Bonus Bugle: Australian marriage equality

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle issue 4050 sub-episode A for Ashes.

I am Andy Zoltzmann and on this week's free bonus, non-full, sub-extra bonus, bonus bugle, we will bring you some more choice morsels from November's Bugle Live Show in London, some classic sporting moments from the Bugle Archives, a look back to what was happening on this planet 10 years ago this week, and a taste of my Ashes Cricket podcast, The Unbelievable Ashes, with the excellent Felicity Ward.

But first, a quick note to make you all aware of two stories of which I am now, thanks to you, fully aware.

Huge gratitude to the literally billions of you who have taken it upon yourself to inverify me of them.

Story one, a US Navy warplane drew a giant sky penis in the sky over Washington State.

Now, clearly this is a story that demands full pupil consideration.

According to the US Navy, the actions of this air crew are wholly unacceptable and antithetical to Navy core values.

Bullshit, US Navy!

Bullshit!

You need to update those core values because for too long our beleaguered species has been trapped in an endless cycle of violence, industrialised, military, vengeful, boom-boom, bombasticism that has brought misery to millions.

If all future geopolitical squabblings and squibblings could be resolved by resorting instead to schoolboy level sky graffiti, So much the better for this planet and its many varied inhabitants.

If the British military, for example, had only flown warplanes over France in the early nineteenth century, leaving vapor trails saying Napoleon et un loser massif, avec un dingeling, vrémont minuscule, and drawing a picture of the French leader covering up his renownedly tiny manhood, well, the hat wearing, warmongering Russian winter cockerly underestimating Ninkampoop would have been fatally undermined politically.

Europe would have learned to get along, neither World War would have happened, and of course we'd have never voted for Brexit.

Besides, the skill and precision required to execute an aerial cock and balls with a fighter jet are surely precisely within the core values of the US Navy.

Or maybe they wanted more detail.

Is this the problem?

I mean in a battle situation if you've proved that you can lay out a cock and balls plus the added vapor trail details of testicular follicularisms and aerojected ejaculatorial globulars, well then in a combat situation, not even the Red Baron himself could scare you.

Admittedly, for the sake of gender equality, ideally, those who carved this vapor trail into the sky would also have carved a similar vapor trail depicting a lady's gagrooch, but still, we can't demand everything.

This kind of thing, this kind of clampdown on this supreme act of aerial creativity, is why America voted for Trump.

Because ordinary Americans have been prevented by the liberal media from doing ordinary American things like training for years to become a US Navy pilot and then drawing a giant vapor trail penis in the sky.

We've brought this very much upon ourselves.

Story two, of which many of you have made me aware and indeed the news made me aware, a Eurostar train was delayed in Belgium by a fire in a waffle factory.

Now if there is anyone out there who has not yet tweeted this story to me or emailed it or Facebook shared it or whatever you do on Facebook, then I assume you are in some kind of medically induced coma.

We've even had about eighteen tons of surface mail on the subject.

I mean that's a lie but obviously when a story involves the two trigger words Belgium and waffles then it has the full undivided attention of all true buglers especially when it involved Belgium waffles and the disruption of international transport links.

Surely the plot of all future feature films.

Anyway we may address these two globally relevant stories in further detail in the next full bugle.

So it is time now to get stuck into this sub-episode before you all run off and feverishly book loads and loads and loads of tickets to my Soho Theatre Show, 2017: The Certifiable History, running from the 18th of December to the 6th of January, with a few days off, as presents for yourself, yourselves, and all of your family and/or friends.

So, time to go back in time to kick off this sub-bugle, a week and a half back in time to be precise, to the live show at the Leicester Square Theatre with Nish Kumar and Alice Fraser.

But Muggaby's not the only lunatic leader in the news this week.

We've seen some quality action coming from the Philippines.

Yeah, it's a budding bromance between two of the world's great shitbags.

There they are.

It looks like a very weird remake of Dude, Where's My Car?

Duterte and Trump.

It's not surprising that they got along because Duterte was described as the Trump of the East.

And much like the YouTube commentator who described John Oliver as a rich man's niche comar, that managers could be insulting to both parties.

That's bullshit.

I think he's amazing.

He came out and sang a love song for Donald Trump.

Can you just repeat that, please?

Can you just

repeat those words that should not have happened?

So he was at an official event.

He stood up.

His quote was, ladies and gentlemen, I sang uninvited upon the orders of the Commanders-in-Chief of the United States and then just broke into song.

I don't know the song personally, but I like to think it begins, at first I was afraid I was petrified.

Well, apparently, the words translate as, you are the light in my world, a half of this heart of mine.

I mean, that's

those are not words you should use about Donald Trump, unless that light is coal-fired.

I was just gonna, what I want to do is lure all the strongman performance politicians into a new X-Factor-style sing-off.

And they get to compete in an arena playoff.

I don't care if the Russians fix the vote, like it'll just be

the future for the United States.

That's the hairstyle and hairstyle.

That's the.

Cheops, Cheops Pyramid, originally, do you know the origin of the term Cheops?

It was sponsored by Cheops, the third millennium BC banking software company, originally checkerboard operations, of course.

Then by Khufu, the second millennium BC hieroglyph generating mobile phone app.

Building pyramids, here's a fact, was cited as a reason for divorce in up to 83% of failed marriages in ancient Egypt.

Hieroglyphs discovered in a Giza solicitor's office from 3,000 years ago include phrases such as: if he'd spent as much time and money on me and the kids as he did to planning his pyramid, I might not have ended up sleeping with Ken.

Right, it's how are we doing for time, Chris?

Really badly, actually.

Really badly.

Oh, yeah, we're supposed to be finished in minus eight minutes.

Oh, minus nine.

Carry on.

We did start slightly late due to the unstoppable march of time

and Stuart Lee.

That is actually Stuart Lee's wrestling name.

So

what's what?

I thought we should touch on Australian marriage equality.

Yes, I mean this has happened.

We had a postal vote, an entirely ill-advised, non-binding postal vote, and it's gone through and Tony Abbott is taking the credit.

How is he taking the credit?

Well, he started the postal vote and

spoke very openly against gay marriage despite having a gay sister and now he's sort of backpedaling

with the rapidity of a Lance Armstrong.

Is that not a bit like Hitler taking credit for the end of the Second World War?

Fair's fair, couldn't end without me starting it.

Yes, I will have that shoved up my ass.

Thank you.

I mean,

it's all happening.

The gay marriage thing is catching.

Senior government minister Christopher Pine has blamed a hacker making

mischief off the plebiscite for a roguelike on his Twitter profile, which was discovered early in the morning as celebrations over Wednesday's historic vote for same-sex marriage wore on into the morning.

About two a.m.

the profile liked a tweet linking to a video showing explicit gay porn.

Just getting into the spirit of the thing.

There's a but my favourite I mean obviously this is objectively good news in the end, regardless of the fact that the poll was started on not ideal grounds, it's objectively good news and it's also objectively good news because of these two people, Nick and Sarah Jensen, who in 2015 said that they would get a divorce if same-sex marriage would was ever passed but now they need a lot of legal help because it turns out that they can't get a divorce because they need to show reasonable grounds for a divorce and throwing your toys out of a pram because some people got basic human rights is not reasonable grounds

When I read this story, it was genuinely heartwarming.

You know, just when you think love is dead, it's genuinely heartwarming to know that two complete cunts can find each other.

Like that?

So lovely.

Well, we saw that with

the Gaddafi

pictures.

And Duterte and Trump.

If anything, it's the theme of the week.

And we go.

Cunts finding.

Good luck with that episode title, Chris.

It's funny because I thought finding c was what the whole thing was against.

Indeed, boom.

If you enjoyed that and last week's show, there are more Leicester Square live bugles on Thursday the 18th of January and 22nd of February.

Details on the internet or from random passers-by in the street.

Time now in this this Ashes beginning week to concentrate on something even more important than Penis in the Sky.

That's Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' finest duet in my book, which admittedly is not necessarily a book you should rely on for historical veracity.

Something even more important than Belgium living up to every stereotypical dream.

It's many admirers and waffle fans around the world had of it.

Something even more important than the world itself, and that, of course, is cricket.

As many of you will know, particularly those who are fans of the universe's greatest thing, test-match cricket, the Ashes.

England against Australia in five five-day cricket matches over seven weeks began in Brisbane, Australia last week.

The now 140-year-old Anglo-Australia cricketing rivalry eternified in the form of a tiny, tiny, tiny little trophy containing the remnants of someone's barbecue from 1883, essentially.

Now, as I record, this is Sunday evening, UK time, England have skilfully turned what had begun as a grippingly tense, taut, close-fought struggle for supremacy, which shifted one way, then the other over three and a half days of absorbing competition into being on the verge of another numbingly humiliating and crushingly inevitable defeat.

We are very, very good at that.

Over the next few weeks I'm doing a cricket podcast covering the ashes for ABC Radio in Australia, produced by the renowned Bugle SKP and Northern Hemisphere quitter Tom Wright and featuring Felicity Ward, the outstanding Australian comedian.

To give you a taste, here are some of last week's episode one recorded before the actual cricket bit of the cricket had begun.

It should hopefully appeal to cricket fans and non-cricket fans alike.

Well, maybe not quite alike, but the point stands.

Felicity, how excited are you as the Ashes is about to get underway?

Well, I was reading an article written by Jason Gillespie this morning and started to cry as he described walking up through the tunnel and then being blinded by the light.

Was that about cricket?

It was that just a personal spiritual journey.

Yeah, that's right.

He had a dark time, you know, after the selectors dropped him.

And

no, but he was talking about Joe Root and Steve Smith.

And this is the quote that I think needs some airtime, talking about them being baby faced.

You don't get to that level of the game without having a bit of shit about you.

And that is in The Guardian today.

That's the level of journalism that you deserve.

Felicity, one of the most important things as a cricket fan, particularly an English or Australian cricket fan coming to the ashes, is to be as pessimistic as possible about the prospects of your side.

And I, you know, learnt this through bitter experience between the years 1989 and 2003.

So what are the reasons that you think Australia are definitely going to lose this series?

Oh I mean there's a lot but okay number one our team's success in any form is entirely dependent on the success of the long-running soap opera Neighbours.

Right.

Now hear me out, not because you look angry so much as bored, eyes are up here.

Okay think about it Neighbours starts in the mid 80s.

No one takes it seriously.

It gets moved channel to channel.

Then the end of the 80s Scott and Charlene get married and 20 million viewers all of a sudden tune in and are on the neighbours train.

About which time Alan Border, a young scally wag with anger issues, is revenge f ⁇ ing his team back into existence via the medium of cricket.

I can't believe they're letting me say that.

Then the early 90s, Australia starts making some waves, getting some solid progression.

We beat the West Indies for the first time in 25 years and so on.

Then we hit 1997, the year Steve Waugh becomes one day international captain and the year Dr.

Carl Kennedy starts cheating on Susan with Sarah Beaumont, arguably the rebirth of international obsession with neighbours, the heyday of both we will regale and recall for decades to come.

Next decade, glorious.

Australia is setting record after record.

Toadfish continues to date and marry many incredible women despite being called Toadfish.

Then 2009 hits.

Things are very shaky for neighbours.

Numbers and interest dropping well off and England achieve its first ashes win win at Lords since 1934.

Final nail in the coffin, 2011.

England win the ashes 3-1 and Neighbours gets moved from the main station Network 10 to their digital channel.

Right.

I mean it's very hard to argue with the history

of science.

It's not with science actually.

It's scientific overall.

A little bit of respect.

Right.

Sorry.

Sorry, Felicity.

Thank you.

Free ashes, verbal war news now, and as always, there has been a war of words, the best kind of war in my book.

Why can't all wars be wars of words?

Particularly worked well for Britain versus Australia.

Shakespeare versus Daphne from Neighbours, no contest.

Trash talking has been

an intrinsic part of the Ashes build-up, really since the 1894-95 tour when England captain Andrew Stoddart called his Australian counterpart Harry Trott a querulous pumpkin and Trott hit back by calling Stoddart a bilgeous rap scallion.

But this time

England have not really indulged much.

I'm not sure they've quite got the characters in the team for that, or at least the characters are currently engaged in certain police investigations.

But Nathan Lyon

has stepped up to the gobby plate, put in his bid for the 21st century's least intimidating gobshite.

It's very hard to be scared of Nathan Orion.

He's a very, very fine bowler.

He burns bread.

Yes, well, exactly.

He caused a professional cricket match to be delayed due to misuse of a toaster.

Burnt toast.

And you know what he said?

He said, oh, I reckon this happens once a fortnight at home.

If you are burning bread every fortnight, maybe your time with toast is done.

Like, give that man an avocado and a plastic spoon because he can't be trusted.

You know, like,

he's done that.

He's stopped play and then he's come out as this big, tough guy.

Like, one of the things what he said was being part of that 2013 squad seeing mitchell johnson scare them was unbelievable we knew they were broken hopefully we can recreate history well let's hope it's not 2015 we recreate accidentally well how about what we lost in 2010 or 2009 or 2005 like it's just you missed out 2013 there in england so i don't want to miss out any of the england victories

And you can subscribe to the Unbelievable Ashes using the internet.

Well, it is not looking very good for England right now.

Defeat seems inevitable.

But as an English cricket fan with three and a half decades' experience of watching England, if there is one profound adversity in life that I've learned through bitter experience to tolerate, and there is a maximum of one profound adversity in life I've learned to tolerate, it is England losing cricket matches.

This they also did with impressive skill, imagination and regularity at the Cricket World Cup back in 2011, held in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

I went out to the Cricket World Cup for ESBN CrickInfo.

It was my first trip to Asia as a pup cricket reporter at the tender age of thirty-six.

And I began in Bangladesh.

So here is my bugle travel guide to some of the places I've been so far.

Dubai.

As discussed previously in this esteemed journalistic organ that is the bugle, Dubai is a silly place.

The world's biggest and most expensive toy.

The highlight of Dubai, other than the departure lounge at the airport, was the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest and fing stupidest building.

And John, it is properly staggering.

It is majestic, physics-defying, a half-mile-high shard of pure economic cock and architectural wang, flopped into the table of humanity to the sound of oil-rich billionaires saying, what do you think of this, my dears?

It is a startling marvel of engineering, a thing of sky-popping, ice-scraping beauty in its own way, a honkingly amplified f you to the concept of impossibility, a pajul's middle finger glittering defiantly in the face of gravity, necessity, and reason, a statement that there is nothing that is beyond the reach of humanity if...

If the part of humanity making it is prepared to spend billions of dollars it doesn't have on something it doesn't need while shafting other parts of humanity hard and persistently in the ass with a solid gold truncheon.

As Albert Fizwiz Einstein himself said, you cannot put a lead on a headless dog.

Sorry, that's the wrong quote.

The author says, an ostrich in a catapult is not the same as a helicopter.

No, sorry, that was Thomas Edison.

But anyway, Einstein said that the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

And if he'd been to see the Birds Khalifa, and if he'd seen, like I did last week in Dubai, two ice hockey teams full of Russians playing each other in a game in a shopping mall in a desert, if he'd seen a hotel with a helipad where a room for a night could feed a village for a year, he'd be patting himself on his back with his magic test tube saying, Nice one, Albert, you have hit that nail, bang on the bonce.

Now Dhaka, next, John.

No one would mistake Dhaka for Paris.

It doesn't have quite the same array of sheet designer clothes outlets.

No one would mistake Dhaka for Los Angeles.

Its film industry is much less prominent.

And even fewer people would mistake Dhaka for Dubai.

Dubai, a place with about as much soul as a bombed-out Kabul fishmonger.

Dhaka, a ceaseless wave of humanity clinging to the precipice of viability with its triumphs and tragedies bustling together.

And last week, John, it was going stark bonkers crazy for cricket.

And the World Cup began in Dhaka last Saturday.

There was an opening ceremony featuring, well, can you guess who it featured, John?

I mean, who would you obviously book?

for the opening ceremony of a cricket tournament in Bangladesh.

There's only one person, Andy, and her name name is Tina Turner.

Wrong, it's Brian Adams.

Close.

But, you know, it's all about cricket in Bangladesh.

You have to play.

If you play Summer of 69 backwards, it's basically a peeing to the Bangladesh Test Captain Habibal Bashar, who is retired now.

And going from Dubai to Dhaka is like playing consecutive frames of snooker against Kim Kardashian and Mother Tariva.

So it was an eye-opening experience.

More sport now and in just over two months time the 2018 Winter Olympics will take place on the Korean Peninsula.

I can't remember offhand which half of the Korean Peninsula, the northy bit or the southerny bits.

If you're going, I'd probably check that first.

It might make a difference to what you pack and how long you intend to be away.

I'll confirm it before the Olympics begins.

But time now for a quick look back to some of the highlights from the last Winter Games, as reported exclusively on the Bugle.

They took place in Russia in 2014.

And as the ice dance reaches its denouement, still in the lead, the Canadian pair, Paul Wodge and Jeanette Mayhem.

And what a routine that was.

Who says you cannot win an Olympic ice dance medal as two halves of a pantomime horse?

And you have to say, they danced quite beautifully to the aria from Mozart's Jack and the Beanstalk.

But now, to challenge them, coming onto this, oh, so very Russian ice, it's the hotly fancied South African pair, Skalkina van der Jaap and Warty Horscock in fourth place after the prancing around sticking your asses out of the judges' phase.

Now it's the free dance, always a strength of this pair and they've gone for another controversial choice of music, Skalkina and Warti,

the chart-topping 2013 hits by the American porn funk pioneers, Turbine and the Grinder.

It's their number one single, Dangler Danger.

I'm going to put my

in your ear

And let's see how this music works out for them.

Here they go.

That is unquestionably a very vigorous start.

And, well, that is an extremely unorthodox move for this date of the Olympic Ice Dance programme.

Can't quite imagine Torvalandine trying to pull that one off.

And...

Oh, that's too graphic.

That is too...

Look, it might score high for technical merit.

In fact, it should score very high indeed.

That is a quite extraordinary angle.

But now while some of the judges are turning away whilst others are leaning in for a closer view, this is a real opinion splitter.

And well I guess you cannot dispute the fact that they have interpreted this music extremely literally.

Welcome to the first ever Olympic downhill curling event and as you join us here, it's Garyla Slopchenko of the Ukraine with the final stone of the 14th end.

She sets it off now down the icy slope.

And

yes, that's another one bouncing into the crowd at the bottom.

The rapidly decreasing crowd.

Still nil-nil.

Contention for a podium finish.

Olympic principles in the middle ring.

Time for the qualifying round of the ice dressage.

And there there are some very, very agitated looking horses out there after this morning's practice round.

Very agitated indeed.

And the only thing one can say about this event is there is a reason that horses do not live on icebergs.

A very good reason.

So the excitement is palpatable here at the ski jump hill as for the first time in the history of Winter Olympic ski jumping motorbikes will be heard.

And here comes Italy's Francella Plottogrotti on her trademark Kawasaki 350.

Good speed down the ramp from Francella and up she goes through the flaming ring of fire.

Oh, one bus, two bus, three bus, I think six buses.

Casinella landing.

Well, it was a brave effort and the judges will look favourably on that.

So tough to land in the last competitors' ambulance tracks.

That was a super effort.

And America's favorite Enid Knievel is going to have to pull out all the stops to beat that.

And this venue has seen some spectacular action in the last two weeks, particularly in the new big hill husky sled jumping what an event that is and put it this way there are some vets in sochi who are enjoying a very profitable games

and there will be further exclusive coverage of the winter olympics next year on the bugle well that brings us towards the end of this sub-bugle i do hope you've enjoyed the various offerings within don't forget my radio 4 philosophy series exploring the wonders of various branches of ancient philosophy entitled my life as a dot dot dot dot, is available on the BBC website.

The first two episodes have covered the Stoics and the Epicureans.

The final episode in this coming week is The Cynics.

Please do listen to that, carve the transcript into a stone slab, haul it onto a bus, and recite it at a confused stranger.

Anything that helps get it out there.

We will be back next week with Bugle issue 4051, including part one of the 2017 Bugle Advent Calendar.

Until then, book your tickets to my shows, please.

I've got a UK tour coming up after the new year as well.

More on that soon.

Until next time, goodbye

hi buglers it's producer Chris here I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now quite simply it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything so please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.