Bugle 4050 – Bad Boys

Welcome, welcome to the Bugle Live.

Welcome to the Leicester Square Theatre

here in the beating heart of London's glamorous London area.

This is the Bugle Live, Thursday, the 16th of November 2017.

Later on in today's show, we'll be finding out what happens when you try to juggle chainsaws blindfolded.

Turns out it makes a big difference whether or not you have them switched on.

And we'll also be examining the rights and wrongs of attempting to resuscitate pharaohs from their sarcophaguses just to see the looks on their little beardy faces.

And we will also be asking why in general.

And once again, we will be bringing you exclusive coverage of everything that's happened on planet Earth, as well as tips on hair.

Leave it well alone.

Make up.

Always make things up.

And how to avoid javelins.

And the key is: don't invade Greece in about 480 BC.

So, this is doubling up as Bugle 4050.

And we're recording Thursday, the 16th of November, 2017.

Very special day for everyone here today and listening at home, because the 16th of November, ladies and gentlemen, as I'm sure you don't need me to tell you, is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

There are 58 of them in every 400 years.

Than on a Saturday or Sunday, it's only 57.

But of course, the rarest of the days to have a 16th of November on Tuesday and Thursday, just 56 every 400 years.

And yet, here we are on this rarest,

rarest of all 16ths of Novembers.

Today, as of course, all God-fearing subjects of the universe know, is the feast day of, ladies and gentlemen,

Hugh of Lincoln.

Correct, it isn't Hugh of Lincoln.

Slightly surprised you knew that.

Who died on this day in the year?

I knew this wasn't going to work.

What?

Who died on this day in the year?

1220!

1220, yeah, you're very, very good.

And of course, he was the patron saint of...

Beatboxing!

No, no, no, he wasn't the patron saint of beatboxing.

Try again.

He was the patron saint of

Sex dungeons.

No, I don't think that's on his official list.

One more go.

The patron saint of

Swans, correct.

Yes, he was the patron saint of swans.

Let's have a look at him, Chris.

Here he is.

There we see Hugh.

That is St.

Hugh with a cheeky little swan down there.

For our viewers watching only with their ears at home, this is he's got a swan.

He's got the regulation saintly frisbee stuck to his head there, the saint golden frisbee that all saints have.

That's how you can tell a saint

or a child with an aggressive sibling.

And he's holding, as you can see here, St.

Hugh is holding what can only be described as a cup full of Jesus.

And it's a...

A golden goblet with the infant Christ in.

What I want to know is, is St.

Hugh using Jesus as a f ⁇ ing cocktail stick?

And if so,

what the f ⁇ does that turn his cocktail into?

I guess merch is merch.

And to mark this historic day, the feast day of St.

Hugh of Lincoln,

we have a special swans quiz.

You have to tell me, ladies and gentlemen, which of the following facts about swans is the least false?

Is it fact one, bagpipes were invented when a Scottish monk in the year 783 AD was caught lustfully French kissing a swan and then hastily pretended he was doing music practice by squeezing the swan until it cried?

Is it fact two?

The queen is constitutionally allowed to use a pair of swans as magic shoes to walk across a lake?

Is it fact three?

The average length of a swan's neck is three centimetres.

What we think of as their necks are in fact fact, periscopes with a fake head on.

Or is it fact four?

St.

Hugh of Lincoln employed an aggressively violent guard swan as his bodyguard.

The swan would honk at anyone who came near Hugh of Lincoln using phrases such as, Chris.

Got the translations here.

That meant f you, buddy.

Also, this.

That means clear clear off, you obvious shitheads.

And

swan phrase three:

Oi, you non-swan schmuck, hands off my Huey, or I will beat you in the balls, Capish.

If you so much as look at him, you short-necked bastard, I will personally feather honk you into the middle of next week.

This is Hugh of Lincoln we're talking about.

You f.

Bit of sophisticated swan satire there for you, ladies and gentlemen.

As always, ladies and gentlemen, a section of this audio live newspaper is going straight.

I can't hear you, it's going straight

in the what?

Correct, in the bin.

This week, a pyramids section going straight.

Not top story, Chris, it's in the f ⁇ ing bin, mate.

Yeah, I'm having one or two technical errors over here.

Do you just carry on and assume it's all fine?

Yeah, good point.

Tell it like it is.

This week's section in the bin, a special pyramids feature section.

Now,

any archaeology fans in might have seen that they've discovered a big void in the great pyramid at Giza, the last resting place of Pharaoh Khufu.

Got any Khufu fans in?

That's a surprise.

You doubled up with a little stint at the British Museum and are you come down here for day out later?

Right, yeah, it's about time someone put that in his place.

I'm sorry, they already did that four and a half thousand years ago.

Anyway, they

quite literally put it in his place.

They discovered

a new cavity in the Great Pyramids.

They'd already discovered one previously.

It was 47 meters long and 8 meters high.

And that's only one explanation for that.

Cricket net with a bowling machine.

So that's an easy mistake to make as an amateur historian to project your values onto times gone by.

That's a very dangerous thing to do.

So, what could this new void be for?

Archaeologists say it's probably just a matter of architectural necessity, but that seems unlikely to me.

I reckon man cave,

five TV screens for the dead pharaoh, beer fridge, pool table, juke box, pinball machine, somewhere to just chill out for those long stretches when just

lying dead in a pyramid gets a little bit dull.

And in the bin this week, we've got a pyramid fat box, Khufu's pyramid, also known as Cheops Pyramids, the Great Pyramid of Giza, also known as the 140-meter-high, pointy, pimped-up coffin.

Some facts about that coffin for you.

Fact one: if the Great Pyramid of Giza had been built upside down, it would have fallen over by now.

Khufu's pyramid held the world record for the world's tallest human-made structure for a cool 3,800 years.

Sadly, no, it's now well down the list, and it's not looking good either for getting back on that podium.

It's going to have to grow by 700 meters to overtake the Burj Khalifa.

And the most a pyramid has ever grown in the last thousand years is, I'm afraid, 600 meters, and that was very briefly.

Also, in the bin, it's

it's World Philosophy Day today.

Who's done some philosophy today?

Yeah, what bit of philosophy did.

Chris, you need to find out what bit of philosophy.

Where's the.

Where is he?

Where is he?

Right at the back there.

We've planned this badly.

Excuse me.

So, what philosophy have you done there, mate?

The distinction between the self and the society as a whole.

The distinction between the self and society as a whole.

Right.

And

and what's

what what's what's your conclusion that yourself is just you and society whole is lots of other people too?

Is that clear?

In particular the question of what is the difference between happiness and contentment?

I don't know.

What is the difference between happiness and contentment?

Well

classic setup.

We consider that happiness may be a more childish and less sophisticated value whereas contentment is more mature and considered.

I'm happy with that.

Okay.

Alright, it's time to meet our guests for today's bugle.

Chris already on stage.

Here, the producer who holds the all-time universe record for most episodes of The Bugle produced.

The man who twiddles knobs for a living.

That's a Jilly Cooper novel as well.

But it's time now to meet our two defendant contestants, guests.

Sorry.

Hello.

And today is International Day for Tolerance, as well as philosophy.

But to mark International Tolerance Day, I'm delighted to announce that tonight's guests I'm tolerating are a woman and a man of Asian descent.

You cannot get more tolerance than that, surely.

Please welcome all the way from the hemisphere that's produced such famous landmasses as Antarctica.

Back up to Britain to bring her unique brand of Australia Buddhist Catholic Jewish wit and wisdom to the northern half of of the planet.

It is Alice Fraser!

I'm regretting ever having said anything mean about the flamingos because the bugle audience keeps sending me pictures of flamingos.

I'm wishing I'd said something like, oh, I hate cute babies, turtles, and tea, and then I'd get a plethora of the things I like.

But, you know,

hatred is its own reward.

And now, to join us, the man who stirs the hot peppers of political humour into the chilly concarni of current affairs,

the satirically barbaceous Scott Bonnet, the human jalapeno himself, Miss Kumar.

Miss, can you just explain for the

boys and girls at home exactly what is on this screen right now?

Well, look,

let's start right here.

So,

I mean,

first of all,

hello, Andy, Alice, and Chris, and hello, buglers.

Now, let's jump right in here.

A couple of weeks ago there was sort of Wikipedia sort of prang involving the bugle audience and myself where I sort of mentioned that

I have some younger cousins who did some serious damage to my Wikipedia page.

Unfortunately what I forgot was that is a red rag to about 250,000 bulls

stationed all over the world who defaced my Wikipedia page beyond recognition.

And one of the defacements involved the idea that I had presented a

talk show

called Nude with Nish,

where I, completely naked, interviewed Nigel Farage, Lily Allen and Steve Coogan and rated their anecdotes based on the response of my penis.

Now

what's happened here for the benefit of the listeners is that

I don't use the phrase inundated lightly, but I have been absolutely inundated with images of myself naked

and one is currently on the screen at the moment now let's a couple of the most important thing to note here is that

this is a doctored photo

really yeah

listen that is it that is a doctored photo but let me just say this it is a doctored photo but it is alarmingly accurate

I don't even know how that is possible.

I don't wish to give away too much of my mystique, but very few people have seen my naked body.

So I don't know quite how they've managed that.

Yeah, it's very, I mean, it's very concerning.

And Nigel Farage is sort of sat on the sofa looking at me, really, as he would do if he was faced with a nude Asian man.

Bit of fun, innit?

Also, let me just say this, high level of heckling.

I was standing back, I was standing at the side of the stage.

At most comedy gigs, the heckles are things like f off your shit, not the distinction between the self and society.

That is a very unusual heckle.

F ⁇ you, dish.

F ⁇ me!

F ⁇ you!

How's the Wikipedia defacement?

Is your page still locked?

My page is still locked.

Only Wikipedia administrators can get into that.

And as I've said that, I realise I should not have said that because

the odds of a bugler being a Wikipedia administrator are,

let's face it, a statistical inevitability.

When you're a group of people that heckle with the phrase the distinction between self and society, these are not the jocks of modern life.

One of these, and I do use the word advisorly,

is going

to absolutely get onto my page.

But because my page is locked, they've now spread it onto your page.

Oh, really?

And so I've been contacted by a gentleman called David Chikapaku on Twitter, who has alerted me to the fact that they doctored your page so that it said Andy Saltzman once played Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Variety performance

With Nish Kumar providing vocals on a rendition of My Neck, My Back.

Kumar also played the Mariba during the show.

I mean, I don't remember doing that, Andy, but it's possible.

It was one hell of a night, to be fair.

It's another classic outing for the chocolate boy and his Jew friend, as I believe.

And Double Act has been referred to.

that was a Rudyard Kipling story wasn't it

yeah it was the it was the working title of the jungle book not a lot of people know this

but Balou is actually Jewish his full name is Baloo Rabinowitz a lot of people don't know that

if you play the bare necessities backwards it's actually the Torah I think.

I think that's right.

The what?

Sorry.

I'm out of the loop.

It's been a while.

Right, it's time for our top story, Chris.

Top story this week.

And well, big Bobby Mugabe, the pin up boy of post-imperial economic mismanagement

and 53 time African snappy dresser of the the year, based on that photo, is currently enjoying a non-voluntary staycation of

spending some quality time with himself under house arrest.

Although his house, the official, I don't know if he's in the official presidential residence, but that is, of course, just around the corner from Harare Sports Club Cricket Ground, where of course Zimbabwe have played 177 international matches, including 34 tests.

So

what an exciting week for fans of 93-year-old dictators being being usurped.

Yeah, it's an absolutely huge week for old Bobby Muggs.

After 34 years of despotic rule, appalling hyperinflation, and one of the world's truly weird moustaches, 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 have 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 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 is so romantic you just want to f ⁇ at the first dance at 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?

He's left or right.

I'm slightly out of the loop with those things as well.

Well, but what now?

What do you think what's Mugabe going to do now?

It's hard to get a new career when you lose your job at 93, isn't it?

I reckon he can retrain in IT.

Well, you say that.

I mean, he does have some transferable skills.

He's an autocratic ruler.

He likes to get his own way.

He has no moral scruples.

He's unconcerned over the impact of his actions on those lower down the social and economic food chain.

And he's done some terrible things in the past.

So, yes, heading up a Silicon Valley tech firm does not

move.

Or the next president of America.

He's not, I mean, he's still officially head of state, I think, as we as we speak.

But if he ceases to be that, at 93, he is currently the oldest serving professional head of state.

And if he is fully officially deposed, that title would instead fall to the reigning 66-time United Kingdom non-executive figurehead of the year and still undisputed World Constitutional Neutrality Federation crown-wearing champion from London, England, and Windsor, England, and Sandringham, England, and Balmoral, Scotland, and anywhere anywhere there's a swan or a post box, I think.

It's Queen Elizabeth, the indefatigably incredible.

Those are what the two I's stand for after her name, by the way.

So that's we'll have a little set, we'll have a little sound of it.

Hang on,

there we go.

Silvio is back.

The

Italy's leading recording artist,

Silvio Berluscioni.

There he is, demonstrating a grip for the

Outswinger, I think.

He looks like someone fitted the reanimated corpse of Tutankhamun with a set of unconvincing elephant ivory dentures.

Just roar, just so stretched, so tight, so malicious.

He's like the horrendous STI that the Italian population just can't seem to get rid of

he's the king of sweaty ball sacks the Milanese maverick the Don Juan of Milan the Italian rap scallion the Duke of Dick the Guido del Libido

He's like one of those egg dolls that's heavy at the bottom and when you push it it just comes back not just because he's weirdly spherical but because he's really bottom heavy with an uncanny load of bullshit.

He's recovered from criminal and civil convictions as well as open heart surgery, which is both the only time his heart's been open and

was the only remaining part of his body that hadn't been cosmetically enhanced.

There is a man who's had a cosmetic scrotal lift, if I've ever seen one,

which I haven't.

He's just indestructible.

He had a four-year sentence for fraud.

It was commuted to one year of unpaid community service, which I assume he served in judging underage beauty pageants at local shopping malls as an unpaid breast inspector.

The reason they didn't send him to jail is because he's over 70, which is a generously low estimate of the age of someone who's clearly the embodiment of an ancient archetypal asshole.

It's the comeback nobody wanted to clean off their bed sheets.

Family show, Alice, family show.

It is a bit like all of the sexual misdemeanours that have been in the news were almost a challenge to him.

He read about one city and he was like, not on my watch, son.

Just getting the team back together for one last shot of the big sign.

By the team, I mean his Willie and his balls.

His controversies have their own Wikipedia page.

But he is that much of a shit that his misbehaviour is its own online entity.

I think Belsconi is to Trump what Mussolini was to Hitler, just like a thin film of skin and hair over like particle board mannequins made of crystallized human sweat and regret dreams.

Well I mean I couldn't yeah I couldn't I couldn't put it better myself.

One of his former ministers had said that he's sort of it is time away from the limelight, he's mellowed.

But then he came out and gave a speech speech, and this is a direct quote from one of the reporters at the scene, addressing the topic of immigration.

The 81-year-old proudly recounted the time his good friend, Munwa Gaddafi, took him on a tour of a migrant center during which Berlusconi noted the absence of B-days in the lavatory.

When the late Libyan dictator asked what the B-day was used for, Berlusconi emphasized the importance of washing before oral sex.

The billionaire's punchline, I taught the Africans about foreplay, had its desired effect drawing laughter and applause.

Now, I have a lot of questions here.

here.

Firstly, does Silvio Berlusconi consider washing to be foreplay?

Because that is not okay.

And secondly, that is not what a B-Day is for.

You can't, it's difficult to

become sexually aroused by going, hold on one second, I'm just going to wash myself in something people used to clean shit off their ass.

And also, it manages to be sexist, racist, offensive.

There was a name dropped for one of the other worst people of all time.

But this was perfect, Silvio.

This was like if Elvis had opened his 68 comeback special whilst playing hound dog in a pair of Bruce Wade's shoes at the same time.

Art news time now, and

well, fans of the world

art transfer market have had a sensational week.

Has anyone here bought a piece of art for 400 million pounds?

Yeah, well Tom.

It's been a great week for that.

Leonardo da Vinci smashed the world records.

So there's another classic team-up between Leonardo da Vinci and Jesus, one of his top models.

And

as you can see, holding

a bubble.

I don't know what a bit of glass?

Is that a crystal ball?

It's a metaphor for the art world.

Right.

As you can see.

That was received with more controversy than I'd anticipated, Chris.

I didn't realise the bugle had a huge Sotheby's contingent.

Jesus, the good-looking young European white man that he was, as we all know, he is demonstrating a grip for the off-cut of father in the outswinger there.

See,

fingers down the side of the seam.

There we go.

For those knots not in the room tonight.

Chris has superimposed the head of the 1990s, early 2000s Australian fast bowler, Jason Gillespie, on the head of Christ.

Which I believe means you're getting at least two-thirds of an eternity in hell.

I will see you there.

There's other alternative interpretations.

Some people think that, because you know these paintings were painted over, it was Jesus smoking a jetan

in an advert.

He was a good cricketer, actually, Jesus.

Was he?

Yeah, he was.

He took five for 17 for the Bethlehem Blasters against

the Jericho Snouts in 19 AD.

Rookie of the Year in the Holy Land Super League that year, of course, before quitting cricket to concentrate on messiahing,

magic tricks, homebrew, and endurance donkey racing.

It's such a shame Israeli cricket has really fallen off since then.

Or it could be Jesus casually flicking a V at a Roman policeman who'd accuse him of being messianic without a license.

And $450 million this went for, including fees.

My worry, though, is that

is this kind of transfer fee pricing ordinary people, ordinary families and kids, out of buying the works of old masters?

I mean, it's

used to be something you do on a Saturday afternoon, wouldn't it?

Where you

go with your parents, nip down the local auction house and

buy a masaccio or something

and still have change for a few points with the kids in the pub on the way home.

But today's young art fans, they're just going to grow up, you know, going to supporting their,

you know, they're just going to watch art documentaries on tele rather than actually going out there and buying

absolutely disgusting.

What happened to English art?

What happened to us supporting young English artists instead of importing this foreign nonsense over?

It's absolutely disgraceful.

Although I didn't realise that it was 400 million, that does mean this painting is technically worth four Neymars.

For two Neymars, wasn't he 200 million?

Was Neymar 200 million?

He was, yeah.

Don't bring lies to this show, Nick.

And also, if anything, go higher, not lower.

For fuck's sake.

Have I taught you nothing?

It was a truly historic auction.

The auctioneer accepted.

He paused just before making the enunciation of the final bid.

What?

Was that a f ⁇ ing pun?

Jesus, I mean, that guy, I am disgusted.

I did not know that puns were an airborne contagion.

Apparently

one of the other men in the room kept bidding to rent the painting and complaining that he wasn't allowed to rent the painting, but he was just a Mona Lisa.

What the actual f ⁇ ing shit is going on here?

What the f ⁇ is going on?

One of the other attendees was just a floating orb sent by a wizard to take a look at the painting until a rival wizard turned turned it into a snake.

It was the adoration of the mage eye.

This is worse than the passion of the Christ.

What you are doing to Jesus now is worse than what Mel Gibson did to him in that film.

He was guilty though, let's not be honest.

Never forget.

Never.

I always forget you were a creative consultant on that movie.

I imagine it was quite a tricky working relationship between you and Mel Gibson.

Oh, there's fing more!

Yeah!

Following the sale of the Da Vinci, other items were auctioned, including a tablet of ecstasy, allegedly the final piece of a collection of drugs owned by Liberace before his death.

It was the last upper.

I'm not sorry!

I'm not!

Have you finished?

Oh, that that was a bit of an uppity tone for you of all f ⁇ ing people to take, Saltzman.

Have we finished?

That's like Obi-Wan admonishing Luke for using his lightsaber in Dorsey.

Not clear who the buyer was at 340 million quid.

The bugle sadly had to drop out of the bidding when it went over

when it topped the 200 million mark.

It was either that or a nuclear deterrent.

And I know which way I'm going on that.

But you also worry that agents of some other big paintings are going to start agitating for transfers now and the

rumour is the Mona Lisa is getting unsettled at the Louvre.

Whilst here in London, Franz Halse's The Laughing Cavalier is reportedly phoning it in at the Wallace Collection.

And it does look inevitable they can't stop him getting his dream moved to the Prado Museum in Real Madrid.

And while Canova's Three Graces, the celebrity sculpture, works so well as a team, but now market forces are going to drive that apart.

Looks like Euphrozyni is joining a big money Chinese gallery.

whilst Anglaire is off to the Met in New York City to try and crack it on the Major League Sculpture Circuit.

And Failure is contemplating retiring to become a TV art pundit.

So

disappointing for me, the Three Graces.

Are you aware of the Three Graces as a sculpture?

Didn't really capture the sporting essence of any of the three cricket-playing brothers,

WGEM and GF Grace, who,

of course, made their debut for England in the same match in 1880.

They,

yeah, definitely, definitely lacked the beard.

What about the Chapel Brothers?

What about the Chapel Brothers?

Again, I cannot emphasise how fing weird these heckles are.

Listen, I understand that in context, this all makes sense, but you have to understand: this is a decade of performing.

There are many gigs in this room, and I'm not used to people shouting out, What about the Chapel Brothers?

In Men Behaving Badly news, famous and beloved comedian Louis C.K.

has been outed by a number of women for abusing his power in the latest series of scandals about men in power abusing their power, which reminds me of last Thursday and also every single day in history before that.

Look, it was a different time, which is to say before he got in trouble.

And the thing to remember

is that there are now literally millions of men literally shitting their pants and regretting every time they ever pushed it.

And I want to just put a message out there to all the people who I've seen on the internet who are like, no, what, we're not meant to hit on women anymore.

Won't the human race die out?

I say, look, if you can't get a woman to breed with you unless you look down her top or aggressively jerk off in front of her while you stand between her and the door, your sperm deserves to die in the pot plant you've spunked it into.

And unless you have mutant genes that have the capacity to spawn a race of half human, half shrubs, you belong at the end of your family tree.

Get some game comedy, mates.

You're funny, powerful, and can string a sentence together.

Here is a fun game to play.

Next time you feel like showing your penis to a relative stranger, don't.

Also, if you are partly on apologizing for any misdemeanours, a handy hint: always include the word sorry.

It really, it really sells the apology element, and try not to mention how often people admire you.

It's also slightly odd to me that a stand-up comedian

felt the need, well, basically, felt that doing stand-up comedy was not self-indulgent enough.

Yeah,

I felt like that.

You know, every night of the week you get to jerk off in front of strangers.

Let's do bird news now.

And

cockatoos have eaten the internet.

Also in Australia, I don't know if this was some kind of there we go, it's a cockatoo chewing a cable.

They've been chewing through internet cables.

Yeah, the NBN, which is the national broadband network, it's a multi-billion dollar, three-billion dollar internet infrastructure project, and it's being eaten by cockatoos.

Luddites.

They're just, yeah.

Can't handle progress.

Oh no, maybe they have a taste for internet trolling.

As an Australian, I speak with authority.

Cockatoos, like ladies out on a hen's night, are very pretty, smug, louder than you'd expect, and chew the shit out of the edges of your house.

Gazella Kaplan, a professor in animal behaviour at the University of New England, told The Guardian it was unusual for cockatoos to target cables, which would be useful information if it wasn't contradicted by the fact.

I don't know whether it's the tang of online trolling, the sweet, sweet flavour of YouTube makeup influences pouring down the pipes.

these cockatoos have a discriminating palate for the information superhighway.

Experts were warned that if they continue to chew into the NBN cables, they'll eventually develop into an avian super race with a taste for calling people cucks and suddenly springing pornographic pop-up ads into your work emails.

You naive fools.

You all think that this is a bird.

Those birds are under the employ of the Russian government.

There is no way if we get hold of one of those cockatoos it's going to mysteriously turn out to be called Vladimir and hail from St Petersburg.

In other bird news, there's a for any buglers in the Channel Islands, beware, there is a terrorist seagull that has been attacking people.

Ah now that was my wrestling name.

The terrorist seagull.

There is been a seagull attacking people

in the the Channel Islands.

Not yet clear exactly what cause the seagull is fighting for.

Maybe something to do with EU fishing quotas or seagull enfranchisements

or taxation.

They do a lot of their business offshore, of course.

Could be maybe some bizarre,

arcane, extremist seagull interpretation of the Bible.

We just don't know.

Police have described the terror gull, which has a silent P on the beginning.

Goes to

taking a translator of this.

Police have described him as winged and dangerous.

And it's interesting, actually, that this terrorist seagull, Donald Trump has been eerily, eerily quiet on the subject of the terrorist seagull.

But

if that had been a bird with brown or black feathers, he'd have been all over it.

He'd have been telling us we need to send all the pheasants back to pheasantistian.

And what part of this bugle birds section, we can cross over now to join our live

partner

podcast for this special bird section.

Hello, everyone.

I am Hieronymus Glenick, and welcome to What If Jane Austen had been a Puffin, the latest in a series of the British Literary Review podcasts, examining what great authors would have been like had they been a specific species of bird.

In previous episodes, we came to the conclusions that Fyodor Dostoevsky, had he been an albatross, would would probably have eaten a quite considerable quantity of fish, whilst if Miguel de Cervantes had been a pheasant, he would likely have been shot for sport before pecking out even a single of his literary masterpieces.

To discuss Austin as Puffin, I am joined by Clifford Marinette from the British Puffin Association and Professor Julietta Snaismark, author of course of Jane Austen novelist, woman, acrobat, spy.

Clifford, if I may start with you, Austin was, of course, seldom renowned for her brightly coloured beak.

Oh, that's quite right, Eronymus.

But

now, Andy, when

when you said we were short of time.

Well, um, yeah,

we are quite short of time.

But interestingly, a lot of famous singers own birds, own

birds from from the

bird order.

Alice,

I will take issue with you looking upset at this point.

You are an enabler and a participant.

I was trying to hit it off at the bar.

It just encourages him.

Yeah, a lot of famous singers, apparently.

Oh, yeah.

Oh.

Come on.

He was looking me in the eyes as you did that and it was f ⁇ ing horrendous.

I liked it.

I saw your soul.

There was one of these

birds, was jointly owned by two famous singers with the same surname, Jarvis from the Britpop band, Pulp, and the 60s Soul Blues singer, Joe, the Cocker 2.

A friend of mine used to

keep all of his parrots

in his vehicle.

It was a bit of a weird vehicle.

It was black and white.

Painted black and white in the pattern of a large woodland creature.

He called it his badgery car.

I just wanted to say that.

Just a little insight into this.

Just before we came on stage, Andy said to me, oh, is a badger a rodent?

And I was like,

the level of fact-checking that goes into this bullshit.

I mean, he lost his keys.

He was looking through a big pile of keys and he said, are these mine?

Nah.

Couldn't find them.

He was so annoyed.

African great.

The African great, African.

F you.

Anyway, I remember he died.

I'll finish with this one.

He died.

He went.

My friend went out to celebrate

getting a new bird and he was eating seafood in a French restaurant.

And I'll never forget the phone call I got from the restaurant telling us he'd sadly choked to death on a large oyster that he'd eaten whole, shell and all.

And the French waiter rang me up and said, De ila squele le grand coquetil émo.

Now, look, I think what you have to admire here is that I've done two birds, two birds with a syllable cock in, and I've not gone down the obvious route on either one.

I hope you admire that.

You do.

Whoa, that I mean that is one of the that was like a hostile round of applause.

I never thought I would hear a round of applause laced with so much malice again.

Be quiet.

Now, right, it's a

right.

Well, we have we have run spectacularly over time.

Thank you to the Letterswear Theatre for having us.

Please show your appreciation for everyone you've seen tonight.

You've seen Chris the producer.

You've seen

the thinking man's naked man, man, Nishkumar.

And Alice Fraser.

Until next time, goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, one more time for Andrew Zaltzman.

Stuff the landing.

There you go, the prime cuts of Thursday's live show.

Whilst I've got you, could I politely entreat you to listen to my new BBC Radio 4 show entitled My Life as a dot dot dot, in which I explore and attempt to live by the teachings of three leading branches of ancient philosophy, starting this week with Stoicism.

The show features some genuinely fascinating interviews with people who know far, far more about philosophy and indeed life than I do.

If you look up BBC Radio 4, Andy Zoltzman and My Life As a, then you should find the programme page where you can listen.

Also available next Thursday, the first episode of The Unbelievable Ashes.

That's my new cricket podcast covering the imminent, very, very imminent, excitingly imminent Australia v England test match series co-hosted by the excellent Australian comedian Felicity Ward and produced by Tom Wright, ex-bugle producer from the early days for ABC Radio.

That's the Unbelievable Ashes first episode available on Thursday.

If you enjoyed this week's live bugle excerpts, why not come to the next live bugle shows, also at the Leicester Square Theatre, on the 18th of January and the 22nd of February?

Details on the internet.

And whilst you're at it, why don't you build up to that by also coming to see my show at London Soho Theatre that's Andy Zoltzmann's 2017 The Certifiable History.

It runs from the 18th of December to the 6th of January with the odd day off here and there for things like eating a lot of turkey with my family.

It's the second installment of my exclusive year-by-year chronicle of this planet and is frankly the greatest Christmas present you can possibly get for yourself, your family, your friends, your enemies, your bodyguards, your pets, your knitting coach, your monarch and even your spouse and or spouses.

I'm not judging you.

Go to the Soho Theatre website for details.

I can guarantee it will be better than sitting at home staring into a bucket of cabbages.

That is an absolute Zoltzmann guarantee.

No further demands, Buglers.

You are now free to go about your business.

And don't forget to tell everyone you know to listen to the bugle, or there will be hell to pay.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Until next time, goodbye.

Andy Zoltzman, live at Soho Theatre, 18th of December to 6th of January.

Don't miss it, or you will regret everything for the rest of your life.

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.