Bugle 4055 – New Year’s Revelations

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Aloha

Uglers and welcome to issue 4055 of the Bugle, the world's finest and solitary audio newspaper for a visual world with me Andy's Oxman are reporting live from 2018.

Yes, Felix, this year is new.

Poke it.

It'll squeak.

That's how new it is.

It's a year that many people have predicted and which is now,

despite early concerns about 2017 becoming the last year ever in history, it has now come to pass.

Happy new year to all of our listeners, especially to those of you who are listening now, missed it, bad luck.

We are here in London, where for the 218th new year in a row, the River Thames drank too much and had to be sick into the sea.

Records don't go back further than that.

Joining me this week in a change to the published schedule, which I hadn't published, so I really didn't need to mention it.

It's a change to the schedule.

But stepping in at short notice is Alice Fraser.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Alice.

Alice, of course, best known as the co-star of Andy Zoltman's 2017 Certifiable History Run, extended to the 12th of January.

So theater, please come, for heaven's sake.

The extra shows really need bums on seats.

Alice, Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to you, Andy.

I was thinking people who came in the early part of the run should come again because it is a very different show.

It is a very different

show, yes.

It's evolved.

It has, it has evolved.

It's great.

Yeah.

It's great fun.

Yeah.

I like doing stuff.

Of course.

I'm glad.

Well, I think the characters that you play, I think, we've successfully stripped out the one dimension they had at the start, which are fully zero-dimensional, as all good comedy characters are.

Alice is replacing Hari Kondobola, who is unable to record due to Snowpocalypse 2018 New York City Edition, the first person wrap-them wrap-them up real life actual life simulator of the so-called bomb cyclone that the big frozen apple is currently not especially enjoying.

Ahori will hopefully be joining us for a quick snowpocalypse update later on on the phone.

It's the second time that I've been on the show where one of our correspondents, foreign correspondents, has been delayed by unavoidable weather events that I definitely didn't cause.

Right.

That's a lie.

I've been doing the whole thing.

I've been leaving the heating on in my house just to

aggravating global warming to create.

Just to increase my bugle time.

people do anything for work these days as always the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week new year's resolutions a special new year's resolution feature section is going in the bin of course new year's resolutions have been a fundamental part of the fabric of human failure since the very dawn of time itself when at the first ever new year in 4004 bc god himself the official creator of this planet of course so long ago now over 6 000 years it's amazing to think that he made the first first ever New Year's resolution.

In fact, it was one year after the first, January the first, when he made his resolution to, quotes, get round to finishing the thing off.

He'd had the previous 51 weeks kicking back.

I mean, sure, for a rush job hacked out in one week, it was pretty damn good, but I just think, I mean, he had too much power, went to his head.

He didn't knuckle down and finish a job.

One-hit wonder, to be fair.

A lot of distractions, mostly peeking at the hot nudie lady he'd made for the garden.

Dirty old birdie bastard.

But anyway,

we're going to take a look back at some classic New Year's resolutions through history, some of which have not worked.

In the year 951, the young Emperor Liu Cheng Yu, also known as Emperor Yin, made a resolution not to be killed.

And typically, like so many New Year's resolutions, it only lasted one day.

He was killed to death on the 2nd of January after losing a battle the previous day and being hunted down to someone's house.

In 1521, Pope Leo X

made a resolution not to excommunicate so many people and on the 3rd of January he excommunicated Martin Luther, the professional theses writer, celebrity chef who pioneered an avant-garde worms-only diet later transmuted into spaghetti off the EU-imposed worm farming quotas in the 19th century.

That is an elongated joke about a historical event called the Diet of Worms that I don't fully understand.

I've always liked the name of.

Nice way to start the year with a completely unnecessary reference to a piece of history that I don't understand.

Some New Year's resolutions have nearly worked.

1988, 30 years ago, this minute, or near enough, Mikhail Gorbachev made a New Year's resolution to find two new centre-forwards for the Soviet Union national football team.

Unfortunately, his stated desire for a pair of strikers was misinterpreted, resulting

in the opening up and subsequent collapse of the short-lived Communist Empire.

And in 1918, 100 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson of the USA resoluted to give the drunkest speech ever by a president within the first 10 days of January.

However, his planned and it must be said much anticipated 14 pints speech was never delivered.

A misprint by his secretary turned it into the 14 points speech in which he delivered disappointingly sober on the 8th of January and which provided 14 ideas that made a blueprint for a post-war war world that shaped the global landscape of the 20th century.

Beautiful handy.

Could have been so different.

Some, though, have been very successful.

1958,

on the 1st of January, the European Economic Community came into being, the forerunner of the European Union, and made a New Year's resolution to undermine British democracy over the next 60 years and strip away everything we hold dear in this nation, make us eat haddock from Switzerland, pay Portuguese poets billions of pounds to write limericks about Slovenian bananas and impose Sharia law on us by stealth.

So at least some

do work out.

And there's been some interesting New Year's resolutions.

Have you you made it?

Do you make New Year's resolutions out there?

My New Year's resolution is the same one I make every year, which is to make no New Year's resolutions.

So I fail real quick.

I guess if you're going to fail at something, you want it to be instantaneous.

Get it over and done with.

Oh, damn it.

I made a New Year's resolution.

That's right.

Yeah.

I wish I'd known that with my career.

Dragging it out for 20 years.

Chris?

Yeah.

Have you made any New Year's resolutions?

Yeah, I'm going to release the world's biggest hip-hop album this year.

It's going to be massive.

I'm going to get all the best collaborators.

It's going to be, I think we're going to do like 10 million units.

It's going to have like, it's going to have beats,

music.

Is it going to have the great British tennis player Andy Murray?

Because I've heard he needs a hip-hop.

That's good.

Thanks very much.

I'll get Andy on.

I'll get Jamie on.

It's the future of music.

Get my mum involved as well.

She had a massive one a few years ago.

Of all hip-hop references, he comes up with a sports player with an injury.

You can't change me, Chris.

You can't change me.

You sit there twiddling your knobs in your special booth.

Yep.

You can't fing change me.

Britain, well, as you know, nations now

have special parliament meetings on the 1st of January to make official New Year's resolutions.

Britain, we've resolved to stop brickering about Brexit.

And the only way to do that is to have an even more controversial referendum.

So we will be voting this week on whether or not to change the national anthem from God Save the Queen to Max Bygrave's 1959 novelty hit single, You're a Pink Toothbrush.

the lyrics of which of course you're a pink toothbrush I'm a blue toothbrush have we met somewhere before

really gender essentialistic well I mean on one level it's it's all about you know about gender stereotypes on another it's

about dental hygiene it's a ravaging

ravaging satire on empire

and in America Mike Pence has made a New Year's resolution that by the end of the year every significant politician in the Republican Party will have his own handmade.

Donald Trump has made a resolution that he will think before tweeting.

Now,

this is exciting because this he has rigorously stuck to so far, which you can see from the evidence that his tweeting has got even more nuts.

So

I think I preferred it when he just did it by instinct.

What would Australia's national resolution be this year, do you think?

I reckon our national resolution would be something like: stop panicking about the relatively small number of refugees who come seeking refuge in our fine country.

Right.

Because that is never going to happen.

My personal New Year's resolution is to promote my shows more effectively on the bugle, starting right here, right now.

Already mentioned the Soho show.

9th to the 12th, please do come.

Bugle live with Alice on the 18th of January at the Leicester Square Theatre, also on the 22nd of February with Nish.

And my UK tour, it's begins on Saturday the 13th in Southport, then Sunday the 14th at the Lowry in Salford.

Many other dates thereafter.

All details on the internet.

Top story: Donald Trump news now, again, now.

Donald Trump has publicly disowned Steve Bannon as the pair fell out over a new book revealing embarrassing details about the White House.

It was written by journalist Michael Wolfe and based on 200 interviews with Mr.

Trump and his inner circle.

Mr.

Bannon said, A meeting Donald Trump's son, Donald Jr., had with Russian figures in Trump Tower was treasonous and unpatriotic.

He's also quoted as saying Mr.

Trump repeatedly tried to meet Vladimir Putin, but that the Russian president couldn't give a shit about him, according to an extract in New York magazine.

The president has accused Mr.

Bannon, in return, of leaking false information to, quote, make himself seem far more important than he was, to which my fantasy is that Bannon replies, I know you are, but what am I, and then they get trapped in an I Know You Are, but what am I spiral until the end of time, and neither of them has time to do their day jobs of being a pair of irredeemably pressed hams made from diseased frenulums.

Or is it frenula in the plural, Andy?

You would know.

Yes, it is, Alice.

Yep.

You come to me for questions about Latin words.

I'm the global resource for all such knowledge, as you know.

Yeah, it's a bit of a disaster for Donald Trump's public image, having somebody who was so close to him basically just stab him in the back with the kind of unholy glee that Trump shows on the reg when he stabs other people in the back.

Yes,

well, I mean, you say it damages his public image.

I mean, that's quite hard to do that, isn't it?

Because I think everyone who likes him will think, yeah, good for you, Donald.

My favourite bit.

Everybody doesn't like him.

It's not going to make any difference.

I mean, quite what this book can add to the sense of chaotic, off-the-cuff, off-the-rocker, improvised unhingedness that has emanated from the Trump regime since day one.

I don't know, frankly, you could have just published a book that was just the subtext of a single Trump text, and the effect would have been identical.

It would have.

My favourite bit about the whole sort of revelation is that Trump, after dinner, gets on the phone and just says mean things about the people he works with.

He reportedly believed that Mr.

Bannon was disloyal, his son-in-law Jared Kushner was a suck-up and Sean Spicer was quote stupid.

I mean say what you like about Trump, that is three for three very accurate.

He's a man with great insight into the human condition.

Yeah as you say Bannon who is viewed by many scientists as the largest boil in medical history

described that meeting with

Trump's son and some Russians as treasonous.

And we have to remember just because Steve Bannon said it, it doesn't mean it is necessarily not true.

So

there might be something in it.

And we're looking at the big takeaway.

People talk about takeaways, a very trendy term, isn't it?

What are the takeaways from this?

The big takeaways from this are, one, big takeaways, burgers mostly,

cheeseburgers in bed.

That seems to be Donald Trump's meal of choice, according to this book.

It's because he has a fear of poisoning, so he chooses his poison with McDonald's.

He, I mean,

what part of him is left to be poisoned?

I mean, you'd have thought, I mean, his soul clearly has uh been infected for some time.

Cheeseburgers in bed.

I mean we all like to pamper ourselves every now and again, Alice.

For some it might be a nice relaxing spa treatment, a romantic meal with a loved one in a quiet restaurant, a bottle of the finest fizzy lemonade that money can buy, a trip in a hot air balloon to take photographs of clouds when they least expect it.

Or twenty-four looking up cricket statistics alone in a darkened shed.

You know, you have to treat yourself sometimes, whatever grinds your grimshaws.

But for Mr.

Trump, it's eating a cheeseburger alone in bed whilst watching three simultaneous televisions, two of them telling him things he doesn't want to hear, and one being the newest equivalent of an automatic tummy scratcher for an over-indulged Labrador.

Takeaway number two: if the old adage that it takes one to know one is true, then Donald Trump and Steve Bannon should certainly have worked each other out.

And I do hope everyone is impressed that I managed to deliver that joke without once using the word.

Takeaway three, Steve Bannon is not really in contention for Inoffensive personality traits monthly magazine's Nice Guy of the Year award.

Takeaway four, Donald Trump keeps his campaign promises.

As he himself has said, he campaigned very hard on a platform of being a temperamentally unstable egomaniac fueled by paranoid delusions.

That's what America voted for, and he has delivered that from soup to nuts.

He is the most honest politician in the world.

And also, takeaway five, for all the criticism, Donald Trump clearly understands the rest of the world he does relate to everyone else because apparently like the vast majority of the planet he was absolutely mortified when he won that election

yes according to this these interviews he didn't expect to win which is something that I think a lot of people suspected but nobody had confirmed yes and if you can say that these interviews are confirmation apparently he looked like he'd seen a ghost when he was told and I think it was the ghost of his dignity

you sure it wasn't the ghost of Abraham Lincoln saying for f' sake, mate, what the fk have you done?

I mean somewhere amidst this unending deluge of lies, counter-lies, half-truths, quarter-truths, 128th truths, there might be one tiny chicken nugget of veracity clinging to the carcass of a democratic hope.

And that nugget is this.

Some self-seeking publicity stunts have unintended consequences.

And it is...

I mean, it is, I mean, it's so, I mean, who knows how much of this is true?

But

it was that element that Trump didn't want to win that really struck home for me.

Because it seemed to me, almost like Boris Johnson in the Brexit campaign, Trump wanted to lose that election by one vote, basically, and be a hero.

And in fact, he won it by about minus two million votes instead.

So it all went disastrously right for him.

It's a lovely quote about Steve Bannon from

one of his competitives in the conservative media.

It was quoted in the book as saying, he's mean, dishonest, and incapable of caring about other people.

His eyes dart around like he's always looking for a weapon with which to bludgeon or gouge you.

Well, that's interesting, you know, bludgeon or gouge, because those are two quite different weapons you're looking for there.

You've got a blunt instrument or a sharp instrument.

The two most famous police reports.

I mean, I don't think there was anything that really surprised anyone.

It was there was a lot of confirmation bash, is that what they call it?

Yeah, it's sort of what you've expected to hear, apart from the revelations about his hairstyle, which is apparently the hair dye that he uses is a just for men, which which is sort of more

plebeian in his tastes than I would imagine for somebody who spends so much time on his hair.

I wonder if

the price of just for men hair dye is going to go up or down.

Oh, that'll be very interesting.

I think it'll go up in some regions of America and down in others.

But really, there was nothing it could have said.

Had there been an excerpt like the following excerpt, I don't think anyone would have been surprised.

At 8pm, Trump retired to his private quarters.

Around 9pm, staff became concerned when they heard unusual noises emanating from within the presidential bedroom.

A bizarre primeval caterwall rent the Washington skies, and the president's personal security detail, led by Jean-Claude Van Damme, specially appointed by Trump eight minutes after he won the election, started trying to hammer down the door.

Eventually, using strategically placed explosive charges, they blew the door off its hinges and entered the presidential suite.

Trump, wearing what appeared to be the severed head of a bison as some kind of ceremonial mitre, was wearing sheet metal body armour and a pair of 1960s cricket pads that once belonged to the great England batsman Ken Barrington.

He was holding aloft a carved Halloween pumpkin, from which were wriggling hundreds of live snakes.

O great Medusa, encanted the President, turn my enemies unto stone.

He held up the snake pumpkin Gorgon to the twelve naked journalists who stood bound fast by ropes to the Sherman tank the President had installed on his first day in the White House.

Why the f is this not working?

screamed Trump furiously as the clothesless hacks quivered unstonily.

Vladimir, you said this would fing work.

Putin looked up from his desk.

Can you be quiet for a minute, please, Donny Babes?

I'm copying your nuclear codes into my PDA.

I'm going to patch the schematics back to Moscow.

Then I'll sort these losers out.

Have you tried just having them not very covertly assassinated openly on the streets of your capital?

Works every time for me.

You're so fing lucky being Russian, Vladsky, said Trump.

People would give me so much shit if I did that here.

I mean, if that passage had been in the book and I've not read all the books, so it may have been there, would that have been any more or less surprising?

I think it would have been more surprising because he, in your excerpt, used the word unto.

Oh, right, okay.

And I'm not sure he would be that eloquent in a pumpkin ceremony.

Would it be any more or less true?

I mean, Trump has never explicitly denied that what I just read out happened, whereas he has contradicted what was in the book.

That's true, Angel.

So.

Maybe there's actually more truth in our version.

Can I ask why Putin has a PDA?

Oh, well, you know, Russia's still not quite at the cutting cutting edge yet, is it?

It was good technology for its time.

It was.

I just remember there was an awful lot in the early series of 24 of people patching schematics to PDAs.

That just came into my head.

Your head.

My head.

Sorry, sorry, into the author's head.

You're right.

Good point.

Trump started the year as you would have expected in lively form on Twitter, including this.

I will be announcing the most dishonest and corrupt media awards of the year on Monday at five o'clock.

Subjects will cover dishonesty and bad reporting in various categories from the fake news media.

Stay tuned.

Now, this was my favourite tweet ever because I thought to myself, we better be buying ourselves a big f ⁇ ing trophy cabinet here at the Bugle because we've been in the fake news business since before the presidency was even a terrified glint in Melania Trump's weeping eye.

But then he didn't make that announcement.

He did not.

He did not give out those words, which I think would have been the greatest moment in presidential history.

Oh, amazing.

A presidential award for bullshit fake news would be.

I mean, we'd because I talked, I think, before about Barack Obama spending half an hour doing a prediction bracket for the college basketball March Madness knockout phase and suggesting that he should have had better things to do.

But if Trump had actually done this award ceremony as promised, it would have been sensational.

But he didn't make that announcement, he didn't do those awards, making this the most meta-award ceremony in human history.

And I i say that with admiration having been ecstatic to be five-time runners-up in the world silver medal winning championships um but he so he announced a dishonest fake awards ceremony which he didn't then carry out which means i won i won i won i won

very good andy thank you

Even more strikingly than that, and an early front runner for Tweet of the Year, was the nuclear button tweet, one of the high points in the history of human communication.

Alice, let me read it to you, word for word.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un just stated that, quote, the nuclear button is on his desk at all times.

Will someone from his depleted and food-starved regime please inform me that I too have a nuclear button and it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his, and my button works?

Exclamation mark.

Button with capital letter throughout there.

As in all of all caps, or just the

B of buttons.

Oh, like the Germans do for important words.

Yeah, or as if he has the British motor racing driver Jensen Button held hostage on his desk.

If only that were true.

I mean, we constantly get, I don't know about you, Andy, but I constantly, if I will talk about Trump, will get comments from the audience of like, oh, we're sick of hearing about him.

But it is astonishing how he manages to consistently, like, it's a very impressive feat to consistently do things that are.

It does slightly make you wonder what the f is going on behind the scenes while he is distracting everyone with the most impressive display of endurance twattery that the modern world has seen.

It's bananas.

Anyway, as so often, Trump has jumped to wrong conclusions.

He misheard what Kim Jong-un said.

He said, I have a new clear button on my desk.

It's a special button that clears his desk.

It's an automated desk tidying machine that he was given for Christmas that helps sort all his paperwork into manageable piles.

Also, let's pick him up a bit of semantics here, Trump.

Will someone from his depleted and food-starved regime, it's not the regime that is depleted and food-starved.

I mean, it's depleted in terms of the people he's shot down with anti-aircraft guns.

The people that are depleted and food starved.

And,

well, I mean, he says my button works.

How does he know?

How does he know?

I mean, I guess, having said that, has anyone heard from New Zealand since New Year?

I certainly haven't.

Draw your own conclusions, buglers.

It does slightly make hanker for the Cold War, the rather more subtle button-boasting contests when the leaders of America and the USSR would just kind of hold up a single button-pressing finger gently to their cheek, stroke it with a knowing yet threatening look down a camera lens, and everyone knew we'd never blow each other up.

Yeah, it had the subtle romance of 1800s courtship, where now they're sort of sending the dick pics of nuclear button

before you used to just sort of gently imply that you might, you know, your eyes would meet across a crowded room and you'd you'd wink in a nuclear sort of way.

How do you wink in a nuclear way?

Explosively, Andy.

I'll take your word for that, Alex.

In Maths News now, which I'm calling Maths News before Harry comes on because it's the right way to say it, the world's largest prime number has been discovered at more than 23 million digits long.

It's known as M77232917 for short, which was my nickname in high school.

When it comes to like discovering numbers, I don't know if you can say discovered when you mean counted up to.

The new prime number was originally found on Boxing Day by the great internet Mersine Prime Search, otherwise known as GIMPS.

It's a collaboration which harnesses the number crunching power of nerds/slash volunteers computers all over the world.

And Chris Caldwell, a professor of mathematics who runs a website on the largest prime numbers at the University of Tennessee, said, I'm surprised it was found this quickly.

We expected it to take longer.

And he he said, it's like finding dead cats on the road.

You don't expect to find two so close to one another.

Which I'm not even going, like,

what are your hobbies, man?

Like prime numbers and dead cat hunting?

That raises so many questions.

It does.

I mean, to find this number in the first place took six full days of non-stop computing on a PC owned by a man called Jonathan Pace.

And it's the first time that his computer has churned out anything on the GIMPS project, and he's now eligible for a $3,000 award, which is pretty good.

But when he was asked about mathematicians' fascination with such big numbers, Caldwell said they are exciting to those of us who are interested in them.

Which, I mean, I guess that goes for people who like finding dead cats on the road as well.

So,

more than 23 million digits.

I mean, it's amazing to have discovered this prime number, and it really changes everything about the world now.

I'd imagine this will probably cure all known diseases and stop anyone starving to death.

It's going to be the most important breakthrough in mathematical history.

As you said, it's known as M77232917.

Coincidentally, the phone number for the switchboard of the Bilderberg Group

and my nickname in high school.

Press the button again.

The figure was arrived at by calculating 2 to the power of 77,232,917 and then subtracting 1, which left a gargantuan string of 23,249,425 digits.

Coincidentally,

the exact number of people who voted leave in the EU referendum.

If you add on six million and take off a bit.

I mean, this is all a very technological and, you know, a high-falutin way of doing what we used to do in primary school, which was say infinity plus one.

Yeah.

We need to come back to this comment.

It's like finding dead cats on the road.

You don't expect to find two so close to one another.

So there's so much there to unpack.

First of all,

who expects to find a dead cat on the road?

Right.

Who expects to...

Who knows the average distance between dead cats on the road?

Yeah, I mean, he must have measured it and worked it out.

He's a mathematician.

He goes with provable facts.

I mean this is his hobby.

What is the average distance between dead cats on?

I mean I ran over a cat

about three years ago.

It ran out in front of my car and it was very much physics one cat nil.

Oh dear.

But I didn't see another dead cat within a million digits of that dead cat.

So

I mean, that was further away than these two prime numbers.

Well also mathematically speaking you have to figure out how dead the cat is because they die in ninths.

Oh of course yeah.

So is it a fully dead cat?

This cat went through its nine lives pretty bloody quickly.

You went back and forth over it Andy?

No.

World's strongest man news now and Britain is back on top of the world.

We are the strongest nation in the world like the good old days.

Eddie Hall, Hall, the British strongman, has won the world's strongest man competition, Britain's first win in the competition for over 20 years.

Eddie Hall, third place in 2016, on top of the podium in 2017.

First British strongest man in the world since, of course, Gary Taylor in 1993.

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

When I was growing up, Jeff Capes, double world champion, was

he was one of the biggest celebrities in Britain when I I was a kid.

Literally, that very big man.

Yeah, he literally was.

I mean, he could

pick up a lorry in his teeth and spit it to the moon or something.

It was very impressive.

Alice, I understand you're a massive fan of the World Strongest Man Competition.

I am.

I watched the 2017 World Strongest Man Competition.

It aired as it does every sort of Christmas New Year period.

And it was won by Eddie, and I don't think you've mentioned his nickname, The Beast, Paul, who, like almost all other international level strong men, looks like an aggressively large, bearded, giant baby.

I love the World Strongest Man Competition because it does indeed tell you who the strongest man in the world is.

If you don't know what the International Strong Man Competition is, it's where very big strong men do things like carry heavy things, pick up heavy things and drag heavy things like cars and planes to prove who is the strongest man in the world.

It's a great sport.

I mean, it's so...

It's so primitive, like, but perfect.

Since the dawn of men, there were men who were like, I can totally pick up that big thing more than you.

How how can you not be fascinated by a sport where guys regularly lift things so big and with such strain that their heads spontaneously burst open and start bleeding like not like a nosebleed andy like part of their head just springs a leak because they're trying so hard did that happen this year oh yes yes

more than once a couple of nosebleeds one mouthbleed and one just to out the side of the head

it's a better sport than so many other sports i'm not going to say it's better than cricket andy but that's only because i want to get booked on the bugle again

think about it this this way.

It's like the first sport.

After actual fighting and pretend fighting, it's lifting heavy things and dragging aeroplanes.

And then obviously things like throwing stuff, which is, I guess, where cricket comes in.

Strongman is always in some out-of-the-way tax haven country this year, held in Gaborone, Botswana.

So you got to see the unusual sporting spectacle of a whole lot of very confused black people watching giant white men picking up inexplicable things for inexplicable reasons.

And the runner-up this year was a fan favourite Game of Thrones Thrones star Julius Hafthor Bjondson, who competed despite suffering from Bell's palsy.

Let me say, it is hard to remind yourself when a man is doing a sport where competitors regularly spring impromptu blood fountains out of their skulls that his half-paralysed face is due to a totally unrelated infection and not the fact that he's currently trying to squat rack a small cow.

It's a disconcerting thing, Andy.

That's his,

well, his sixth time on the podium, and he's never won it.

He's never won it.

Poor old Julius.

He's Icelandic.

And when

Jeff Capes's big rival back in the John Paul Sigmarson was an I mean, why is it what is it with the Icelandic people that makes them so is it?

They're just used to like picking up volcanoes and chucking them in the sea before they go off.

Strong people.

They are strong people and they've traditionally been very good in the strongman competitions, mainly because there's not much else to do in Iceland than try and pick up cows and things.

Lift things up.

Donald Trump responded, he tweeted, my nukes are stronger than your glutes.

But it's, I mean, I do worry for the future of it, though.

Vladimir Putin finished a creditable seventh place, by the way.

I do worry for the future of the World's Strongest Man competition, Alice, because it's something of a relic of a bygone age, and it'll all be done on computer games soon.

We'll have the E-World's E-Strongest E-Man

who could make an animated warlord called Growclatch the Unmerciful lift up the Titanic with his penis, whilst 20,000 idiots in an arena lose their shit.

Is this the future, people?

Yes,

I was once 18th in the world's weakest man competition.

Really?

What did you have to do in that?

Just

try and snap a pencil.

Yeah, failed to put up a shelf.

I did once lose control of a lawnmower and put it through a fence.

For more on that, you'll have to wait for my full autobiography.

Well, we are joined now from the very center of the snow apocalypse in Queens, New York by

coldness fugitive Hari Kondobolu.

Hari, how how are things in the snow apocalypse?

We're getting by here, Andy.

We're getting by.

It's it's difficult.

You look outside and it's it's as white as Trump's America.

Horrendous.

Everywhere.

I mean, if you looked at New York, you would assume that he was electable here.

It's just horrendous.

I'm stuck in my parents' home.

I mean, it's really the bare minimum.

Let me just put it to you this way.

I'm making coffee with a Keurig coffee maker.

Wow.

I have no access to a coffee shop.

Oh, my God.

I mean, it doesn't even bear thinking about.

To think that this can happen in the year 2018 puts everything in perspective.

I mean, I'm not wearing clothes, but that has nothing to do with the bomb cyclone snow copy.

so essentially what is happening is a physical satire of of america that is

you're icily cold and white like the heart of government

andy i can't make fun of a tragedy like this we're in the middle of something really intense like again i i am unable to leave this home i physically am able but it's just very cold

are you trapped in your parents home with your parents no they they uh they left for work

you can you can get through it's just been described as a bomb cyclone uh so what exactly how what what form has this taken in new york well a bomb cyclone in America is different than bomb cyclones in other places because it's neither a bomb nor a cyclone.

There's just been a lot of snow.

Right, okay.

Well, Harry, if Christmas movies have taught me nothing, being snowed in is an opportunity to resolve all of your family issues and find the love of your life.

Well, I think that's already resolved because my parents are not in the house right now, and

I'm alone with myself.

Tell me, at least, Harry, that Uber Eats is still running.

I wish I had thought of that.

That would have been a good idea as opposed to being forced to eat Indian food or whatever it is these people make here.

Well, Hari, we do hope that you managed to soldier through the rest of the wintry Armageddon that has been unleashed on America by the forces of fate.

And Hari, we'll be back on a full bugle later this month.

Hari, thanks for joining us.

Do for heaven's sake put some clothes on.

Well, I don't want you to tell me what to do but i might because uh i can't feel my nether region

that's because of the uh climate in the entertainment industry rather than the weather

that will those will be my last words on the bugle as i brief the death

creating a brand new island so you can get drunk on new year's eve news now and uh some people in new zealand have responded to an alcohol ban in their area in

an almost godlike way by creating a new island on which to sit and drink alcohol like some kind of cross between Zeus Dionysus and whatever other god you want to throw into the equation

they built a like a tiny sand fort in the sea just off

in an estuary in Coromandel

and then claimed it was in international waters and therefore not affected by the local alcohol ban.

Yeah, and the construction attracted admiration from the police rather than censure.

Inspector John Kelly commented, That's creative thinking.

If I'd known about it, I probably would have joined them.

Which I've got to say, Andy, while it shows an admirable spirit of laddness,

it fails to fulfil his legal duty as a police officer.

To tell them that international waters is a technical term and to truly apply to this situation would require the tiny homemade island to have been at least 12 nautical miles from the low water mark of the coastal state.

Also, I mean, is that the kind of thing you want to hear from a police chief?

I mean, after, you know, some massive, great 40 billion pound robbery of gold bullion from someone, you think, oh, that was a good idea.

If I thought of that, I'd have been right there.

Yeah, I wish I'd been part of that.

But it just shows the unending capacity of the human brain to find ways around

attempts to stop them getting pissed.

Yeah, it's admirable ingenuity.

Who says that drinking causes brain damage?

Yeah, it's but it it provokes creative thinking.

Maybe it balances each other out.

The threat of removing alcohol balances out the actual drinking of alcohol itself.

My real question is if they built the island sober or if it then slumped into the sea halfway through.

Well, history will be the judge of that, I guess.

But I mean, it does raise a slightly dangerous precedent that if you don't like the laws of somewhere,

you just build an island somewhere.

Worked for Australia.

Your emails now and thank you for the emails you've sent in.

This came in from Jackie who writes, Hello, just a short note to say that after drinking everything in my house on Christmas Eve with my mother and auntie, I woke up Christmas morning very delicate and rather queasy.

As I often do in these situations, I popped on a podcast and laid down, shut my eyes and tried not to hurl.

Unfortunately, this was an issue of the bugle, where Chris had festively replaced the bleeps with stomach-turning burps.

The result was me spending all of Christmas morning vomiting.

That literally, I've not had a more heartwarming email in my whole time on the show, and I don't think it was meant to be that way.

That's the kind of power you wield in the producer's chair.

As I won't hold a grudge, writes Jackie, against the other possible culprit, Brackett's wine.

I place the blame squarely at your feet.

Yes!

Right.

Well, Jackie, I'd love to tell you that Chris is looking chastened and apologetic.

I've never seen a man look more triumphant.

He has the glee in his eyes that you have at the end of a successful pun run, Andy.

It's my equivalent, making listeners sick.

Although that's nothing compared to the glee in my eyes at the end of an unsuccessful pun run.

And truly do they say, f you, Chris.

And this extremely exciting email comes from Axel, who writes subjects, Bob Sleigh and the Olympics.

Hello, Andy and Nish.

I'm going to take a guess at who will be on when reading this.

Bad luck.

Fuck.

50% right.

One out of two.

My name is Axel and I am a member of the British Bob Sleigh team.

Yes.

Wow.

Welcome to the show, Axel.

I would like to take a moment to thank you for your ongoing Bob Sleigh references.

They always catch my ear.

I look forward to your coverage of the Winter Olympics, and we are.

The Bugle is exclusively covering the Winter Olympics.

We are the only media outlets with full rights to cover the Winter Olympics.

Though, hopefully, I'll be a tad too busy to listen immediately.

I assume you're listening while you're sitting in the back of your bobsler, isn't it?

Don't you just hop in and stick your headphones on and wait till you bang into something at the bottom?

I think you have to think aerodynamic thoughts.

Right, okay.

I think that's the technical term.

Right, that's the level of sporting expertise you're on this show for us.

Would you consider a pun run for us winter athletes?

Well, this, we've only just picked up this email, but consider that pun run very much commissioned, Axel.

And

that will be, in fact, there may be several pun runs, to be honest.

Considering our sport involves sliding down hills in a sometimes unexpected fashion.

A fast-paced, thrilling ride along some bumpy puns seems fitting.

All the best.

And go, Team GB.

Thanks, Axel.

Bob Sledder Extraordinaire, which is a nice way to sign off an email.

Well, Axel, that pun run will be coming

in the near future, in the next couple of weeks, on the strict condition that you and the rest of the British bobsled team are listening to it whilst hurtling down the Olympic bobsled run

at 70 plus miles an hour.

So, do keep rumours coming in, particularly if you're a member of a major sporting event

to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

The Winter Olympics...

As I said, we will be covering the Winter Olympics exclusively on behalf of this planet.

The opening ceremony is on 9th of February, so we will be covering it then.

And it's being held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Ironically, Pyongchang is the noise that happens when a bob sled run goes wrong.

Well, that brings us sliding and sledding to the end of

this week's bugle.

I could be a local radio DJ.

Please don't.

Hi.

Alice, thanks as ever for coming on, particularly at such short notice.

Ah, it's my pleasure.

Do come and see Alice appear with me in the Certifiable History at Soho Theatre next Tuesday to Friday and come and see all of my

tour shoes, all of my tour shows thereafter and the live bugle on the 18th of January.

All details on the internet.

I have a podcast.

It's called Tea with Alice.

It is not like this, but it is fun.

Not funny, but fun.

It's very different to the Bugle.

I can confidently say that having appeared on it.

But it did involve some very nice tea.

Thank you for listening, buglers.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

And I want you all to get out there and bobsled your way to work in honour of the British Bobsled team, officially sponsored by the Bugle podcast.

Giving them pung runs for free is less sponsorship than it is sabotage, Andy.

They can stick a

bugle logo on the sled.

Let's do it.

Probably against IOC regulations.

Right, thank you for listening.

Until next time, goodbye.

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.