to the Index of Forbidden Books by the Catholic Church 73 years after it was first published.

But of course, then the damage had already been done.

The sun had ceased to revolve around the earth.

We'd lost our place at the center of the universe.

And well, really, that sense of declining influence is behind both the Trump and the Brexit votes recently.

So, thanks a fucking lot, Copernicus.

You sky-bothering star pervert, you snoopy telescope gawping at naked galaxies and shit.

You filth monster.

Pop off, mate.

Pop off.

And that's two weeks in a row, Copernicus has been on the show.

He's a hot topic,

he really is.

Have any of those stars me too'd him yet?

Well, not yet, but matter of time, isn't it?

Yeah, you know, it's just the male gaze, isn't it?

Hey,

not a moment too soon.

On this day in 1953 Joseph Stalin, the pin-up boy of Soviet authoritarianism, 25-time USSR celebrity being a brutal despot series winner.

What a series that was.

He popped his clogs.

He died.

Thought that might get a cheer from you too.

Massive fans.

I just like the fact that you had to explain what popped his clogs was, just in case we weren't sure.

Well, it wasn't so much you.

I don't know if

it's quite a British phrase to pop one's clogs.

I don't know.

I mean, you'd think it would be Dutch.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Just pop them.

What happens?

Do they just presume that when you die, the gases just like

builds up and fire your clogs off the end of your feet?

And that's popping your clogs.

Yeah.

As we all know, there are valves at the end of your toes that are only revealed when you do die.

That is biology.

Can't fight it.

Science.

It's science.

It's a bit of science.

As always, a section of this esteemed audio newspaper is going straight in the bin.

This week, we are looking at tech startups.

Now, Spotify this week was valued at 23 billion pounds dollars.

Well pounds where the exchange rate is going.

And we give you the Bugle Business Guide to tips for tech startups to invest your hard-earned virtual money in, including Nullify, an app that deletes all your photos, music, videos, and everything else in your digital life and prevents you accessing anything outside your immediate three-foot circle.

Rumored to boost human productivity by 18,000%.

Just at the idea stage, the market value, $100 billion.

Also, bubble up.

That prevents any people's stories or opinions intruding into your own personal political bubble.

So far, just three lines of code and the pencil drawing of a cartoon bubble.

That's worth $250 billion.

And Testify, that's a new app that turns your favourite novel into a Test Match scorecard.

And of course, as we know, good Testmatch is like a good novel in terms of narrative complexity.

That is worth $1.4 trillion.

Huge demand for that in this room.

The Testify.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean,

66% of the people in this room would get that, I reckon.

How much is it to download?

To download for you,

20 grand.

For me.

That is a hot price.

Thank you so much.

Anyway, that section in the bin.

Top story this week, the world.

All kinds of things happening in the world, and we are going to take you through the most important of them.

Beginning in China, where Xi Jinping.

China.

Yes, thanks for that.

Xi Jinping.

I like saying it.

It's a lovely collection of syllables.

It really is.

It's satisfying.

And we might be able to say it for basically eternity now, because he is essentially in the process of a massive power grab to make himself life president.

Prez for life.

Of

China.

And

more importantly, China, as part of this deal, temporarily banned the letter N from all speech and conversation, if I may exaggerate the story slightly.

Could you say that again?

That was me trying to say again without the letter N.

We could have made it good, cool, cool.

That would

technically mean that China would now be Chia,

which is a seed, not a country.

So they've banned Winnie the Pooh and the letter N, like a kind of totalitarian sesame.

I don't know what the Winnie the Pooh thing is.

Apparently, he's been compared to Winnie the Pooh.

I don't know.

Maybe he doesn't wear pants either.

Xi Jing.

Yes.

Because that's the main thing I know about Winnie the Pooh.

He did also try to bring down Mao Zedong when he was first in power.

Winnie the Pooh.

He nicked off from Ashdown Forest in southeast England with Piglet, of course.

Never seen again.

With a jar of army.

Yeah.

Well, that's an interesting comparison, though, Mao, because obviously, you know, there was a charismatic leader a long time ago who said he was for the poor who brought in a totalitarian regime and that ended well, didn't it?

So I thought you were talking about Jesus for a second there.

I think I've got my stories mixed up.

Have you guys ever been?

No, I haven't.

Oh, I've been to Honkers.

I've been to Hong Kong.

Oh, Honkers.

Sorry.

Sorry, is that?

I genuinely didn't know why you didn't understand what I was saying.

Like, the country.

I thought that was like a strip club or something.

I was like, wow.

Okay.

It is.

Honkers.

It's like a generic version of Hooters, but they didn't want to, you know, they didn't want to copy the name so they're like honkers they didn't they didn't want to bother with the t-shirt yeah that's right they just went straight for underwater they just do topless yum char at honkers

when i was there right everywhere you go they've got all these like chairman mao ashtrays mugs um i bought my boyfriend this like bright red chairman mao t-shirt he put it in the wash and it destroyed all the other clothes

which i thought was beautifully ironic yeah like there's a forced collectivization cycle on the machine um

but it that it it's it's it's terrifyingly close to what to going down the road that Mao went down.

And that ended like 90 million lives.

Well,

I mean, that's less than ideal, isn't it?

I mean,

that's even worse than what John Major did here.

Because there were hopes that China would become

more open, liberal, democratic as it became more of a sort of global force.

But it's almost as if China has taken a look at how we in the open, liberal, democratic democracies

of the Western liberal, open democratic world are conducting our open liberal democracies and thought, you know, let's hold fire on that.

I don't think it's working.

Not for me.

They're looking at North Korea and going, what can we learn from those guys?

That seems to be going really well.

They've got snappy haircuts, like the cut of their gym.

All right.

Also, abolishing constitutional time limits on presidential terms.

We all know who's watching that and thinking, oh, that is a very good idea.

Brilliant.

I don't know if we have them in Australia.

We seem to get through prime ministers about once every eight months.

I know, I know.

We've got a good metabolism.

What can I say?

John Howard, though, was in for like 11 or 12 years, and that felt like an eternity.

And he did some bad things.

It's like when you're watching a film that's critically acclaimed and you're like, I mean, I don't get it.

This just feels like a thin red line.

I remember watching that going, I just, I'm lost.

And then I said, Oh, I suppose it's good cinematography.

And mum went, they filmed it in far north Queensland.

You can't f that up.

You make an excellent point, Trevlyn, and you should be a movie reviewer.

There was another movie, there was a movie

notes on a scandal, and Kate Blanchette was in it.

And mum went saw it at the movies, and I went, How was it?

And she goes, Oh, it was just two and a half hours of cardigans.

Yes, please.

Yes, President Xi.

Sorry, President 11.

Am I reading that wrong?

The Jingping, incidentally, the best-selling cocktail in China at the moment.

Dictator for life is essentially basically, well, the thing is, with that term, there are certain get-outs in what for life means, as, for example, Colonel Gaddafi would testify.

There can be some fairly abrupt severance clauses in the dictator for life.

So they banned the letter N, which was so it the various search terms were blocked on the Chinese Twitter equivalent Weibo,

including

the phrase personality cult.

You can understand them banning the letter N from that, I guess.

There could be mistypings.

Also, they banned 1984.

All references to 1984.

Presumably the harrowing memory of England losing 5-0 to the West Indies in a Test Match series that summer.

Lest we forget.

Lest never forget.

We can forgive, but we can never forget.

I think that's the year Man Yu beat Everton, actually, in the FA Cup as well.

I didn't know you were a football girl.

I think that was 85.

Was it 85?

I think Everton beat Watford in 84.

Chris, can you check that, please?

Stat check.

Refereed by Peter Willis of County Durham, of course, famously.

First man ever to send someone off in a cup final.

It was Everton, Neil, Manchester United won.

Yeah, did.

It's 1985.

Yeah.

The reason the N was banned, it was something to do with some mathematical formula that was tweeted as some kind of implied criticism of the government, I think.

That to me sounds oversensitive.

Banning 126.

I mean, it's obviously not the same alphabet, but let's go with 126th of the alphabet, the globally correct alphabet.

Well, a friend of mine in China was viciously clamped down on by a succession of Chinese leaders over the years.

Firstly, because

he promoted a new brand of feminist alcoholic drinks, spirits, high-alcohol drinks designed specifically for women.

And he was caught and he wore a lapel badge for his,

which he called his Shi Jin pin.

He got very nervous as a result of this whenever confronted by anyone who looked like an authority figure, and particularly the prominent bit under his mouth.

So we always like to keep with him at all times a huge tin tow.

Huge tin towel.

Huge tin towel.

I mean, maybe do need a slight working knowledge of Chinese leaders.

Anyway, but he wasn't happy with the quality, so he rang the towel shop and they said, Don't worry, sir, we'll give you a replacement.

You can change him in any of our high street stores.

You can, nope,

no way, no way, he said.

I've finished with retail outlets.

I'm done Xiaoping.

He got ready cross and he pulled his trousers and underpants down to make his point about how cross he was.

It was just a bit of a nervous tick he had, but no one could fail to notice his tiny, tiny, almost rodent-like member.

He had a mousy dong.

Oh, wow.

I thank you so much.

I'm going to walk it out.

This early in your debut.

I know.

But

he was surprisingly very gullible, easily hoodwinked.

I once told him his favourite martial arts actor and star of such films as Drunken Master, Rumble in the Bronx and Rush Hour was actually from Prague, not Hong Kong.

He said, what, Andy?

The Chang Guy's check?

The Chang guys check?

I mean, even you weren't confident in that last one.

Not really.

Would you briefly know if you're not going to be able to do that?

Do you know what the pun was there?

Please, are the headphones clean off, please?

The headphones are clean off, Greg.

There's not more, is there?

Well, no, but I just feel that Chinese leaders need to be lampooned through the medium of the kind of bullshit they're trying to suppress.

Fight authoritarianism with puns.

Yep, it's the only way.

That's the true meaning of satire.

Without the letter M with pus.

With pus.

With pus.

A Russian policeman has been accused of writing pro-Putin graffiti

on

a fence.

This is great, isn't it?

The police denied it was graffiti, and then the fence mysteriously disappeared.

Yeah, the walking fences of Russia.

It does suggest that Russia slightly lost its edge because,

I mean, time was, it wasn't fences that would disappear.

It was entire towns, He collected intelligentsia and anyone who even looked like a poet.

Now, just a fence.

I mean, what are you, Putin?

Man or mouse?

But

if he is listening, we do support the regime.

It's a bit of a desperate move, isn't it?

It's kind of like sending a Valentine's card to yourself to make someone else jealous, which I've totally never done.

Have you done it?

Oh my God, please tell me you've done it.

I did it at school.

Of course.

It was to try and make Darren, this guy that I liked at the time, jealous.

So I opened it in the classroom and I was like,

oh, I'm pretending that I didn't know that there was going to be a care bear on the front of this.

So great.

I just look, I think, with Putin, Putin is what happens if a movie was made where the plot is, what if an actual penis was a superhero?

He looks like an actual penis.

His face looks like a penis with two eyes, like he's ripped, but then just has a penis head.

I'm not even like trying to be mean.

He looks like a penis.

He's a walking dick pic.

He's a walking Snapchat dick pic.

let's move on uh to

to the um

uh the italian elections uh coming up this weekend and um

well the potential return of uh bugle favourite uh silvio berlusconi and i don't know it's a weird time for berlusconi because since he was last in in in power the the goalposts for being a lunatic leader have

well not so much moved as grown.

Widened exponentially.

It was like America took one look at Berlusconi's Italy and raised them Trump's America and

supersized it.

It's supercised.

It's about Italy digging Emperor Nero out of retirement.

It's really

hard to see how Berlusconi can match up to the levels that are being set around the world now.

It's like a faded sports star coming back for one ill-advised last shot at the big time.

I do have an explanation of what's going on with Berlusconi at the moment in Italy via my boyfriend.

Right.

There's a little section that we like to call Scottish Boyfriend Explains a Thing.

Oh, right, okay.

The return of Scottish Boyfriend Explains.

The Return of Scottish Boyfriend Explains.

Accompanied by bagpipes, one will presume again.

For cultural sensitivity.

For cultural sensitivity and my beautiful attempt at the accent.

Scottish Boyfriend Explains a Thing.

Here's a Heng Ray.

The Italians have brought in a new electoral system that requires any government seeking power to have the support of both chambers of parliament.

It seems like they've implemented this because there's a new party who are likely to have a majority, but everyone in the main party thinks they're a bunch of fannies.

So it's meant to streamline hangs, right?

But it hasn't erely.

Add to the fact that Italy was one of the worst-hit European countries in the 2008 financial crisis, you know, obviously not as bad as Greece, but close.

And you end up with a fractured political landscape and lots of smaller parties with generally more and more extreme ideals not unlike here really only our electoral system makes it less likely that wankers like Farage get elected.

Now here's a really crazy thing that I just lost the accent there but we'll find it.

Mind Berluscone.

I, the Play-Doh guy, looks like Morph the heartbeat.

He's he got done having sex and drug-fueled bunga-bunga parties.

Well, he's back in the fold as the leading force behind the coalition that has a strong chance of winning.

Obviously, he couldn't he be elected because of all the fraud and the toot.

But he'd have a lot of power again.

And it's maybe not a bad thing, considering the far-right candidate now has the backing of Steve Bannon.

Better bunga-bunga parties than make Italy great again, no?

Actually, I'll tell you what would make Italy great.

See all their smashing pizzas that they make.

Fire them in the deep fat fryer.

F and magic.

There we go.

Well, now we all understand it.

I find you a bit more attractive.

Is that

I enjoy kind of living with someone that will occasionally talk to me and it sounds like a threat.

Yeah, I enjoy that.

You should have married a South African.

I married a lawyer.

Very similar.

It is weird.

The way Italy keeps coming back to Berlusconi,

it's,

to me,

very much...

I'm making the same mistake over and over again.

It's like when you meet a man who's lost both hands in separate threshing machine accidents.

You know, one

could easily be misfortune, bad luck, at a stretch, horseplay.

Two, if Bing wanted to hurt himself.

A quick Brexit update now, and well, the launch of Empire Part 2 is getting closer, seemingly, by the day, on an almost daily basis, it seems.

Theresa Mayer said that Britain should come back together.

It's unclear when we were last together.

I think probably 1945 on VE Day was the last time that we were anything approaching together.

I quite like talking about Brexit.

It's sort of been dragging on for so long.

It's almost retro talking about it again.

It's like it's come back into fashion.

It's like a hypercolor t-shirt of, you know, the terrible international decision.

I'm like, oh my God, you guys are going to collapse your economy from the inside.

Great to see you again.

Cute.

Like a magic eye picture.

They're coming back in.

Exactly.

What is it?

What is it?

Is it fiscally f f ⁇ ed?

It is.

I think it's.

Or a boat.

Yeah, Brexit for me, I'm the opposite.

I just, Brexit now stands for brain exit.

I hear it and I just think, oh, God.

I don't know if I have anything fresh or exciting to say about it.

And neither do the politicians.

Nothing's going to happen.

Nothing continues to be happening.

Again and again after meeting me, nothing's happening.

Well, that's, I mean, what this country voted for.

Exactly.

We voted having not thought about what would happen afterwards, and the government has a duty to put that into practice.

And they are.

That void.

That void of planning.

If anything, they should be applauded for carrying out the lack of planning.

And respecting the will of the people.

Exactly.

As the great Swedish philosophers Anderson and Ulvaius famously wrote, breaking up is never easy, we know, but we kind of have to go because we voted to go in a general hunchy kind of way without really looking at the specifics of what leaving actually entailed.

And now going back on that or even revisiting it would make a lot of people really angry.

And we really need to take a long, hard bath with ourselves and think about how the f ⁇ we do democracy better going forward.

So it's an awkward situation as they famously sang back in the 1970s.

Theresa May set out five tests that had my full attention for a future EU-UK deal.

That has lessened my attention.

Will it be a whitewash is the question.

She wants the deepest and broadest possible trade agreement to replace the deepest and broadest possible trade agreements we evicted ourselves from.

A betrayal of all those leave voters who voted for isolation and national decline.

Do their votes mean fing nothing?

She also said that her long-term goal is the bespoke economic partnership.

It's not a pantsuit, Theresa.

You can't just go in, give your measurements, then pick it up in a fortnight.

It's a little bit more detailed than that.

It's like breaking up, isn't it?

And then going, but I still want to bang.

I still want to bang and live with you and co-parent our children and share bills.

Yeah, but we're just not saying we're together.

We're not together.

These are the five points in the deal, apparently.

Any deal must respect the referendum result.

Any deal must not break down.

That's nice and vague, isn't it?

Wow.

It must

protect jobs and security.

A bit vague.

And any deal must be consistent with the kind of country we want to be.

Modern, outward-looking and tolerant.

Where the f was that in any of the campaigning?

And any agreement must bring the country together.

I mean, it's hard hard to...

I mean how can you issue that list of

it's hard to issue a vaguer list of demands other than just kind of going oh yeah.

There must be signatures on it.

Signatures, yeah, just draw like a cloud or something and

that'll do.

Just put together

just a thing.

Yeah.

She might as well have written thing five times.

Thing.

Clearly the five tests we should be having,

will the agreement make us feel at least 1.6% more in control of our national destiny?

That is the threshold for an indefinable indefinable sense of national freedom.

Also, will we still be able to send stag parties and other battalions of the Queen's Royal British Youthful Inebriads to vomit in the city centres of Europe's great capitals?

That's very important.

That should be number one, I think.

Will we get our promised V sign from the cliffs of Dover?

As discussed, we must get that.

Must be at least 500 metres tall.

And will it enable Britain still to be able to blame all of our national problems on A, Europe, and B, Johnny and John at a foreigner?

Or Jean Etranger, or Gian Estraniero, Jan Auslander, or Juan Ignacio Estraniero.

We need to pin it on all of them.

We might have voted to leave the EU, but we did not vote to lose both of our keynote national scapegoats.

Like any nation, we need scapegoats to stop us turning our mirror on ourselves.

And Brexit or no Brexit, Europe must accept that this is one historic bond with the continent we will not abandon.

Please don't leave.

I want to know if people of Britain can still go to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, stand about 100 metres in front of it, but make it look in a photo like they're the ones that are holding it up.

Are we still allowed to do that?

You can't do that.

You're probably all right as an Australian fisherman.

And American tourists are fine, but I think we're not.

I'm so sorry for your loss, guys.

That's the big loss.

I think we also have to take away anything that kind of is European-esque here.

So, for example, alfresco dining has to go.

I think we never should have tried tried that in the first place, really.

We're not

climate for it.

No, on a freezing cold day, seeing people go, I'll just sit under this heat lamp and pretend that I'm on holiday in continental Europe.

I once saw it up.

I was up in the northeast in Newcastle to do a show, and literally a group of Geordie women walked past, and there were some chairs outside.

And one of them went, oh, I'm having that.

And literally just picked it up and walked off with it.

And it was, it was.

That's what the sharing economy is all about.

It was so beautiful.

It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

I was like, this is the opposite of what this kind of European spirit is, and I love it.

Boris Johnson has,

as always,

dipped his poisonous cock into the inedible stew of Brexit.

Like a platypus.

The edible strew of steeped his balls.

And well, he's compared the Irish border to the different zones in London's congestion charge.

I was waiting for him to compare Boris bikes to repeal the eights.

One ride and now you're fed.

Also said you these words, and it's hard to know exactly what he meant by this.

He said you can't suck and blow at the same time.

Boris can.

Well, evidently.

Evidently he can.

It's

hot air is it?

He blows hot air and he sucks as a human.

Yeah, you're totally right.

He can do both.

I mean, I just, he never thought this is where he was going to be.

He just wanted people to like him, Boris.

That's what this whole thing has been.

It's very similar to Trump in that.

I don't think that either of them actually want to be in politics.

They just want the notoriety, the power, the fame.

Yeah.

That's why I'm in comedy.

Yes.

Weird, sort of badly thatched blonde hair perched atop.

I've never seen them in the same room at the same time, actually.

I don't want to.

You sure?

Is that not going to be hot for you for these things?

No.

Oh, no, no, you're putting things in my head.

That's gross.

Let's cross the pond to the USA.

USA.

And

the president, Trump Stiltskin himself, has

followed some of his curious comments in the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Florida by saying that he would have run into the school unarmed.

like the military hero he is.

To draft dodging.

To To deal with.

I mean, in some ways, I just thought, typical politician, just always thinking, what would make me most popular?

And Donald Trump Clee thought running in and being shot, that is finally the way to win over the Liberals to his cause.

He's right.

He's absolutely right.

There is, I think we've seen slightly in the past few days the benefits of having a president who essentially just pisses with the wind.

And, you know, will, you know, if there's a particularly strong public movement, he will, you know, swing behind it in some ways.

And even he has urged lawmakers not to be afraid of opposition from the National Rifle Association, despite all the things he said to them in the past.

And essentially, as I say, he just whases with the wind.

And I mean, it's slightly surprising to hear him come out in favor of not completely tooling everyone up in America for their own personal Passchendales.

The Passchendales, incidentally, easily the world's most harrowing male strippers.

Oh, the mud.

Do you have to take it all off?

Are they from Passion of the Christ?

They're the dancers that didn't make the cut.

Well, it goes to show how he just needs to be like halfway decent and like how public opinion will swing.

I'm not sure if I actually said this on the Unbelievable Ashes podcast, but when you have bad mental health, when you, like, if you're if you're very, very depressed and then you get slightly better, you think you're normal again.

It's just that your standards of good have become so low that you're like, oh, this is probably how I was living before.

You know, I mean, I haven't shat myself.

That's got to be something, guys.

Yeah.

It's.

And we can't even say that Trump hasn't shat himself.

We don't know that for certain things.

We don't know.

We don't.

Andy, have you got any insight on that?

Don't, not a great deal.

Have you shat yourself, Andy?

Let's talk about that.

Oh, I have.

Have you?

Oh, yeah.

I've wished a couple of times.

That's the point that Andy just looks out at Chris.

Chris is like, no, no, no, no, do the shit in yourself, you are.

This is how Andy turns the same colour as his hair.

I did once accidentally shit myself on a water slide.

Oh, that's the worst.

It was kind of like an unexpected enema.

Were you scared, or was it just like

you ate too quickly and then went straight into the water?

No, it was none of those things.

It was I came off really quickly one way and the water came the other way and gave me an unexpected enema.

Oh, literally.

So the water literally just

Andy's like, none of this is making it.

You are the kid that they had to evacuate because of yes oh my god we've met one

Australian news look it's not all bad news guys sometimes we just need a stereotype to to restore us to sanity and so you'll be happy to know that there was a little festival that took place very recently in a town called Curry Curry tell me you don't love it already so good they named it twice they just hosted the inaugural mullet festival.

Yeah.

I mean, this is something that humanity has been waiting for.

It's just a celebration of the world's most practical hairstyle.

Is that how far behind Australia is?

No, mate.

We just

did it in our hearts.

Right, okay.

The curry curry are actually saying they started the mullet.

They're saying it was invented.

Big claim.

Big claim.

Gum, that's a bullshit.

Yeah, well.

Jesus had a mullet.

Did he?

Just about.

Depends which way you look at it.

Yeah, it was.

It was business at the front party at the back.

Yeah.

Jesus's hair famously.

It's very, very versatile.

You'll be happy to know there was a competition and there was categories.

There's your everyday one, you know, your everyday mullet.

That's your casual going up to the shops haircut.

Then there's the grubby.

A grubby mullet was.

And I don't know if that's...

That sounds like a cocktail.

The grubby mullet, yeah.

I don't know if it's to do with the quality of haircut or the hygiene of the hair.

Either way, I want to see it.

So, I mean, if you're not going to use that as your everyday mullet, when do you need the grubby?

Well, just, I mean, it depends what kind of person you want to put yourself across as.

If you want to be taken as a family mullet, you know, like someone that participates in society, it's a community mullet is your everyday mullet.

Really, right.

But a grubby mullet, I think.

It's got a perm in it.

It's got some curl.

It's got some kick in it.

It's got some unwashed curls, I would say.

If not a dread, I reckon there's probably a dready or two.

Definitely a rat's tail hiding underneath the mullet.

Right.

yeah it's the chuck norris of haircuts there's a little punch waiting underneath it um this is real ranger was one of the categories now ranger we

as in redhead that was it's a ginger mullet that was that was a

competition yeah you could go all right i mean there's a little bit of business at the front there's so much party at the back

you're all party that's what they say about salts but it's all party at the back you look like you've run so far towards business that you've just got party shooting out the back of you.

There was also women's.

The women's mullet and your...

The mullet for her.

The mullet for her.

The mullet.

The she-mullet.

The she-mullet is so nice.

Imagine all of the cast of prisoner cell block H.

Yeah, that's right.

Actually, there was only one entrant, and it was an 11-month-old girl.

So she wouldn't have had a choice in that anyway.

It's a non-consensual mullet.

That's what that was.

And finally, juniors.

There's a juniors mullet.

And the sweetest part of that is that the winner said with the $50 prize money, he was going to buy his girlfriend a pie.

Oh!

That's someone that doesn't have a girlfriend, doesn't it?

What does every woman want apart from a pie?

Well, what did you get for Valentine's Day?

I can't tell you.

Tell me.

All right, I'll just show you.

That was my pie.

And it's such a good news story.

There was a guy who left the festival.

It's a festival.

And he broke his leg because he was on his way to KFC.

Of course he f was.

Of course, he was to meet Trump.

Oh, yes.

Oh,

um, the uh, I mean, there have been some great mullets in, oh, Jesus essentially wasn't far off from a mullet, Isaac Newton.

I mean, uh, and uh, Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of uh USA.

Oh, actually, that's pretty much a mullet for me.

I don't think you know what a mullet is, mate.

Well, you know, it's maybe stretching mullet, of course, etymologically quite interesting from a Latin word, uh, meaning uh let him grow it long at the back.

Chris Waddle.

I was just reminded of the fast show then.

Chris Waddle.

Famous mullet.

Famous.

Well, I think that's when the mullet in Britain

really took off, didn't it?

What I was saying, it ceased to be an acceptable heck at when Chris Waddell missed that penalty in the World Cup 75.

It became attached to shame.

Yeah, it's the football inversion of Hitler's moustache.

Yeah.

There is an Australian comedian last time I was out doing shows in Adelaide called Chris Something, who has a mullet.

There's more than one Chris comedian that has a mullet, absolutely.

Is there?

Because this guy did a version of Chris Franklin.

Yeah, who did a song, a version of the Meredith Brooks song Bitch called I'm a Bloke.

And that was a number one hit in Australia for a long time.

It was

a countrywide hit.

Like it was number one on the charts.

Bloke.

I'm a bloke, I'm an ocker, and I really love your knockers.

Wow.

I'm a laborer by day.

I piss up all me pay.

Look, it was a huge hit.

I have absolutely no problem with that song whatsoever.

And it was, I mean, it's rare that a comedian has a number one hit, so full respect.

Pain news now and doctors have confirmed that period pain can be, quotes, as painful as a heart attack.

What?

Yep.

Really?

Yes, as painful as a heart attack.

Now, I'm a man who has never had a heart attack.

But I think, you know, us men can still relate to it, and Chris will back me up on this.

But I've heard that it's also equivalent to

seeing your team can see the last-minute goal.

Very similar, I think.

This should be titled Not Pain News, but No Shit, Sherlock News.

It's incredible and sad.

And I know that last time I came on to the bugle, I did talk about periods and the fact that I thought I was sinking with the apocalypse.

So as far as I'm concerned, stories-wise, if it bleeds, it leads.

I want to be the person that brings periods to the bugle consistently to upset people.

But

I am.

Sometimes you don't have a choice.

You just bring your periods to you.

Your period is here.

It's present.

It's like another person in the room.

But basically, the sad thing about this is how women's pain is just not taken seriously or listened to.

And I'm someone who's sort of suffered from this.

I take codeine regularly.

My first day is apocalyptic.

And

because I'm, you know, as I described it before, I'm building a house in my vagina and it's in the process of being demolished.

So, you know, we're in a deconstruction phase.

It's very painful.

And yeah, I've had pethidine shots, which is what they give women when they're going into labor.

You know, it's a serious thing.

So I think a lot of women have been like, yes, we know.

But finally, to have doctors turn around and go, oh no, this is a thing that

we hear you.

Yeah, it's just like, unless we can relate it to everyone, it doesn't count.

It's like, oh, you say it's really bad.

I just don't know if men are going to buy that.

Yeah, I don't have a vagina, so I can't really understand.

Yeah, like, and it's not even like feminists going, yeah, we, like, this is women going, we've been telling you for f ⁇ ing centuries.

Like, we pass out from the pain.

We're not making that up.

We're not like, oh, fragile little flowers.

We can pass a person through through our gins.

Yeah.

The regime can take a person, so we can take the pain, but we're telling you that it is still painful.

Yeah.

So what are you going to fing do about it, Andy?

What are you personally going to do about it?

Yeah.

Well,

did you bring your mum poms today?

What I will do is I will eat as unhealthily as possible until I have a heart attack and then I will be able to relate to it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And you'd then encourage all men to do the same.

Every month for three days.

We'll have a three-day heart attack.

That's the pledge that the bugle is going to make.

And I would like the listeners to do the same.

If there are any people that were born

with

out-female reproductive organs for the next, well, the rest of your life.

Every month you have to eat badly enough to have a heart attack once a month that lasts at least one day.

My dad did that once at Christmas, ate 20 roast potatoes and gave himself a mild heart attack.

I mean, it wasn't for me for periods, but he did.

It was part of the struggle.

Here's the thing.

I think all men need to step up now and understand.

Partners, boyfriends, husbands need to be able to say, yes, I understand how painful this is.

Go out and buy the tampons.

I mean, my fiancé does.

He's quite good.

I'll send him out to buy them, but he will say, what magnitude?

So

there's a part of him that still has to make it like a gun and a bullet, but I accept that.

That's okay.

What size engine do you need?

How many litre fuel tank do you want?

Sorry.

I'm so sorry.

How many shops at goal is this?

I don't know.

What other things do men talk about?

That's it, really.

That's really it these days.

How many is it?

Have there been a lot of test runs?

Yeah, is it Big Bash?

Is it one day or is this a five-day test?

There we go.

Well, on that moving note, it is now time to wrap up this episode.

Thank you very much for listening.

Buglers, we will be back next week.

Thanks to Felicity for joining us for the first time.

I'm so sorry.

I'll never be out of luck again.

Thanks to Tiff, whose tour is currently underway as soon as the weather relents.

Yeah, get out of London.

As soon as, I'm hoping Tuesday, which will now be the new first day of the tour, which will be Colchester.

And then I'm Leeds, City Varieties, Soho Theatre in May, everywhere else.

You know, go and look on my website.

Find me on Twitter.

I have a Netflix special if anyone wants to watch that.

It's under the Live from the BBC series on it's only Netflix Island and

the UK.

It's not anywhere else in the world.

So if you are outside that region, suck it.

No, I'm sorry.

I'm joking.

It's not good anyway.

No,

I think that's all.

And if you want to see my gigs, then I have a website, which is justfelicityward.com.

There you go.

Well, there you go.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Until next time, goodbye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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

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

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