The Bugle 2017 Review: Men are Terrible

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle 4054 sub-episode 2017, the official Bugle Review of the Year 2017.

I am Andy Zoltzmann, hardened veteran of all 365 days of this renowned year.

And once again, it has been a year containing more than one major news story, as is so often the case these days.

Of course, the most significant factor in this year has been that it has once again taken place under the watchful eye of The Bugle, the universe's official audio newspaper of historical record.

During our hiatus, the entire foundations of civilization basically crumbled.

Sorry about that.

But since our return, late last year, ISIS have had a terrible time and stock markets have rocketed.

I know it's probably nothing to do with us, but other people seem to be taking credit for shit like that, so why shouldn't we do the same?

So, coming up month by month, are the unarguable highlights of 2017, beginning, appropriately enough for fans of chronologically linear sequencing with

January.

The concern does seem to be that anyone who opposes Brexit is sort of seen as a kind of traitor and someone who needs to be expelled.

Nigel Farage, who is a total

has waded in again,

saying that he hopes Sir Ivan is the first of many to go.

And the spirit of Brexit seems very much to be, we have got our freedom back, and if you don't agree, go f ⁇ yourself.

That is the spirit of Brexit.

Farage

complained about who

Sir Ivan Rogers was replaced with.

He was replaced with Sir Tim Barrow.

And Farage put up a tweet saying good to see that the government have replaced a knighted career diplomat with dot dot dot a knighted career diplomat well fair point Nigel because of course the last thing you want in top-level diplomacy is a diplomat especially not a career diplomat with years and years of relevant experience because they're just going to come in Nish with their hackney old ways of doing diplomatic stuff negotiating stuff by the book and what we need in this country we don't need that we need an absolute novice who comes in unencumbered by the dead weights of experience and expertise unconstrained by the constricting shackles of having even a vague f ⁇ ing clue what might be going on what we need is a randomly chosen Brexit voter as our official Brexit Britannia representative to sit in a paddling pool sit in a paddling pool in the middle of the negotiating room wearing a knotted handkerchief on the head saying do what I say or I'll splash you.

What we need, Nish, as only Mr.

Farage has had the courage to point out, is someone who believes in Brexit, someone who will sit in the negotiations with their eyes squeezed tight shut and their fingers and their ears, believing as hard as they possibly can.

What we need is someone dressed as a bulldog to run around barking at the Germans and shitting on the carpet.

That's what we need.

We don't need a career diplomat.

God save the Queen, Andrew.

God save the Queen.

I'm tearing up over here.

2017 will be remembered as the day the factories closed.

Rusted out factories and the drugs and the gangs.

These are just, righteous people.

This is your celebration.

Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams stops right here and stops right now.

At the center of this movement, trillions and trillions of dollars.

We will get our people radical Islamic terrorism for everyone to follow.

We will rediscover there is no room for God.

We've enriched foreign industry.

It's going to be only America first.

America first.

Ladies and gentlemen, please remain standing while the president and official party depart the platform.

You will be released by sections shortly.

And now, February.

Andy, the top story this week, like all top stories everywhere in any country of the world, including southern Suriname, is Donald Trump.

I have a question, Andy.

So, a judge in Seattle, a Republican judge, blocked a nation, had a nationwide block on the travel ban.

And he said, you can't stop people just randomly from different countries coming in.

Fair enough.

And Trump called him a so-called judge.

Yeah.

And my question is:

does this now revolutionize judgments everywhere in the world from the Greek system of justice?

Like, for example, if a man in India has been tried for murder and is sentenced to death, could he just stand up and say, well, that's your judgment from a so-called judge in this so-called court.

in your so-called justice system.

Right.

See, I see it a different way, actually.

I see this as an example of Trump being extremely respectful to both the American justice system and Judge Robart

himself.

He called him a so-called judge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is fair enough, because there is nothing about James Robart that intrinsically makes him a judge.

It's merely the fact that humans evolved language to communicate ideas.

and gradually form some concept of justice requiring people with expertise and authority to be given the jurisdiction to apply the concept of justice and call it justice and themselves be called judges and for James Robart to attain the elevated level that enables us to call him a judge.

So highlighting all the human evolution that has gone into him being appointed a judge and called a judge merely highlights what an amazing guy he must be.

I mean, this is Trump bowing the knee to the concept of justice.

You know, I'm reminded of a story of a court in Uttar Pradesh in India, where a judge felt so unsafe because the

area he was a judge of was filled with so many vandals and criminals that he sat on the judge's desk with a gun.

And I felt that that's you're then one step away from then announcing the sentence and carrying it out yourself by shooting the guy in the face.

Right.

I do hope Donald Trump does not listen to this episode because that will give him ideas that will be very hard to stop.

We need to prove one way or the other which gender is better and or worse by doing uh working out based on the historical events of Men's Day and Women's Day

which of those two days has done more damage to the planet.

All right, I'm ready.

Okay.

1495 was the birth date of the Portuguese saint John of God, the patron saint of booksellers, the dying, mental health, hospitals, and nurses.

All good causes.

He also died on Women's Day.

No, that's because they thought saints were born and died on the same day.

Oh, he didn't actually do it.

It was a fake, was it?

It was a tax thing.

TPC.

Right.

And 1931, the birth of the South African cricketer Neil Adcock.

Well, a terrific fast bowler, one of the most underrated fast bowlers in the...

Women's Day.

Women's Day.

His mother was a woman, to be fair.

But he was a terrific fast bowler.

Shared a birthday with Gary Newman and Gaz Coombs of Supergrass.

Also, on Women's Day the Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato Iradia was assassinated in 1921.

Thank you sisters.

And in 1949 Mildred Gillars, also known as Axis Sally, was condemned to prison for treason.

She was an American broadcaster employed by the Third Reich, Helen, in Nazi Germany to proliferate propaganda during World War II.

Oh, if you're talking about Nazi Germany, Andy, on Wednesday in 1943, the Nazis liquidated Janowska Janovska concentration camp, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.

Well, thanks for raising the tone of this show.

Women's Day, 1963, the Ba'ath Party comes to power in Syria in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian army officers, if I may quote the internet.

I mean, that's going well, isn't it?

But because of Women's Day, that happened.

Everything that's happening in Syria now is because of that in 1963 on Women's Day.

But 1658 on Women's Day the peace of Rosskilde was declared between Sweden and Denmark and look how those pals are still getting on.

Oh you have got a point on that one.

But on Men's Day perhaps probably the greatest one of the high points of human culture and civilization Pele the Brazilian football genius scored his 1,000th goal.

That's he did not notice that he did not wait until the 8th of March to do that.

He did it on the 19th of November because he's a man.

But also on Men's Day in 1824 a storm caused the St.

Petersburg flood which killed 10,000 people because of men.

Because of men.

Yeah, well you say that.

But then in 1985 on Men's Day Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time heralding a process that brought an end to the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation,

which women were doing absolutely nothing about.

We can't do it if you're already trapped in a bunker

of society by men.

I mean, don't see any women in those pictures, do you?

Bloody sausage party.

But also, on Men's Day in 1994,

in Britain, the first national lottery draw was held, spawning millions of really boring gambling habits.

In 1618 on Women's Day, Johannes Kepler discovered the third law of planetary motion, which is the best one because of rule of three.

As a comedian, you'll be familiar with that.

Third time's the charm.

On Men's Day,

the Slovenian philosopher Clement Jugg was born and

he made everyone else's name seem boring.

We're all suffering because of Clement Jugg.

Well, Chris,

I think you can adjudicate.

You want me to adjudicate?

Yeah, which you know, which day has done more damage?

Women's Day 1979, the CD was demonstrated publicly for the first time.

Given that I was also six months old, I probably also shat myself

with excitement about the CDs and also gender equality.

I'm going to say that the winner is sort of early August.

You're a natural-born compromise.

Yep, I'm not getting involved.

That's what the world needs.

It's April time.

Election fever.

They said she wouldn't do it.

She said she wouldn't do it.

No one was asking her to do it.

She said she wouldn't do it again.

There was absolutely no need to do it.

She said she seriously wouldn't do it.

Everyone had forgotten that she might do it.

But she did it anyway.

Theresa May has called a snap election.

I mean, it even made the news here in Australia.

Yeah.

I saw it on my Facebook feed.

Well, I mean, that shows what a big story this is.

It's infiltrated my friendship circle.

People are posting up things.

I mean, I think in a post-Trump world, you need to up the stakes in politics to get your nose in the news.

Like going back on your word and doing something completely off the cuff and unthought through makes you relatable to the common man because people look at you and they go like, oh yeah, I remember the time I did a U-turn against traffic on a freeway at midnight because I wanted a McDonald's.

I want my politics to reflect that impulse.

Oh, right.

So it's three isn't I plainly.

Yeah, it's like all the politicians at the moment just sat down and watched an 80s movie marathon and then they just heard the phrase, it's mad, but it might just work, one too many times.

And they're hoping the public will confuse the word sudden with the word decisive.

You know, like those people who say, I'm just honest when they mean I'm just a cockhead.

Come in with your semantics.

She called a snap election.

She then explained why in a speech outside number 10 Downing Street.

I mean, it was like a six-minute speech.

Quite impressive that she managed to get through those six minutes without at any point saying the words, obviously this is just naked political opportunism.

And that was impressive self-restraint in between the bits about no one being allowed to play political games anymore and doing what's best for Britain.

Naked political opportunism is my favourite kind of naked.

Wow, you're sharing too much again, Alex.

My second favourite is naked in the kitchen.

The two often go hand in hand.

If George Osborne's Instagram feed is anything.

Look, I'll digress.

Impressive display from the woman who's put the chancer into lives next door to the chancer le.

And Britain has come down with election fever yet again classic symptoms of election fever yeah uh shivering hot sweats headaches general listlessness and uncontrollable vomiting um shivering very much at the icy blast of the arctically cynical pragmatism unleashed from the permafrosted political heart of louisa main hot sweats as we flush red with the embarrassment of what the f is going on in our country headaches provoked by merely contemplating the prospect of two more months of political bitchcraft and general listlessness as we contemplate the options on the electoral menu thrown up by this kind of slow-motion car crash collision of 21st century political expedience and an 18th century political system.

And vomiting at the pure naked hypocrisy of our Prime Minister.

Tough times to be a British democracy fan, Naz.

Yeah, I mean you're heading towards the path that Australia's taking.

You're just, you know, one Prime Minister in, another one out, you know.

Yeah, we turn over Prime Ministers at quite a high rate, mainly so that they don't have a chance to do anything because things are okay here for the mainstream.

Because you have three-year terms, don't you?

Yeah, three-year terms.

We sort of, you know, that's a loose term.

Yeah.

And by three years.

Wait the full three years these days.

Nah.

I mean, it's not even an aspiration anymore.

You just want to get in and then once you're in, it's like, oh, I've made it.

Had the portrait done.

Yeah, got the portrait.

Yeah, give someone else a go.

Move over.

Right.

Don't hog the seat.

So that's what we do.

And I think it's good to see that the Brits are sort of taking that up as well.

The way we do it is as Australians, we don't like tall poppies.

We have this tall poppy syndrome and we don't like tall poppies.

So the moment we elect someone into power, we're like, think you're better than us, do you?

We're very OCD about the height of our poppies.

We don't know, we don't care.

I mean, is that a smart guy?

Are you trying to be smart?

No, gonna cut you down.

But I think that's what's going on with the Brits.

You know, they all just want change.

Why?

I don't know.

And she sensed that.

Brexit was probably that as well.

Well, I think Brexit was that.

It was basically what happened was a Britain was left alone in an empty room with nothing in the room but a single electrical socket.

Eventually,

at some point, inevitably, we were going to put our penis in that socket.

Theresa May says we must come together.

Sat, how you got your hair like that?

That is my business, Alex.

Andy is the manifestation of Britain putting its penis in electrical sockets.

Can I use that on my poster, please?

Take star mom in Australia.

Reality star in the ZPC.

May.

Yes, in No Low Too Low News, Australian Literary Magazine editor Roger Franklin decided that he was going to leverage the appalling tragedy into a petty political vendetta against Q and A, which is a Monday Night Light political debate programme that airs on the ABC.

So he wrote an opinion piece saying that had there been a shred of justice, the Manchester blast would have detonated in an Ultimo T V studio

because he wanted to punish the ABC for refusing to acknowledge the true causes of terrorism.

And I don't know, I contend that had there been a shred of justice, Franklin would have been sideswiped by a terrible case of colon evacuation and the time he spent in the toilet pooping out his dreams would have been just long enough to make him think twice.

You know, maybe he'd think between spurts of hot rectal regret: oh, you know what's not actually cool?

Trivializing the murder of children by co-opting the weight of their senseless deaths to add force to a metaphor in a minor literary spat.

And then he would have wiped his bottom and not suggested that lefties and moderate Muslims being on television should have been the rightful target of an incredibly wrongful attack.

I don't know.

You can be reliably relied upon to

bring some spectacular bodily analogies to...

Basically,

generally pretty much your first full sentence on each bugle you've been on has rocketed right into the top five of most

crudest things ever said on this show.

I'm sorry, I'm thought of as very well spoken in Australia.

Oh, no, absolutely.

The two are not mutually exclusive, unquestionably.

June.

It was a very odd election in that the Conservatives...

got basically exactly the same vote share and number of votes as Tony Blair in his biggest triumph in 1997.

They got the same 42.5% of the vote as Thatcher in 1983 when she waltzed home with a 144 seat majority.

More than Thatcher in 1987 when she got a 100 seat majority.

They're resurgent in Scotland where they've basically been spent the last 20 years checking into a mortuary and whacking tags on their own toes.

And yet the result is a total fing catastrophe for the Conservatives and the Prime Minister clinging to office.

by some extremely ill-kept fingernails.

Context is all...

It was amazing to me how how quickly the Tory party turned on Theresa, which firstly suggests what a noxious uh culture there is within the party, but secondly suggests that she has both been shaped by that culture, having been in it for such a long time, and has shaped it, having been in it for such a long time.

Yeah, it feels like that happens a lot in the Republican Party in the States, that people will put someone up on a pedestal and be like, He's the next uh, you know, he's the the next Saviour and then he does one thing and they're like, We never liked him.

I liked very much Anna Subry's victory speech seems wrong.

It had the tone of a concession speech, even though she won.

But it went on for many minutes, and it was like a one-woman performance of Abigail's party.

And middle of the night, she looked kind of haunted, and she basically just kept saying, well, Theresa May is a shitpile.

She's a shitpile.

I'm paraphrasing.

She's got to go because she's f ⁇ ing shit.

And I thought you're supposed to be on the same team.

Thank you for interpreting those words for us.

You are, of course, an etymological master.

I d I just call it like a single.

Well, if you are enjoying this compilation of buglings, don't forget my live review of the year show, Andy Zoltzman's 2017 The Certifiable History, continues at Soho Theatre from the 2nd to the 6th and the 9th to the 12th of January, co-starring Bugle Australian lapsed Buddhist of the year, Alice Fraser.

The run has been specially extended to the 12th due to fate, destiny and the heartfelt desire to give you buglers as much chance as possible to see it.

And a gap appearing in Soho's schedule that needed emergency short-term notice filling up by a show that is by no means selling out.

Shut up Andy.

Remember 2018 is the year of Zalt marketing.

Odd thing for the United Nations to choose, but there you go.

Anyway, do come along, it's a fun show to do, and I hope a fun show to watch.

Do come in as large numbers as you can possibly manage.

Thank you.

Thereafter, my UK and Ireland satirist for Hire tour begins in Southport on the 13th of January, then Salford on the 14th.

There's a bugle live show at Leicester Square Theatre on the 18th of January, also featuring Alice.

Then Satirist for Hire plows onwards.

The remaining January dates, Birmingham the 19th, Bromsgrove on the 20th, Oxford the 23rd, Aldershot the 24th, Nottingham 25th, Milton Keynes 26th, then Aberdeen on the 29th, Edinburgh the 30th and Glasgow the 31st.

Then on into February and loads more gigs, including my first island gigs for 15 years in Galway, Dublin and Belfast, the 10th, 11th, and 12th of February.

Sorry, Kalani, but if you think I'm coming back to you after what happened in that so-called comedy club gig in a hotel nightclub in 2002, you are very, very, very much mistaken.

Full details of all the tour gigs, which run up to early March, at andesaltsman.co.uk and do send your requests for topics to satirise this at satiristforhire.com.

Back to the Bugle Review of the Year now and the famous celebrity month, July.

Helen is five years younger than me and um

she uh

she

let history be the judge of that

and

at present we can be the judge of that and you you you owe me Helen you owe me because I remember when we went to a brass band concert in the Tunbridge Wells Assembly Room when you were aged naught and you did a shit so big

that they basically had to stop the concert so it could be cleared up.

Really?

The reason you owe me is because I've never ever told anyone about that in public.

Do you feel better now that you've got it out of your system as evidently I did then?

That was one of the most spectacular three-dimensional heckles in Shobiz history.

Also,

also joining us, someone from

an entirely different family.

It's the former four-weight world boxing champion, widely regarded as the best pound-for-pound fighter of the mid-1990s from Norfolk Vinci.

Oh, no, sorry, that's the...

Sorry, that's the introduction I'd written in case Purnell's sweet P.

Whitaker turned up.

Anyways, he's all here, isn't it?

Anyway.

Someday.

In Sled, joining us for neither the first time nor the last.

It's this week's convincing winner of the most bearded bugle co-host of the week.

It's Nishkumar.

Hello, Zaltzmen.

Hello, Buglers.

Here we are, back, Andy, performing inside an upturned purple cow.

Oh, no, they're taking the cow off.

Oh, it's not a cow!

Oh, really?

Well, that's good for me because every time I used to do a gig in here, it was a real

pissing on my Hindu upbringing.

Is it kosher?

It doesn't matter to Hindus, mate.

You can't be like, well, I can't eat beef.

Well, it's kosher.

Yeah, that's not relevant to me in any way.

Double negative.

Nice to see you guys.

You are one of the worst Jews of all time.

Another classic Kenny Rogers song.

August.

Top story, world on the brink of nuclear war.

On a positive note, this might solve the climate change crisis.

Yay!

Every mushroom cloud has a silver lining.

So this is, so there might be a war, it looks like, between North Korea and the U.S.

I'm jumping the gun a little bit, but it feels like that's where this might be going.

My interpretation of what's happening right now with Trump challenging North Korea

is

basically the last president of the United States was black, right?

So now

we all have to die.

And I think that's the policy decision that has been made at this point.

Okay.

I hadn't spotted that logic before, but that doesn't make sense now

that you mention it.

I mean, I was, like I said, I've been away for a few weeks, and I missed the escalation of

this crisis, which seemed to happen largely while Donald Trump was playing golf.

I guess you have to ask, how likely is war?

And I guess the answer is, well, how long is a piece of string?

And the answer to that is, that depends whether that piece of string has got two f ⁇ ing lunatics pulling as hard as possible at either end, shouting, wrap your tape measures around this, you fing losers.

Correct.

Correct.

If I had to put my money on it, though, I would guess that there probably will not be a massive global Armageddon-level apocalypse-grade conflict arising from this.

Because for every one person who wants it to kick off and make things go boom, there are approximately 3.75 billion who are probably not

as keen.

Basically, Harry, this seems to boil down not so much to

you know, a classic build-up of geopolitical tension that many wars originate from.

This is basically just a dick-swinging contest.

And, I mean, that's fine to an extent, but the problem is when dicks get swung, there is always a danger that porcelain ornaments will be knocked off relatively low mantelpieces.

That is the concern for me as a member of the human race, particularly when one of those doing the swinging is Kim Jong-un, a one-man zone who rules North Korea with a rod of stupid, stupid iron.

Surely even he can't be that keen on unleashing the full might of everyone else's military on his shitty little country.

I mean, what would that do to the living standards of ordinary North Koreans?

I mean, that'd probably go very slightly up, which is not what he wants.

I think that when you're a maniac

after

you lose any kind of contest or when you want to show the other person off, you burn the village after, don't you?

So

they are planning to burn down the global village.

That'll show them.

Also,

quick commentary on your commentary.

Did you just say if you were to put money on this, that seems like a safe bet because if you are wrong, you do not need to

pay up.

I guess so.

That's the ultimate no-lose bet, isn't it?

Yeah, that's a very safe bet.

And also, with regards to your dick swinging, the one thing you left out is it's possible that one of those parties is able to fit a nuclear warhead on the tip of their fingers,

which would change the dynamic considerably.

September.

In sexual harassment news, the recent allegations about Hebrew Weinstein have been exploding out into the world.

A new world for women, in which we've suddenly realized that people are going to listen when you tell them about that sleazy dude who did that sleazy thing.

News stories have been emerging left, right, and centre, including one about Carrie Fisher, who apparently sent a cow's tongue to a sleazy producer in Hollywood.

She personally delivered it in a Tiffany's box after hearing that he forced himself onto a friend.

I think that is absolutely the appropriate gift for a sleazy dude, being a slimy, rough and a toxic mixture of testosterone and socialisation, leading to an arrogant entitlement to the bodies of women.

No wait, that's men again.

Cows are a gentle creature whose only sin is being delicious and farting a lot.

That's two sins there, Alice.

Well, it depends.

It depends if you consider being delicious a sin.

Oh, well.

Women in Hollywood and around the world are using the hashtag me too to share their experiences of sexual harassment.

In France, women are using hashtag balance temp porque, which roughly translates to rat out your pig.

This hashtag went viral this week and encourages women to speak up in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

The French Government has capitalised on this recently, proposing a bill that seeks to crack down on sexual harassment, which would include, according to gender equality minister Ms Chiapa, on-the-spot fines for, quote, when someone breaks into your vital space, talks to you within 10 or 20 centimetres of your face, follows you for three,

four, five or six streets, or asks for your telephone number about 17 times.

It's very specific and I think it's like something that happened to her.

It's got the specificity of this dude this morning.

I think on-the-spot fines for sleazy douchebags on public transport are an amazing idea.

France is going to be the richest government in the world in about five minutes.

If I had a dollar for every time some dude said something disgusting to me about my body and his jizz, I would be richer than Harvey Weinstein.

Also, if on-the-spot fines for sexual harassment were given directly to the women being harassed, you would fix the pay gap within a month.

It's interesting that she went for

following you for three, four, five, or six streets.

I mean, that's quite a specific range, that, isn't it?

Because you think, I mean, one or two might be coincidence.

Seven, I don't know, is that because that's now showing a level of romantic commitment that needs to be acknowledged?

I think at seven, you're married.

That's how it works.

I mean, you'd have thought three or four would start to get to the you're obviously not going to get the telephone number phase of the conversation.

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know, women aren't very good at maths, so this is the world I live in now.

I can make that joke, and you can't laugh at that joke.

This, I mean, it is been a hugely

depressing story and I guess an encouraging response to it.

It's a story that made Hollywood manage to make itself look even less ethical than it already did, which is in its own way quite an impressive feat of moral gymnastics.

It's kind of bizarre, shameful, patriarchal omerta that does slightly make you think, Alice, that perhaps men ought now to be taking a break from their current two million year stints as the de facto gender in charge of planet Earth.

I think we've had maybe a fair crack of the whip and just need a little mental refresh, reassess our priorities and goals as a gender, chill out and then come back refresh for another two million years.

Just have a little bit of a sit and think about what you've done.

You know, just sit back, have a cup of tea, feel regret and shame, come back into society better men.

And on behalf of all women, I forgive you.

We fixed it.

November.

Robert Mugabe is completely fed, and he is, yeah.

He's under house arrest.

Although, when they say, I keep reading reports that say he's confined to his house by the military, and you're like, he's 93 years old.

You don't need the military to do that.

You just need a particularly steep set of stairs.

There's been some dispute over whether or not it is technically a coup or not.

The African Union president says it seems like a coup.

The military are denying that it's a coup, and they did so in a broadcast from the state television station that they had taken over.

You have to admire the barefaced coupe balls of that.

I guess, as the old saying goes, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably an ally of Robert Mugabe in a duck outfit disguise, trying to sneak his way to safety past a load of soldiers in a fing tank.

So, um.

It's not a military takeover of government, says the military, having taken over.

Yeah, it's it's it doesn't look great.

The root of the conflict in this occasion is that a couple of last week Mugabe sacked Emerson Magangwa, his former deputy who it was assumed would take power and it was widely assumed that this was a way of clearing a path for his 52 year old wife Grace to assume power who is quite a divisive figure.

A lot of people feel that her lavish spending at a time when many Zimbabweans experienced horrendous economic conditions was at best distasteful.

And there are others who are fine with it, presumably because she is paying them to say they're fine with it as part of her incredibly lavish lifestyle.

And they met in the 1990s.

This is an alarming detail that I did not know.

They met in the 1990s while Mugabe was married to his wife Sally as she suffered from terminal cancer.

And just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse.

Which, in many ways, is the epithet of Robert Mugabe's time in charge of Zimbabwe.

Also, terminal cancer.

Yeah.

Zing.

This is a direct quote from Mugabe, right?

On his courtship of Grace whilst he was married to his wife Sally, who let's remember was dying.

It was necessary for me to look for someone.

And even as Sally was still going through her last few days, although it might have appeared to some as cruel, I decided to make love to Grace.

Now, just when you think, again, all right, immediately we know Mugabe is a fully class act, right?

But this is what he says of Grace.

She happened to be one of the nearest.

And she was a divorcee herself, and so it was.

Oh boy, that is like listening to a Barry White record.

That is so romantic, you just want to f at the first dance of my wedding.

I don't want love is all around or every breath you take.

I want to hear a recording of this on a loop for three minutes.

So was he the first man to swipe Bright in the sense that he swiped his wife off her deathbed

and finally

december i i'm so confused by this i had to uh i had to get my uh scottish boyfriend to explain it to me yeah which i sometimes do so that thinks that it might be a regular feature now that i uh i have my scottish boyfriend explain things to me so scottish boyfriend explains it do you want to know how he explained it yeah i had to ask him to explain to me how the situation came about in the first place and what he said was uh

after world war ii everybody felt bad for like the jewish people and that so let's get some of the holy land uh arabs arab states said naman gima bit of germany because they were the ones who were out of order during the war and then everyone else said na pal jerusalem and gradually israel have just taken the piss in it so in 1967 they then annexed a bit uh so israel stole it and now trump has basically gone well you stole it ages ago so it's yours now now.

A bit like finders' keepers, except stealers' keepers.

Well, I mean, it's slightly alarming that your Scottish boyfriend appears to have a slightly more nuanced appreciation of the delicate

situation than the leader of the free world.

I think it's a genius move by Trump.

What he's gone in is he's gone in and he's just been an arta, arta fool.

And I think he's hoping to unite them against him.

I think he's being a real hero here, putting himself out there and hoping that they can at least all agree on the common ground that he is a head.

Bringing the world together.

Well, as I said, you know, it's our land as one of God's chosen people, promised to us by God, or was it Arthur Balfour?

I forget.

Was he the son of...

Was Balfour the son of?

I forget.

Were they related?

I can't remember.

Anyway, but I mean, just through history over hundreds, thousands of years.

Jerusalem has, well, it's kind of changed hands more often than the flesh-regenerating kleptomaniac Saudi Arabian android.

Is that going to be on the the next season of Doctor Who?

Because I need to see that.

Balfour, very much the King Solomon of his day, wisely cutting the metaphorical baby of Jerusalem in half, although he slipped when he saw a puff in and cut the baby into two rather uneven halves.

But, you know, it's been right since the very creation of Earth in 4004 BC.

Jerusalem's been a...

you know, it's been a battleground.

I don't know.

My theory is that there are assholes on each end of this very complex faceted asshole machine, and they're just spraying each other.

And then everyone in the radius of the shit spray gets covered in shit, and then they get angry and drop their pants.

And then there's a veritable unidirectional travia fountain of rage poop.

It stinks.

It stinks, Andy.

But also, Lashana Hava, Baby Rushalehim.

I couldn't agree with you more.

Next year in Jerusalem, Andy, as a half-Jew and a lapsed Jew, let's do it.

Well, buglers, there you go.

The entire twelve months bagged, tagged, and ready for the historical incinerator in one easy package.

On a personal note, I would like to thank all my Bugle co-hosts this year who have made the show such a total delight for me to do.

I would like to thank you, the Buglers, for continuing to listen to, correspond with, and support the show.

I do hope you've enjoyed the rebooted Bugle as much as I have.

If you do want to contribute financially to the show, that option is still available via the website.

Every little bit helps to keep this show alive and thriving.

There will be more live bugles, hopefully on an expanded range of continents in 2018.

I would like to thank our many and varied sponsors and our hosts, Radiotopia.

It's been a pleasure to be binetworked with such an esteemed medlio-cornucopia glomeranthology selection of podcasts.

Etymologize your way out of that one, Helen Zoltzmann.

And above all, I would like to thank, on behalf of myself and all buglers, and indeed humanity, producer Chris, the technical, logistical, and organisational Noah's Ark to the Bugles' squawking menagerie of bullshit.

We will be back in 2018, or next week, whichever happens sooner.

From 2017, this is Andy Zaltzman.

Happy old year, Buglers, and here's to a less cranky new year.

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.