Bugle 4059 – Space, Snow and Super Bowl

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4059 of the world's longest running only and greatest audio newspaper for a visual world.

We are recording on the 9th of February 2018.

So this is the Bugle for the week beginning the 12th of February.

I am here in London with Alice Fraser.

Hello Alice.

Hello Andy how are you?

I'm very well thank you.

You've been in this hemisphere for a very long time.

Too long.

I'm starting to forget what the sun looks like.

It comes, goes up on the wall.

And what joy feels like and what good water is like.

And how water goes the wrong way down a the plughole.

Yep.

That's more.

It comes out of a shower at any pressure at all.

Upwards out of a shower, doesn't it?

In the southern hemisphere.

Yeah, yeah, it just comes out of the the drain.

It's like a B-day.

All showers are B-days in Australia.

Is it right that in the southern hemisphere, the sun, rather than rising over the horizon, just curves down from the bottom of the sky and then curves back up again?

It just sort of leaps out at you from behind things, Andy.

Okay, that's what we're worried about.

And joining us from New York City is a man who is not usually in New York City.

It is Anuvab Pal.

Hello, Andy.

Hello.

Hi.

Anuvab, great to have you on the show, as always.

I understand that the current weather conditions in New York City are not the kind of weather conditions you are used to in your home of India.

I am not, Andy.

I am from the tropics.

And I think I've realized why the Americans like Fahrenheit.

They like Fahrenheit.

Because the moment they get into centigrade in the American winter, they're always in a minus number.

Right.

And

I think if Americans had to live through 20 20 days of minus 5 degrees, there's a psychological impact.

So 17 degrees Fahrenheit still feels like a positive number.

I think you've got to the very heart of the American psyche then.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, they always look at the positive side of things.

So they came up with that centigrade Fahrenheit formula just to give themselves a positive number.

Bottom line is,

you know, it's a black sky.

And when my plane landed in New York City, the pilot couldn't see anything.

He could have landed in Philadelphia.

We were in the middle of a snowstorm.

It could have been anywhere.

It could have been Godthab.

I'm probably in Godthab right now.

I have no idea.

Because

as you were talking about, this hemisphere, particularly this part of this hemisphere, North America, I think, as they call it, gets pretty cold this time of year, Andy.

And us from the tropics, we're not used to it.

I've never heard the term, Indians are a cold people.

We're known to be apparently warm people, but literally, that is not true anymore.

I share your pain.

Thank you, Alice.

I've been doing a lot of reading on the southern hemisphere

just

to put my mind at ease, you know, being in the cold.

South Africa, Australia,

lovely summer going on there, right?

Yep, pretty good, and I'm not there to enjoy it.

But you are returning to Australia just in time for it getting slightly colder.

Yes, I am.

I'm going to be in all of the festivals.

I'll plug it at the end of the festival.

Okay, good thinking, Alex.

So this, we are recording on the 9th of February, meaning it is 32 years to the day since Halley's Comet last cranked out a cheeky little perihelion.

That, of course, is a comet's closest point to the Sun.

Halley laid down the Big P on this day in 1986 during its jaunt to the proximity of Earth.

You don't need to be a rocket astronomer to know that.

But it was a disappointing performance by the peanut-shaped celestial whizzer, panned by critics as the comet's shittiest flypast in the last two thousand odd years today's comet magazine described Halley's 1986 effort as quotes a barely visible anticlimax this once great comet that has in its time presaged all manner of major global events was patently resting on its laurels in one of the most egregious displays of smug comet placency we've ever seen

Andy I'm just pleased to hear there is a comet magazine that it has subscribed to

is.

There's a magazine for everything, as regular listeners to this, so we're only too aware.

Halley's Comet famously

done some quality

Omen throwing in 1066.

It appeared in the skies before the Battle of Hastings,

which of course brought about the beginning of European domination of British politics, which continues unbroken to this day.

But 1986 wasn't entirely

without effect on the world.

Just eight days after its perihelion, on the 17th of February, we had the signing of the Single European Act, the first major revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which established the EEC, setting in motion the single European market and/or the complete and utter subterfuginous appropriation of British democracy, freedom, liberty, and Britishness.

Our listener can't see this, but Andy almost got out of his chair with a fist over his head at that.

Just so that you know its method.

Must stop reading certain newspapers.

And also, six months later, Diego Maradona cheated England out of the World Cup in the quarterfinal.

So maybe let's listen once again to the classic commentary from the Bugle Archives on that historic sporting moment.

Maradona gets the ball now, the cheating little shit.

What are you gonna do?

Punch it in from the halfway line?

You prick.

He turns now.

Kick the fer past Beardsley.

Whack him, you loser, past Hodge.

What part of kick that basket of the balls you struggling?

Do you understand, Hodge?

Past Reed, nail him!

Fing nail him!

He's up to Fennec now.

Come on, Terry, put him in a body bag!

Fing fing!

Shit, he's past Butcher as well.

Fing twat him, Terry!

Just something to beat now.

Take his fing head off, Pizza!

I don't give a f if he scores!

F if he ruined him!

Oh boy, come in!

Oh no, it's in 2-0!

Oh, that was a tremendous goal by the little magician, Laurie McMenamy.

Have you ever seen anything like that?

Oh my gosh.

The next time Hallie is scheduled to come here, 2061, although we are used to people turning up late these days, according to my computer simulations, it will be 3D and wireless by that point.

That's high-tech stuff from the comet.

And will be viewed as an ominous omen in 2061, harbinging, amongst other things, the return of Elon Musk to Earth after the completion of his journey to Alpha Centauri via his new hyper-splat interstellar catapult.

It will also foretell the death of US President Honeydew Mellon, the first piece of fruit to be elected to high office in the USA after voters finally tired of human politicians, then robot politicians, and then dogs howling at each other, which was a big step up for the 2044 election.

But unfortunately, President Mellon will fully biodegrade seven months into its second term in office, despite the advanced refrigeration techniques of the day.

And also, following Halley's visit to Earth in 2061, we will see see the retirement of Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 135.

And finally, the tender knight is in her waving wrist, forcing her to step down.

Top story this week.

Elon Musk has blasted his car into space.

I mean, no big deal.

Well, actually, quite a big f ⁇ ing deal.

He's just blasted a f ⁇ ing car into space.

Yep, space, the final frontier for rich wankers to show off their fancy red cars.

Elon Musk, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and man to whom nobody has said no for way too long, says sent a space suit in a fully functioning Tesla car to orbit around Mars in an eternal floating monument both to how smart and how stupid humanity is.

It's amazing how often those two go very, very close together.

They're so close together.

I mean, I guess, you know, the question is, why did he blast a car into space?

And the answer is clearly, why the f ⁇ not.

I mean, what was he going to do?

Blast a bicycle into space?

Don't be an idiot.

Or a jet ski?

I mean, he he might be an American citizen now but he's not that American.

Clearly it had to be a car.

It's the first consumer car to be blasted into space.

I mean you do have to use the word blast at all points in this.

That is the only way you can put a car in space is by blasting it there.

I believe that this is the initial step in a kind of a super villain storyline because often at the beginning of a super villain storyline you know that they're a villain because they fire someone into space or drop him into a pit of crocodiles.

This, you know, eternally orbiting car in space with cameras on it is the thing that he'll point to when his kids won't won't eat their vegetables.

The first consumer car blast in space, although of course, Neil Armstrong did insist on taking his collection of toy cars with him on the Apollo 11 moon blast, and apparently said to NASA, It's gonna be boring spending three days travelling to the moon.

And you've pretty much exhausted Ice Buy with My Little Eye within an hour or two of blasting off, and Buzz is really shit at Scrabble, so I'll play with my cars.

If the cars don't go, Neil Armstrong doesn't go.

Cars in space.

Musk said that he wanted to launch the silliest thing we can imagine

into space with his on the back of his head.

He should have got you on the TV.

The Falcon Heavy rocket, which is a disappointing name for a rocket to me.

Falcon Heavy sounds more like a craft ale than

sort of a massive great rocket.

Is this the beginning of us sending up various household objects?

Because if we're in the process of sending up things that you get in a suburban middle class house in San Francisco, you're going to send the car up and very soon a refrigerator,

maybe some sort of an espresso machine.

And my question therefore is, when we do find intelligent life in space,

should their encounter with humanity be this?

Just seeing a bunch of nonsense stuff from homes flying around next to Neptune?

Like is is this do you guys feel okay that this is the first thing extraterrestrials will see and judge us for?

Well, I have a bit of a problem with this in that I think it's a very disappointing.

I don't object to a car being sent up into space.

What I do object to is the choice of car.

I mean, obviously, Musk is going to go for the Tesla, you know, high-tech, futuristic, super tech tech technology.

But that's just what the aliens will be expecting.

If, however, he'd sent up a 1975 Robin Reliance or my mum's old Nissan Micra,

Then, how are the aliens going to interpret that?

That blend of advanced technology and shit cars?

Correct.

They're going to think to themselves, how the fk did that pile of shit get here?

Yeah, I want a daihatu charade.

You know, the kind with those pleather seats that burn little holes into the back of your legs in summer.

Yeah.

You know, Andy.

Happy days.

Not in an English summer.

Anyway, let's go back to this phrase.

The silliest thing

we can imagine.

Raise the bar, Elon.

We know you have a hyperactive imagination.

Raise the bar.

I mean, the commies, they put a doggy with flying goggles on in space.

That is already sillier than a car for me.

And that was the most sensible thing they could think of to send into space.

And it's a dog with goggles on.

I mean, that to me is inherently sillier than a car.

What I would have...

I would have, you know, if he's going to put a car in there, it would have been better if it had one or more of the following car accoutrements attached to it.

A, some tins tied to the back

and a just divorced banner in the windscreen.

What a breakup.

A parking ticket tucked under the windscreen wiper.

I mean, that, that's, I mean, that, that has to, that, that has to go.

Uh, a family food shop in the back, just for the sake of mystery.

Uh, a folder marked Plot to Conquer the Universe.

Actually, I assume that was probably in the glove compartment.

Um,

Donald Trump, I think we'd have all got behind that.

Elvis, even better.

What most I would have liked to have seen is a carrier bag full of prison clothes, an envelope with $40,000 in cash, a wig, a passport, a driving license, a revolver, and some sunglasses.

So whoever finds this car in future will think, now that is a breakout.

I mean, what is the future for the space car?

I see, you know, it's going to rotate mindlessly through the vacuum of space around Mars for eternity until we all crash into the sun.

But hopefully, at some point, Elon Musk will send up some roof racks and skis, which I always think make a car feel jaunty.

I mean, at some point, it's going to have a prang with an asteroid.

And then the dummy figure in the space suit,

in the Tesla suit, whatever it is, in the front seat.

Hopefully, that is programmed when it bangs into an asteroid to honk its horn and shout, look where you're finging going, you jumped up fing pebble.

In less high-tech flying objects news now, a gang of smugglers who have been likened to the characters of TV comedy porridge flew drugs into prisons on drones and hid illicit goods inside parcels of bogus legal papers, a court has heard.

Gary Grannels, which definitely sounds like a made-up name, Stephen Stocker and his nephew Stephen McGonagall Stocker made up the gang.

And the

Standard UK newspaper uses quote marks to say they were literally the inside men during the three-year operation, which implies a way in which they can be metaphorically the inside men, given that the phrase the inside men comes from the exact literal circumstances in which this prison smuggling gang operation has taken place.

It sort of makes saying literally redundant.

Sorry, side channel there.

Grannels is accused of working with his mother, dinner lady Amanda Grannels, to sneak drugs and mobile phones past prison guards, revealing that the gang used drones to fly drugs to sell windows, passed on goods during prison visits, or hid them in fake legal papers.

If only legal papers were that exciting when I was was a lawyer, Andy.

The only drugs I was ever offered were Adderall to get me through a late night.

And I mean surely just the natural high of being part of a functioning legal system was enough for any young lawyer.

Sure, Andy.

Just the

glorious natural cocaine of justice.

No, I didn't even take the Adderall, Andy.

I refused the Adderall because I am too uncool, even for work-enhancing drugs.

That's me.

I mean, this is a big problem for prisons now the

the advent of the of the drone.

Interestingly here's a fact.

Do you know that 67% of all wasps are now Amazon-owned picnic drones

spying on what you're eating at your picnics?

So you get those emails saying we notice that that you've had some warm chemicals.

Perhaps you'd also like a pot of strawberry jam.

It's the future of commerce.

That is the future of commerce.

I mean the invention or the introduction of drones into prison smuggling has certainly saved a lot of very uncomfortable doctors' visits.

I mean, it's gonna, it would, I mean, in terms of you know, kind of shore-shanking your way out of jail, if you can just get a giant drone to fly in, and I mean, it takes all the romance out of it, doesn't it?

It does.

Suffooning a tunnel for over several years.

There's one question in the story, as usual, you know, just

being

so far away, I don't understand many British things.

But here here it said

in a parcel of bogus legal papers.

And I think that that could be an interesting profession if people could make bogus legal papers.

You know, it would have like nice sort of graphics on it or whatever they call it, on the crest and your emblem of royalty, so it would look like a legal paper.

But also, it takes a special kind of prison official to not know that that's a bogus legal paper.

Yes, I guess when a huge bundle of legal papers comes through that rattle slightly, you think suspicions will be arised, I reckon.

Yes, or when the legal papers are being flown in by a drone that says criminal on it.

And the paper itself says bogus legal paper on the front page.

Well, Andy, I've got a couple of things in India news that I wanted to share with you.

And again, raise some conundrums.

And I'm hoping you and Alice can help me.

So

the New York Times reported Andy

that recently in India there were some

there was a religious crash.

There was some religious violence and a particular gentleman was supposed to have been martyred in this religious violence and he became a hero on social media Andy

and he

became a martyr for this religious violence and then everyone online said, oh, you know, people from different religions got together and killed him.

His name was Rahul Upadhyayai.

And then people were saying, you know, Hindus and Muslims shouldn't kill each other.

This was in a city of Khas Ganj in India on Republic Day.

And, you know, that this guy, you know, is just a symbol of unifying India.

All of that was fantastic.

Except that this guy was not dead.

He was just a guy in his house.

taking a nap.

When he woke up a few hours later, he was martyr Rahul.

And there were 2 million things about him on WhatsApp, and some 11 million things about him on Facebook.

And he went viral all around the world, and there were 36 candlelight vigils for Mr.

Upartha.

It lit up the streets in seven districts.

Wow.

It's like Jesus all over again.

Yeah, but I don't know.

A man dying in a religious cause and then a few days later turning up alive, that is so far away from my understanding of religion.

I do not know where to begin, Andy.

And you know, it's a great, great, great point, Alice.

And you know, the point is that when he was asked how he feels about this whole thing, he'd just woken up, he'd poured himself some tea, he opened his door, and he said, No media house or politician bothered to visit my place or call me first to confirm that I was indeed dead.

Adding, adding,

the marketplace of rumors has heated up beyond control.

After which he said he was going back for another nap and he wasn't sure what he was going to wake up to next time round.

That is pretty good.

Well, yeah, it's good.

The nap is absolutely

critical in the birth story of any religion.

Jesus had his little two-day nap, didn't he?

Friday to Sunday.

Yep, I mean, that is a big weekend.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's proper.

And

this is why I love India Andy, because everywhere else in the world they say, you have to be awake and work hard to make the news and be someone.

In India, you just have to go to sleep.

Another story from India that grabbed my attention this week at Anivab was this story of a public park that started trying to require people to show a marriage certificate before they went into the park.

Now, I'm all in favour of this because I've lost count of the number of times I've been walking through a park and I've thought to myself, I'm married because I'm f ⁇ ing awesome.

Why the f ⁇ should I have to share this place with these unlovable commitment phobes who can't hack the holy bonds of matrimony under the eye of a vengeful god?

So I'm all in favour of it.

But what is the full story behind this in this park in India?

Well, Andy, you know,

the boring story is that there were lots of single people going out there in the middle of this park and making out.

But the real thing is,

you know, that's, and they didn't want them, so they wanted them to have marriage certificates.

And, you know, in true Indian fashion,

all the people that went to the park immediately produced forged marriage certificates.

So four minutes before they were single, four minutes later they're back in the park, they've got some candy floss, and they're married.

So

that worked out well.

But, but, but, the larger question here, Andy, Alice, is

why would you and this is I want I want your perspective, because you live in the advanced world, the both of you, I want to know why shouldn't you have to carry your marriage certificate in to enter an Indian park or indeed any park?

I carry around a marriage certificate wherever I go but the names aren't filled in yet.

It's just if I see someone who I really take a fancy to.

With that empty certificate Alice, you would be welcome in this Indian park.

They would welcome you.

They would help you fill out the form and then you could enjoy all the benefits of this park which include pickpocketing and various other things.

In Australia News Now, the Daily Telegraph in Australia has published a picture of a political staffer pregnant with Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce's out-of-wedlock child, sparking a controversy about what the Australian media should leave private and what it should splash loudly across the front pages in the interests of selling ad space, sorry, in the public interest.

The question of whether a married man who campaigned loudly for the sanctity of traditional marriage while knocking up a colleague should be exposed as the venal hypocrite he most definitely is is definitely a question and not obviously yes put him in the internet stocks and let people throw rotten tomatoes at him.

But the question of whether the lady involved should be outed is a more delicate one.

There's an argument that she doesn't deserve public vitriol to be sprayed at her because getting pregnant to Barnaby Joyce should be punishment enough for any woman.

And it's arguably cruel and unusual punishment to make her publicly acknowledge that she has terrible taste in men.

The debate is at its hottest in Canberra about whether the article was in the public interest with politicians the Greens expressing outrage at the publication and the Labour opposition who are also politicians maintaining that the Deputy Prime Minister, a politician, should keep his personal pri life private.

This is definitely because they believe in the separation of policy and personal behaviour, and not at all because they have skeletons in their own s closets.

They didn't become public figures to have their privacy invaded, Andy.

You should definitely be allowed to insist, for example, that everyone should pay their taxes while also running a Ponzi scheme, or that marriage should be heterosexual and monogamous while maintaining an oiled harem behind the velvet curtains of the Senate.

I have always said it, Andy, marriage should be between one man, one woman, and his secretary, colleague, or secret girlfriend.

girlfriend.

Still wait.

As soon as the scientists make that breakthrough to turn hypocrisy into electricity, politics will save the world.

We will go to the moon.

Sport now and well it's been a sensational weekend of sport last weekend.

Of course the most dramatic sporting event of the weekend was to a global audience of around about 300 people, the Streatham Redhawks going 3-1 up on the London Raiders in the first four minutes, 10 seconds at the Streatham Ice Rink last Sunday evening.

Unbelievable scenes.

It was followed shortly afterwards by the Super Bowl, which was an incredibly exciting event.

Alice, are you into American football or do you have other ways of enjoying watching young men suffer life-changing cranial traumas?

I mean, my comedy shows.

But look, look, my mate watched the Super Bowl, and I can tell that it was a great match, is it called a match?

By the amount of shouting and waking me up that he did.

I am someone for whom the Super Bowl is something with quinoa in it at a pretentiously wholesome but less posh than it pretends to be cafe.

Nonetheless, I'm willing to concede that it was a very good game because multiple friends who enjoy it have told me in great enthusiastic detail that it was as exciting and full of drama as a sports movie about the Super Bowl, which, to be honest, I still probably wouldn't watch.

Philadelphia Eagles won their first Super Bowl, and it made Philadelphia, which is traditionally a fairly stroppy place, the least angry it has been as a city since 1776

on the official city's official stropometer.

It called in at just 53.4 cranks on the Rumpel Stilt scale.

So that's that's

happy a joyous time for Philadelphia.

Aniveb, you you were taken you you've been in America for the last week or so, so you you were there to watch watch the Super Bowl happen in the because it's got a huge global event now, but only a barely barely notable 100 million people watched it in the USA, which was down by a few percent, I think, on last year.

Andy Alice, I have some news to share with you people,

and it it's probably gonna sound like it's 70% of it is a lie,

because it's just one of those one of those things that sound like a lie.

But I happened to be in Minneapolis with a friend who had an extra ticket to the Super Bowl game last Sunday.

And I happened to be at the Super Bowl

watching it.

And

you were at the Super Bowl.

I was, Andy.

So you saw Justin Timberlake live.

Wow.

That is unbelievable.

I did, Andy.

I did.

All one inch of him from where I was sitting.

He looks spectacular.

But there are a few things I have to report and I want your views on it because they left me confused.

Andy, the stadium in Minneapolis is called the Viking Stadium, and it is built to look like a Viking ship.

Right.

Great.

Because clearly, you know, Minnesotans feel a close affinity to Vikings because they're mispillaging.

I don't know what it is, but they decided to build a stadium to look like a Viking ship.

Great.

For a person from India, confusing enough.

The second thing the Americans have done with their sport, which I love, is that they have covered the entire stadium with a glass dome

so they don't let anything silly like nature interfere with with the Super Bowl final so silly games like you know Andy like cricket or whatever that that thing is called

you are familiar with things like rain stopping play the Americans don't believe in all that so it was minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit outside in Minneapolis inside the stadium it was a toasty 70 degrees

and you could

turn up the heat on your chair while you sat in Atahoda, which I thought was fantastic.

The second thing I loved is that they kept saying that the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles are the two greatest teams in the world.

And this is the world final.

And it's always lovely to see two countries in a world tournament be so close to each other that you could get from one to the other by bus

in a matter of two and a half hours.

The third thing I completely loved about the Super Bowl that day is I didn't know you could do this, but

you know the Americans you know when they do everything you know they make it a Hollywood movie.

So before the Super Bowl started they had retired veterans from World War II take part in the toss.

So the two team captains came up for the toss and then there were there were war veterans who participated in the toss and when the toss happened and somebody won, F-16s flew over the stadium

in some sort of a formation, and they did a little F-16 dance.

So, the next time, when India's playing England with Lords Andy, if your typhoon fighters are not overhead,

when Joe Root is doing the toss, Andy, I don't want to watch cricket anymore.

Well, I mean, how can you tell if something is an important sporting event unless the presence of the military?

Yeah, military aircraft pass overhead at a dangerously low altitude.

The Super Bowl halftime show, one of the most watched cultural events of any year.

Justin Timberlake this year.

I mean, look, Justin Timberlake is to be applauded.

He crawled his way, clawed his way out of the doldrums of boy banddom to become a well-respected artist in his own right.

And he was brought back after his sort of disgraceful last Super Bowl excursion in which he accidentally, slash on purpose, revealed Janet Jackson's boob.

I was looking forward to him just revealing his own boobs on stage.

Yeah, because I mean that was that was shock because that had been a very closely guarded Shobi's secret that Janet Jackson had had a boob for many, many decades.

That they managed to

keep that and for her to be I mean it was probably the most shocking moment in American history.

It seemed to cause more

angst and complaints than, for example, the overthrow of the Allende regime in Chile by a CIA endorsed coup.

I mean it's right up there with the Kennedy assassination for the Americans, you know, it's a big one.

But

that was a very choreographed accident.

That was definitely choreography.

Who was the choreographer?

Who was the choreographer?

Release the files.

It was the most choreographed accident I've ever seen, and I've seen Ballerina shitting to Tchaikovsky.

Shitting to Tchaikovsky.

What?

What kind of bullshit ballet is that?

When you've got to go.

I need to watch more ballet, please and gentlemen do it in time to the music

just uh time for a quick look ahead to the winter olympics now which as we record they've just held the opening ceremony um and uh it has not uh chris you can confirm this has not been

uh part of the olympic ceremony was not the north korea invading at that very moment just no they haven't oh that's good not yet uh we will cover the winter olympics uh exclusively

over the next few weeks.

What I'm most looking forward to, some fantastic events coming up.

Snowball fighting.

For the first time, controversially, snow drones are being allowed.

The purists don't like it.

But it gives teams a different angle, and you've still got to compact your snowball and load it onto the drone.

So you get what you gain in accuracy and payload, you may lose in speed of delivery.

Look out for the North Korean team.

They had some very oddly shaped snowballs in yesterday's final free practice, one of which landed halfway across the Pacific.

Ski jump jousting, that could be the ratings winner of this Winter Olympics.

Surely there can be no more dramatic sight in sport than two pugilist athletes clashing jousting pole to jousting pole, 30 meters above ground, having just flown off a 90-metre ski jump ramp at opposite ends of a stadium.

That is real sport.

Also, a real chance for some of the less fancied contestants in both the men's and women's events after a very exciting World Cup season.

Sadly, none of the top 150-ranked jousters are out of hospital yet.

Some

new additional disciplines.

The bobsled biathlon.

Bobsled biathlon could be a real real sensation this time.

Testing the skills of the driver and the rear gunner who has to fire at five different targets whilst plummeting downhill at 85 miles an hour.

That one's sadly being held behind closed doors after the test events.

Well, we can't say too much about it.

It's still an active legal matter.

The skeleton event has proved hugely popular because, well, who the f doesn't want to watch someone flamak themselves face down a concrete pipe at idiotic velocity?

And they've souped it up this time.

They have the skeleton Pac-Man events inspired by the 1980s computer game.

It's going to be a huge hit.

Can the likes of Soshi gold medal winner Lizzie Yarnold adapt to the new requirement to catch tennis balls in her mouth on the way down?

Luke Deluge, enough said.

And I'm particularly looking forward to the, well, two events really.

The Polar Bear Rodeo,

which could be really sensational this time.

Polar polar bears of course in a real mood at the moment due to the devastation of their natural habitat by climate change.

So anyone who could stay on the bear for more than 15 seconds will be doing very well, Norwegic hopes in the mixed doubles event rest with Stigval Björp Gluggerson and Ethel Frieda Vjork returning after a four-year ban for polarisation after they painted a sloth head to toe in an off-white emulsion.

And the Captain Oates Athlon, arguably the toughest of the many disciplines in this toughest of all Olympics winter.

That's the event inspired by the death of Lawrence Oates on Captain Scott's silver medal winning squaz to the South Pole in the 1911-12 World Polar Exploration League season.

The competitors have to leave the start tent and the winner is the one who takes the longest some time to return to the tent, still waiting for the result from Sochi.

And sadly, the Vancouver Games gold medalist from 2010, Dreiskjork Humelison of Denmark, unable to defend the title, he was confirmed as winning only last year.

Not the best event for TV, but tough, tough competitors.

And

any news on how the Olympic ceremony?

Because the last time South Korea held an Olympic opening ceremony, it turned into a barbecue for flame-grilled doves.

And I can reveal the breaking news from the opening ceremony is that the Tongan flag bearer

in conditions of up to minus 20 degrees has gone out shirtless and greased up, waving his flag.

Why change a winning formula?

I love the the Winter Olympics.

There are two sports that I'm looking forward to, the real sports in the Olympics.

I'm looking forward to figure skating for two reasons.

First, because it is extremely silly people in beige stockings and sparkly leotards trying to tell a graceful, romantic physical story with what are undeniably knives strapped to their boots.

The second reason is that my merciless Jewish-Hungarian grandmother had a real old world sort of Austro-Hungarian Empire idea of what children's education should involve.

And so she would regularly hijack me and my twin brother from our hippie parents for things like, but not limited to, figure skating lessons.

She wanted to turn us into a horrifying sibling ice dancing duo.

So when I watched the figure skating, it's with this real joyous, relieved sense of there, but for the grace of God, go high.

And I'm also looking forward to Skeleton, which is the one, as you mentioned before, where they go face down and head first because somebody very high at the top of a mountain once gave someone else a thousand drugs and a boogie board.

Did you know Bugle listener and top-notch comedian Alex Edelman has a twin brother AJ who is representing Israel in the skeleton,

which is a brutal dilemma for a Jewish parent because, on one hand, you definitely want them to be successful and famous and the best in the world at something.

On the other hand, you would prefer it not to be like hilariously dangerous.

So, if Moses are that way down the mountain, who knows what would have happened?

Skeleton is one of those sports that I'm definitely supporting, but you couldn't pay me to actually watch it.

You know?

Like, unless you've got a prolapse that needs cringing to retract,

you just

right.

Are you a qualified doctor?

My brother is a doctor of law.

Right.

Just just passed his viva, so I think I probably count.

Yeah, that does.

Let me do surgery now, Andy.

Anuvab,

is the Winter Olympics big news in

India, a nation with not the most glorious of

Olympic records?

We've got one guy, Andy.

We're sending one guy.

Right.

Not even a joke.

His name is Shiva Keshavan.

He's taking part in Luge.

He's built his own frozen little luge practice area in India.

He's been all over the news because

we were all worried as to how he found all that snow and he managed to keep it frozen through the Indian summer.

But most of all, nobody in India knows what Luge is.

So they thought he was a crazy guy sliding down an ice rack wearing a helmet and he was probably mentally unstable.

I mean it is about time for there to be a gritty reboot of cool runnings.

Exactly.

So, we've got Shivakeshivan.

You know, he's

the various world headlines say that he's India's lone resilient luge champion.

I don't know what that means because he's competed with exactly zero people in India.

But we've sent him, you know, we've sent him.

He's cold and ready.

And,

you know, I hear that at the Olympics people send teams.

But look, I think one's a start.

I always feel one is a start.

Look out for him.

Shiva Keshivan.

He's going to lose it up over there in Pyongchang.

Well, we have, as we tend to do, overrun.

The Bilderberg competition has been postponed again,

so you can still submit entries for your place in the Bilderberg group.

They are starting to get a bit cross with me, the Bilderberg.

They've got four million entries.

They've had an empty seat for the last couple of weeks.

They really need to know who's going to be secretly running the world with them.

So keep them coming in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

There are only a few tickets left for the live bugle on the 22nd of February with Alice and Nish.

There will be live bugles at a Melbourne Comedy Festival on the 15th and 22nd of April and I will announce further dates for later in the year in due course.

Do come along to all of my satirists for higher shows on the rest of the tour.

Alice, anything to plug?

Yes, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth comedy festival is coming up.

And apparently, there's a hashtag going around for funny women online.

I think it's hashtag funnywomen if you think I'm funny.

Right.

Enough for a hashtag?

I don't know.

No, come to my shows.

That's more important than Twitter hashtags.

Yes, yes.

Come to my shows in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, or Perth in the next couple of months if you're around.

Anuvab, anything you'd like to alert our listeners to?

Well, very quickly,

my stand-up special and the comedy series I wrote and directed, Going Viral, Private Limited, are both finally available at Amazon UK.

So I suppose if you've got Amazon Prime video, you can just press something and something will happen.

And you

no longer need to subscribe to an Indian channel called Hira to get to those things on Amazon.

So you will be saved from having to watch 4,000 people dancing in front of Golden Gate Bridge in a murder mystery.

So

that's what I have.

Thank you for listening, buglers.

Until next time, 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.