Bugle 4053 – Mountains, Monkeys and Moore

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4053 of the Bugle the World's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world with me Andy Zoltzmann here in London, which is still the only city in the world to have hosted all of the following: A.

An Olympic Games, B a Football World Cup final, C.

A live bugle show, D.

The execution of King Charles I, and E.

A pidgin, which is not unusual in itself, but not often found in that combination.

Joining me from Mumbai, India, a city once given to Charles I's son, Charles II, uh, as a wedding present, and of course, potentially the capital of post-Brexit Britain, Mumbai.

Joining me from there, it's Anuvabal.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, hello.

That is indeed correct.

We were part of a large dowry,

and I'm sure the other things in the dowry were geese, baths of Spain, some of America, and us.

And I'm happy to report that we're still here as part of the dowry.

I mean, that puts a lot of pressure on a marriage, I think.

When you've got wedding presents that include a city

i mean it's it's a lot for a relationship to live up to that's correct andy i i think that it it came down to a to a thing where charles was probably rejected with with smaller presents and we've all been there you know he tried he tried gifts he tried flowers he tried chocolates but clearly uh this spanish lady wanted something bigger i'm sure he he tried animals and then he just said f it here's bombay and i think

and i think that's kind of the attitude with which we've governed this city for the last 400 years

it's Bombay so so I think there is a long history here that we've taken from the dowry into our civic infrastructure ending

so this is Bugle 4053 4053 coincidentally of course the number of people the young Donald Trump blamed for a priceless ming vase breaking after he personally picked it up whacked it with a hammer threw it into a quarry and urinated on it that according to a computer simulation also 4053 the number of minutes in the average day that the average man spends thinking about exaggerated statistics and also 4053 the number of takes it took for the camera crew of David Attenborough's the blue planet before they finally got that polar bear to act really really hungry uh mostly it was just goofing around pulling silly faces at the camera waving and asking for more money.

It's all fake.

It's all fake.

It's a Chinese conspiracy.

They've been starving down the real bears and painting them white to make people think global warming is real.

And that is a fact.

We are recording on the 14th of December 2017, which means tomorrow, the 15th of December, will be exactly nine years since in my bathroom at home I began and ended my career as a freelance midwife with a 100% record, one chance, chance, one goal.

Child, sorry.

So, happy ninth birthday to the boy, and also happy ninth birthday to England's loss to India in the first test match in Chennai,

the commentary of which was the soundtrack to that birth.

Today, the 14th of December is World Monkey Day, and to commemorate it, we are giving our little ape friends in the Bugle scriptwriting dungeon some fresh typewriter ribbons.

Right, let's see what they've come up with today.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outragers' fortune close, like just missing an E there, but we'll take that.

That's a standard spelling mistake many people make, or to eat loads of bananas, scratch your dentals and shit off a branch.

Oh, they were doing so well.

So well.

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

This week, a Christmas Party Ket section.

Teaching you the etiquette for how to behave at your office Christmas party.

In case you're about to have one and you're not quite sure how you should act.

Then relax.

All your problems solved with the Bugle Christmas Party Kette Guide.

Scenario one, if someone offers you some canopies, accept or refuse them politely.

Do not hurl the tray of nibbles in their face and scream, I know what you're up to.

These are f ⁇ ing poisoned, aren't they?

Why are you trying to feed me a poisoned volinvant?

You're a f ⁇ ing murderer.

Scenario 2.

The party's now in full swing.

You're worried that people will start photocopying their asses.

So simply photocopy a vintage King James Bible page by page by page for the rest of the evening.

If anyone complains, just say you're respecting the religious origins of Christmas.

And scenario three, you've now all gone to the local nightclub to round off the evening.

You don't want any of your colleagues embarrassing themselves and indulging in alcohol-influenced romantical interclonchings with each other, but you also don't want to be seen as a prude about it.

So wait until a break between songs, then bribe the DJ to play a succession of Mongolian funeral dirges for the rest of the night.

All your office party problems solved.

And well, Advent is now in full swing, so it's time to return to the Bugle Advent calendar of Christmas Lies.

This week to just heighten the excitement that I know you all have for opening each audio door on the Bugle Advent calendar, we'll be spreading them through the show.

So, you're getting the 16th of December now, and the rest will be dotted through the show.

16th of December, Jesus, ironically, did not celebrate Christmas.

He mostly worked doing his magic and storytelling shows at office parties.

Business time, he called it, or the holy month of Wedgevember.

That is how the former carpenter described the festive season when it's estimated he took 30% of his annual takings for the parable and conjuring tricks of his franchise.

You'll have the rest of the week's Advent Calendar bits through the rest of the show.

Top story this week and absolute chaos in British politics as Parliament demands that at some point in the medium term future it will have a discussion about something.

There's huge upheaval here, Anuvab.

Last night, as we record on this Thursday, the government was defeated in the House of Commons vote on an amendment about letting Parliament have a, quote, meaningful final vote on the Brexit deal.

And this seems to have been viewed in many quarters as one of the hugest constitutional upheavals in the history of the universe.

Quite how we've managed to get ourselves in such an absurd state of political kerfuffledom over the simple question of whether you want to run the details of the biggest deal in British political history through Parliament before blindly going into it or not is utterly, utterly baffling.

Basically, there seemed to be a vote on a scenario that is roughly parallel to

deciding whether or not to get a second opinion after an online medical self-diagnosis website has suggested curing your sore throat by clobbering yourself repeatedly in the groin with a fire extinguisher, injecting mayonnaise into your carotid artery and getting a tattoo of Theresa May done.

on your face.

You have to take that second opinion.

And surely Parliament has to be

I I don't understand this anymore, Anivab.

The Daily Mail, of which I'm sure you're aware, even in India, I'm sure

the bile waves reach even that far, ran a headline this morning after this vote with pictures of the 11 Tory MPs who'd voted against the government with the headline, proud of yourselves.

And to be fair to them, they didn't use a 1930s German font, although it would really have suited the way they'd done their front page.

They voted against the government in favour of not letting an unaccountable elite ride roughshod over our great and irrefutably British British Parliament of Britain.

Now, there is a certain irony in this, given that getting power back to our Parliament was apparently what this whole thing was about.

This was more ironic than a well-pressed shirt made of ferrous metal being hit with an angle-faced golf club by a 69-year-old English actor called Jeremy, if I may stretch the word iron slightly too far.

Andy, Andy,

I did read the Daily Mail thing because

horror spreads much faster than dignity.

And

I have a couple of questions, Andy.

Many years ago, I attended a meeting, I was in the corporate world, and I attended a meeting, and that meeting was a meeting to decide whether we should have more meetings.

Is this something similar?

Did Parliament meet as a body that is constitutionally known as a body that meets to decide on things?

And did it meet to vote on whether they should meet to decide on things?

That is essentially what it did.

And I guess also that is kind of its job as a parliament.

The Daily Mail front page ran as follows.

Just as the newly confident Tories edge ahead in the polls,

I mean, newly confident is all relative, given what they've endured this year.

And also edging ahead in the polls, is this...

surely this cannot be a British newspaper saying that a decision of historical momentousness for this country is less important than a one or two point boost in the opinion polls four and a half f ⁇ ing years away from the next election as it is currently scheduled to be.

It continues.

11 self-consumed malcontents, which is also, I think, a pretty accurate description of the Daily Mail editorial board,

pull the rug from under our EU negotiators.

They didn't didn't pull the rug from under.

They just wanted to have a look at the rug before we enter it into the rug competition to make sure it's not full of shit.

They betray their leader, their party, and 17.4 million Brexit voters.

No, no, no, that is not how democracy works.

And most damningly of all, increase the possibility of a Marxist in number ten.

A mar uh Marxist yes uh yes, yeah.

Uh I died.

It's very hard to be able to read.

To read a British newspaper

sinking to such phenomenal depths of propagandistic shit sheetery.

It did read slightly as if Kim Jong-un's press officer had been doing work experience at the Daily Mail.

And maybe I'm being a bit harsh here.

I think the only conclusion we can really draw, because there's no way that Britain with its proud democratic traditions and its free press that is so proud of being a free press for Britain and its democratic traditions would print a front page so willfully malinformative and basically opposed to the concepts and principles of democracy.

I can only conclude the Daily Mail has been hacked, Anivab.

It's the Russians trying to divide our society again by hacking into our newspapers and making them print out millions and millions of copies of a biliously mundacious front page that no true British newspaper would even contemplate publishing.

So, the Mail, you have my deepest sympathies.

Well, I have two very quick questions, as usual.

Okay.

The first one being:

it is rumored in the East that the Western world, the media, is balanced, objective, logical, and impartial.

Would you say this headline is an example of that?

Well,

not entirely.

Balanced, what were the other ones?

Objective,

balanced,

logical,

sensible, thoughtful.

Would you say that this headline covers all those very foundations of Western journalism and well, if it does, it's spreading itself a little bit thin over each of them.

Maybe it should have just focused on getting one of them right.

As it is,

it's missed the target on

all of them.

The EU Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, put up a tweet saying British Parliament takes back control.

European and British Parliament together will decide on the final agreement.

Interests of the citizens will prevail over narrow party politics.

A good day for democracy.

Now, Anuvab, I'm going to give you a quick multiple choice question.

How would you describe those words?

And one of these three choices was the option taken by the Daily Mail newspaper.

Would you describe those words as A, objective, cooperative, respectful of the democratic process, and positive that a harmonious solution will be reached?

Was it B, sexy, raw, almost animalistic carnality dripping from every syllable?

If you read it backwards in a hot French accent.

Or would you describe those words as C gloating?

This is a tough choice, Andy.

Tough choice.

I'd say that it's a mix of B and C.

Right.

And I think it would only be A

if

this headline was being read by people

under the influence of severe Asian narcotics.

And I have one last question, Andy.

Some of your ministers that voted apparently betrayed their own party.

It is said that one of their issues was that they did not want to take your country, which is apparently a constitutional democracy, back to the days of Henry VIII, where ministers could pretty much do anything, including make love to small pigs,

take over large tracts of land, and indeed give away other nations as dowry.

Is it true, Andy, that

were this to have been a vote where what happened yesterday did not happen, the Henry VIII powers would be invoked in your ministers and they could pretty much go around doing anything.

Essentially, yes.

Now, Henry VIII powers are statutory instruments in the workings of government.

They are provisions which allow primary legislation to be amended by secondary legislation and are called Henry VIII clauses.

And don't take my word for this, because I'm quoting this directly off the internet, because an early example of such a power was conferred on King Henry VIII by the Statute of Proclamations in the year 1539.

Now, this statute was repealed eight years later on the grounds that it was considered to be too despotic, even in the 16th century, which was not the least despotty century in history.

A famous 18th century British legal expert, William Blackstone, described it as as calculated to introduce the most despotic tyranny, which must have proved fatal to the liberties of this kingdom had it not been luckily repealed.

Now, unluckily, it appears the government was seeking to use similar powers in 2017

because, well, f progress, frankly.

Just f progress.

Well, I'm hopeful, Andy, that if Henry VIII powers are invoked, they're invoked in totality.

So they should be able to do things that you did in 1615, like eat a whole goose, for example, which was apparently quite popular.

Yes, well, I mean, Henry VIII was,

well, he was an interesting man, as his record with the ladies would testify.

He was a man who very much liked to get his own way.

And if he crops up as the name for a type of legislation, well, it's probably best to check that your head is still attached to your neck and then run screaming for cover.

So, Andy, what you're saying is, you know, as an outside observer, would you say that the debate now has got mildly contentious?

It's more that it's got incredibly infantile.

And

I'm not sure that's really what you want with massive era-defining pieces of legislation.

But, you know,

such are the wonders of modern democracy.

I'm reminded, Andy, you know, of something that happened last week.

I think David Davis is your main Brexit negotiator.

And I think he was being interviewed by a committee.

And he said that they hadn't done any impact studies of what

the outcome of Brexit would be.

Now,

I'm not much of a scholar and economist, Andy, but a basic impact study, like for example, if there's a fire outside your house and you leave your house,

a basic impact study would say you might catch fire if there's a fire outside your house.

Would you think a basic impact study, at a very basic, like whether it's at a high level good or bad, should be a thing that should be done, Andy?

What would be your view on that?

Well, I mean, that's, you know, one way of looking at it, and it might be the obvious logical way of looking at it.

But I would say, I mean, there's too much certainty in life nowadays.

You know, everything, all information is leaked.

There's no real surprises now.

We know all about football transfers way before they happen.

And, you know, let's live on the edge of it.

Let's get some instincts and off the cuff improvisation back into top-level politics and economics.

And besides, if you start thinking about the consequences of a massive, enormous decision such as Brexit and everything it entails, then you are letting the terrorists win.

I think I'm getting confused.

I can't remember what it's what now.

Andy, what I'm learning here is that it seems like the Brexit impact study is like the whose line is it anyway of macroeconomics.

Yes.

You're given a loose subject matter and then you're hoping for the best.

Yes, and as I probably have said before in a bugle, I'm uncomfortable with improv at the best of times.

And when it is happening in top-level politics, that is no more reassuring to me than if it was happening whilst I was having open heart surgery.

You want some advanced planning and some technical expertise.

Well, you know, you know,

I think we need to look back to the age of exploration, right?

If you remember all the great guys, Christopher Columbus, America Vespucci, they they got on a ship and they said, it, let's go, we're going to reach the edge of the world.

And they hit a bunch of stuff.

They hit India, they hit Eurasia.

Maybe, maybe David Davis is a student of history and exploration, and maybe he's just going and seeing what the hell might happen.

Well, it worked for the

just mentioned the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

That's that's how they did it.

That's all.

If you hear that, if you hear the recording of when they were blasting off, you just hear Neil Armstrong saying, just point it at the sky and press go.

It's not only Britain that has had something of an unuphea of Democratic votes this week.

In America, the Democrats beat the Republicans in Alabama, aided by the fact that the Republicans had chosen a racist, misogynist, Democratic grotmonger with a bulging catalogue of sexual abuse allegations in his back pocket as their candidate.

And given that, he did surprisingly well, because you would have have thought he'd have got approximately zero votes but he you know he wasn't that far away from winning uh Roy Moore but Doug Jones beat Moore

Moore was faced with all kinds of allegations

that he was you know anti-Semitic his wife rejected that claiming touchingly that one of their attorneys was a Jew which proves everything

Another friend claimed Moore cannot have molested any girls in America as he's been accused of doing because he once declined to conflagrate his prankle with a prostitute in Vietnam,

which, you know, I think that probably establishes a pattern of behavior that cannot possibly have changed in different circumstances in a different country at different times.

And also, some of Moore's closest friends have dated adults, so that proves that he's actually fine.

Andy, again, you know, I'd like to bring up that I think this vote vote tells us something about the world, you know, and nowadays it's very hard to know what democracy is saying given who it throws up as the elected candidate.

But it seems like Alabama is telling us that child molestation and civil democracy do not indeed go together.

I think that the Greeks had a few things to say about it.

And, you know,

Plato got into some trouble.

And I think he came back in the early days also.

He said, no, no, no, not a good idea.

And

I think not enough people listen to him, so we get Alabama.

But I think that this is quite reassuring that

they've decided that those two indeed don't go hand in hand.

And second is a question, Andy.

And my question is that Roy Moore, I think one of his election campaigns, he rode around in a horse, and that was part of his advertisement.

He was on a horse.

And

I don't know what it says to you, Andy, but I think in 2017, nothing says progress, you know,

unity,

cultural diversity, the digital age, than a man in a hat on a horse as your leader.

Well, I mean, I guess this ties in with the whole concept of making America great again

because there's debate on exactly when, at what stage of American history is this aiming for?

Roy Moore's basically said America was at its best when it had slavery.

Correct.

So, you know,

before the combustion engine, maybe that's just part of his message as well.

That's correct.

I think it's nostalgic for him, isn't it?

He's sort of, he's kind of missing the days when Galileo was wrong.

You know, I think he's missing that.

Bring back the flat earth.

We were so much of a happier place when this planet was flat.

So much happier.

At least you knew where it ended, Andy.

Well, exactly.

Bugle Advent calendar of Christmas lies,

17th of December.

King Herod, Hercules Rodriguez as was, was not only the first professional monarch to be boss of both Mexico and Judea, but he initially launched his slaying the firstborn policy as a traffic calming measure, similar to those used today when alternate days cars with odd or even numbered license plates are allowed to drive in some cities.

Hirod hoped that eliminating one child from each family would cut donkey traffic and more importantly donkey emissions by up to 13%.

18th of December.

Brussels sprouts, the traditional but largely unloved Christmas vegetable, were cited as the quote most significant reason by 78% of the people who voted for Brexit.

More from the Advent calendar later.

Statues of footballers in India news and well, I mean this has got to be the biggest story in India so far this millennium.

Anuvaba statue of Diego Maradona, the Argentinian football genius, unveiled in Calcutta to what can only be described as universal global ridicule.

Well, I don't know what the screaming and shouting is about, Andy, because, you know, Maradona is a frequent visitor to Calcutta in that he's been there twice.

The first time he was here, Calcutta's, you know, that part of it that's crazy about football.

He's like a god there.

The last time he was there, a number of people set themselves on fire just to be noticed.

Maradona was not happy with that.

He turned around, flew back immediately.

This time, things are much more calm because riot police were stationed.

And this time, there's the accusation that this great sculpture that's been made in Calcutta of Diego Maritona looks like someone's grandmother.

And when the sculptor was interviewed,

he was obviously very distraught.

And his only defense was, and I think it's a fair defense, Andy, where he said that Maratona doesn't look like someone's grandmother.

He looks like everyone's grandmother.

And I just wanted to know if you think that's true, Andy.

I don't don't know.

I haven't spent a lot of time with a large number of grandmothers.

Well, he didn't look much like my grandmother, and certainly my grandmother has never scored a goal with an illegal handball in a World Cup quarterfinal.

So, I mean, there's not a huge amount of common ground there.

For those of you who've not seen the picture, I'm sure you can find it easily on the internet.

It is an extraordinary piece of

art.

It's basically a statue of someone that looks vaguely human and possibly possibly granny-ish, holding what may be a replica of a World Cup or a giant ice cream or a marital aid for a hippopotamus.

And in terms of the Maradona figure himself, you will have seen cabbages that look more like Diego Maradona than this statue.

It looks less like Diego Maradona than Donald Trump looks like a president.

And I mean that puts everything in perspective.

Artistically, it has as much resemblance to the 5'4 inch magically left-footed Argentinian powerhouse as the Mona Lisa has to a plate of battered sausages and baked beans.

And seriously, Da Vinci went way off piece with that food packaging brief.

But just a bit of background on Maradona, for those of you who don't know so much about him, he was a legendary figure in sport, a man described in the space of five minutes of the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England as, quotes, the most sublime individual genius football has ever seen, and quotes, you cheating fing asshole, shithead bastard, fing cheating, scumbag, fing cheating fing fair.

Not in that order, as I recall, and that was that was the official BBC commentary as well.

We also have to take a second to look at Maradona's relationship with Calcutta because I assume not very many cities invite him

because it has been reported in many newspapers that I guess the technical word is that he's mad.

He's a bit mad.

And indeed when he visited Calcutta for the first time he was undergoing some medical treatment and he saw half a million people, some of whom on fire.

And his first comment was these people are crazy

and

that was his first visit and his second visit he gets a giant statue that looks like someone's grandmother so i i feel like it's a love-hate relationship that he has with calcutta that's leaning more towards hate now andy

are there any you know more statues of uh international football stars planned uh planned by calcutta well you know uh i mean sudden sudden footballers will pop up in india uh mumbai where i live there is a giant real estate project coming up called the Zinadin Zidan Project.

And it's just a bunch of high-rises, and it just says, buy a flat and be like Zidane.

And

I don't quite know what's going on in India with international footballers, but it seems like we're carving some out of stone and making them look like grandmothers.

And in other places, we're selling flats and then claiming that if you live in them, you'll become like a bald French Moroccan legend.

I don't know what's happening in India, Andy.

Well, to back this up, we will now have a special bugle feature section on great Indian footballers of the world game.

That concludes that section of the bugle.

Andy, I have one more piece of Indian news, Andy.

It's reported in Scroll, which is an Indian news website, that a just um influenced by great British movies like Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and so on, a British couple have happily retired in India, in North India, and are running a donkey healthcare centre.

Um they're using their pensions and donations to help a large number of donkeys and people are really happy to have them there.

And somehow, Andy, I feel that, you know, with first the empire and all this stuff about, you know, Britain exploiting India for material wealth, and then the reverse of all these Indians moving to Britain and chicken tikka masala becoming your national dish.

After all these years, I think this particular incident is an apt end to empire, don't you think?

Everything is fused into this British couple happily retiring, running a donkey healthcare centre.

I think what started with the British East India Company in 1757 has now truly ended.

Yeah, history will judge this as

the final full stop on the British Imperial era.

An elderly couple with a bunch of recovering donkeys.

That's what it's all about.

That's what it was all building towards.

All it needs is for them to teach the donkeys how to play cricket, and I think that will just tie up all the loose ends

of empire.

That's the last piece, Andy.

The last piece.

And also in this, you know, the post-Brexit era, when we become this glorious new global, global, global nation with an incredible amount of

global globalism in Britain.

I can see all elderly British couples being forced legally to run donkey sanctuaries around the world because that's what we voted for.

I mean, it's not what we voted for.

We didn't know what we did vote for, so it may well turn out that we did vote for all British pensioners to be forced to run overseas donkey sanctuaries.

I mean, that's the problem having a

vague referendum like we did, as warned, in fact, by David Davis some 15 years ago in a rather entertaining speech that my sister retweeted on

Twitter today,

in which he was warning of all the pitfalls of

poorly conceived referendums.

But I think maybe that was the subplot.

The subplot was donkey couples everywhere.

So, what you're saying, Andy, is this is the impact assessment.

This is indeed the impact.

Were we to assess, this is what would happen.

Half a million donkeys around the developing world and a large number of British retirees gently stroking them.

Well, I mean if that is not a vision for a better utopian future, I don't know what is

in other exciting British Empire news Britain has a new tallest mountain.

This is hugely exciting news, Anuvab.

It turns out we are in fact an enormously mountainous country.

Because, I mean, I know in India you've got, you know you've got your Himalayas which you know topping 8,000 meters in height but we in Britain now have something even taller at 3,239 meters Mount Hope which is situated in the part of the Antarctic claimed by the UK it's been remeasured and found to be 379 meters higher than people have thought previously, which means it's overtaken the previous highest British mountain, Mount Jackson, also on Antarctica at 3,184, way ahead of Ben Nevish, the tallest British mountain that's actually in Britain, which is down at, I think, about

1,300 meters.

Also, now, I mean, you might quibble and say,

you know, these clearly aren't in Britain.

They are in Antarctica, which is not Britain.

But I would say, as a nation, we've been open-minded enough to get behind

southern hemisphere sports stars who've chosen to play under our flag of convenience.

So I'm prepared to get behind a a southern hemisphere mountain that is proudly waving the British flag.

Yeah, I mean, look, you guys discovered Mount Everest in the Himalayas, tallest mountain in the world, 8,848 meters.

Now you're stuck at home, you're not leaving Britain for whatever reason, and you're looking around at your mountains and you've got 3,239 meters.

So 100 years ago, you guys had a mountain that was 5,609 meters higher than your current highest mountain.

So that is why I think hope is the apt name for that mountain, Andy.

I think

hope is the only word you've got to make up for the 5,609 meter differential of what you once had and what you have today.

Well, bearing in mind that a month ago it was 379 meters shorter than it is now, then it's going to overtake Mount Everest by this time next year.

So, yeah, well, you may be eating your words with your mountain superiority on behalf of the continent of Asia.

Now, on the negative side, what I do worry about is, you know, the friction this will cause between Mount Hope and Mount Jackson, which has now been displaced and is now only humble second highest mountain, and all those kids with Mount Jackson posters are going to have to take them down off their bedroom walls.

But I mean, is this what we really need at this time of national division?

When we're tearing ourselves apart over Brexit, we really need two mountains arguing over who's got the biggest dick.

Sorry, Peak.

Do we need this?

We need to come together as one unified nation and make sure all British mountains are exactly the same size.

Secondly, the exciting news is we still have an empire, Anuvab.

You might have said it's ended with a donkey sanctuary, but we've still got a bit of Antarctica.

And it's always nice to have a bit of Antarctica up your sleeve with global warming tootling along nicely.

The land value of that sweet little nest egg is only going to go up and up and up.

And thirdly, and most importantly, go Team GB.

What a mountain.

A mountain so British that it has swelled with national pride to become 400 meters biglier than it was before.

That is what we can achieve as a nation, Anufab.

Have you seen any German or Spanish mountains growing since we voted for Brexit?

Bullshit, you have.

Get it.

There's the highest mountain in the world for my money, Mount Hope, and I don't care what the stats say.

That is a terrific, British mountain, the greatest mountain you could ever wish to meet.

It encapsulates the tough, unquenchable spirit of this nation.

It's been standing, freezing its mountainous kahunas off for hundreds, if not trillions of years in Antarctica.

But it didn't give up, and it didn't make a fuss when people didn't give it full credit for how fing tall it is.

That's the kind of never-say-die attitude that saw us through the blitz.

Other, less British mountains would have just given up, or melted, or collapsed, and become shitty little hills.

But Mount Hope, infused with the very breath of the Queen herself, has stood up to the vicissitudes of fate, has not given in to the terrorists, and hasn't sold out and become a ski resort like all the greedy French mountains.

This is one of the greatest days in British history that we now have the tallest mountain in the world.

This is after the Battle of Britain.

This mountain inching uh an extra two, three hundred meters is probably one of the greatest achievements i i in in British history.

Uh I'm going to put it up there uh along with David Gower's team that that won the ashes in nineteen eighty five and the Battle of Britain.

Um it's it's both

as relevant and as important.

I would just like to posit one slight argument, not to not to you know not to

dampen the party here, but could it be could it be that this mountain is desperately working against gravity to get away from what's going on at your sea level?

It does not does not want to have anything to do with what's going on at the ground level.

It's probably concerned that it may get screwed based on how Brett will fall.

So it's just trying to get to a higher stratosphere so it doesn't have to deal with the rubbish on the ground.

Could that be ending?

That that could be but that is you know deeply deeply unpatriotic.

And at this side, you know, just even questioning that mountain, that makes you a traitor to the entire universe.

I apologise on behalf of the Commonwealth, Andy.

I apologise.

Apology accepted.

Oh, it's Advent calendar time again, the 19th of December.

The British NHS now advises that you do not follow the old tradition of putting coins in your Christmas pudding.

They now advise that instead of putting a piece of physical coinage in the fruity, boozeadled Stodgefest festive dessert, you simply take a mouthful and then wave your contactless bank card in front of your face.

20th of December.

The baby Jesus famously was already quite old by the time he was born, as discussed on Bugle's Passium and illustrated in most medieval paintings of the Nativity scene.

The Christ child popped out clean as a whistle, not covered in any of the birthic goo that afflicts so many non-divine human babies, and looking like a 28-year-old accountant.

Theologians believe that the reason for this is that God wanted a son who was already toilet trained, as he really didn't fancy the nitty-gritty of hands-on parenting.

Certainly not after the clean-up job he had to do on Noah's Ark.

21st of December.

Santa Claus has never made a year-on-year profit.

His takings from reselling cheap alcohol he decants from what's left by people's fireplaces, plus occasional thefts of trinkets from people's mantelpieces, do not come close to covering his overheads.

In fact, he's never even paid a penny of tax.

And 22nd of December did not even exist until relatively recently.

The 22nd of December.

Previously, December went straight from the 21st to the 23rd, but Queen Victoria got stroppy at her children being uncontrollably excited before Christmas and making the Windsor Castle Christmas tree fall over when messing about with the decorations that she added an extra calming down day as punishment.

And that day remains to this day.

Your emails now and this came from someone called Andy who writes Andy this is Andy.

Hello.

I would like to think that we are both the same being, just living in different parallel times.

Would you really like to think that?

Anyway, after listening to this week's Bugle, I would think it is a great idea to do a swear-a-thon podcast where different members of the community swear as long as they can in their native or non-native language

with donations for every 10 seconds of swearing.

Profits could then be donated to a charity of the Bugle's choosing.

Well, I mean,

this could be one of the great new charitable movements.

We obviously had, you know, comic relief, sport relief,

swear relief.

I would hope the Queen would get involved with her swear obics, as discussed on previous bugles.

This could be a thing, Andy.

Profanity for poverty.

Or it could have a thing.

That's right.

Do keep your emails coming in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

Well, that concludes this week's Bugle.

If you want to hear more about the cricket, do tune in, if you can indeed tune into a podcast, to The unbelievable ashes which I'm doing for ABC in Australia available on the internet for example

and thanks once again to Anavab for joining us from India I guess you'll be back in the new year that is correct Andy that is correct

you know I will be back in in March in London doing some shows where hopefully everything about Brexit would be decided Yes, it'll all be fine by then.

We'll all just be dancing in the streets and bunting each other.

What what do you do for New Year in India?

Are there any any particular

excitements on the horizon?

Well, if you remember, Andy, last year our Prime Minister took away all the currency.

And

that tended to reduce the celebration.

There was a rumor last week, Andy, that there's a high risk of a lot of bank failure in India.

So there was a there was a rumor floating around that banks may also take away your deposit.

Any deposit you put in the bank may be invalid.

So I think every new year in India, I think collectively, a billion of us just pray that we don't lose all our money.

I think that is our celebration.

It's better than fireworks.

Until next week, goodbye.

Hi, buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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

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

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