Bugle 4048 – common ground with Osama

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, or as they say here in America, hello buglers.

It looked exactly the same on paper.

This is issue 4048 of the world's longest running bugle podcast.

I am Andy Zaltzman reporting to you from Boston, Massachusetts, just yards away, well a few thousand yards away from where in 1773 some slightly crotchety locals started cold brewing British tea in their salty harbour water, an event now acknowledged as the birth of hipsterism.

The whole process was kicked off in part at least by the British government cutting taxes on tea for the East India Company, making this another thrilling episode in the long-running series When Tax Cuts Go Bad.

And that looks like it's going to run and run and possibly run quite hard here in America over the next year or two.

I am in America but joining me from London this seemed completely the wrong way around.

It is Nish Kumar.

Hello Andy.

Hello buglers.

How's it going Andy?

It's been good thanks.

Thanks to all the buglers who've come to my

show so far and thanks to everyone else who is not a bugler who's come to the show which I think on current total after

10 gigs of the tour is is approximately 18 people who are not bugle listeners.

You've got to start somewhere, Andy.

You've got to make those in.

Also, 18 people.

I mean,

that was a substantial chunk of my total sales for my first tour.

So, I mean, you're doing well.

Yeah, onwards and upwards.

But thanks to everyone who's come, three gigs left.

Philadelphia this Sunday.

If you listen to this in time, then Nashville on Tuesday.

And Washington, D.C.

on Wednesday, although I believe that is

basically sold out now.

So apologies.

You're a sellout in DC.

I mean,

I'm not the first to have sold out in D.C., not necessarily in that way.

I mean, I'm going to drain the swamp, Nish.

I'm going to go to DC and I'm going to drain the swamp.

Imagine I just have this vision of you.

Imagine if you sort all the problems out, Andy.

Yeah.

Imagine if your gig ends up being the tipping point that averts the American apocalypse.

Right.

I mean, you've put quite a lot of pressure on Nelness.

I was

just going to do a load of largely childish gags

with possible involvement of a cauliflower.

Yeah, I'm in London having a substantially

less glamorous time than you.

I've spent the last couple of weeks in recovery from what can only be described as a cyber onslaught.

Last time I appeared on the bugle, I

made what can only be described as a catastrophic error of judgment from someone who, because he has been listening to the show for a long time, should definitely have known better.

My cousins had defaced my Wikipedia page and I

erroneously, I now see,

challenged buglers to do worse, resulting in my Wikipedia page being locked for editing.

People went hard at it, Andy.

I'm sorry I didn't get to all of the various defacements of it, but I did catch a few of the key highlights.

To the end of the sort of opening introductory paragraph, somebody changed he is of Indian descent to he claims to be of Indian descent.

Yeah, show the proof, Mish.

Show the proof.

Is this a reverse birth of movement?

It then followed up that claim of my Indian descent with the sentence, he is often referred to as the brown John Oliver and is being lined up to be the first brown Smurf.

So far, so funny.

Slightly racist.

But it got more imaginative from there.

This is just a whole paragraph that I'm just going to read as a chunk.

In October 2017, E4, which is a British channel, announced he is to front a new chat show project called Naked with Nish, due to air in February 2018.

The format has been described: that a fully naked Nish Kumar will interrogate a host of clothed celebrities about the more intimate aspects of their private sexual lives.

Guests announced thus far are Lily Allen, Steve Coogan, and Nigel Farage.

The guests will be scored based on how excited Nish gets.

Wow.

Now...

Well, Vommy, this is sounding like a crowdfunding project waiting for.

That's exactly the joke I was going to make before I panicked and realised that if I did, they would set one up.

Perhaps more concerningly was between 1999 and 2002, Nish started a semi-nude stage production of a Christmas carol that ran for four weeks every September.

The show was cancelled after its 2002 run when it was revealed that Kumar had been using the production as a front to launder money made in the illegal trade of ivory Colonel Gaddafi face masks.

No smoke without fire.

No smoke without fire.

No edits could be made to my Wikipedia page.

That is the summary of my time while you've been in America.

Right.

So, I mean, how long

is your page on lockdown?

I don't know.

The only reason I know it's on lockdown is because my fing cousins tried to deface it again

and then texted me saying,

why can we not edit the

one change that did stay for ages, because now all of these have been reversed, but the one that did stay, which is a genius piece of Wikipedia graffiti, was that they snuck a change into a sentence that had been cited.

So it looked legitimate.

The sentence was Nish was also a debate with the Durham Union Society, which tragically is completely true.

But what they changed in the sentence was Nish was also a debate with the Durham Union Society, killing three and wounding two.

And that stayed up there for longer than I am comfortable with.

You'd almost have to set up a new Wikipedia page for

either a fictitious...

Maybe your nude with Nish deserves its own Wikipedia page.

I don't know.

Well, yeah, I mean, if anyone wants to set up a nude with Nish...

I don't know why I'm doing this.

I don't know why I'm reopening this door.

But if anyone does want to set up Wikipedia page, including episode summaries for nude with NIF, I would very much like, I'd very much like to see that.

Especially if the episode did have Steve Coogan, Lily Allen, and Nigel Farage on it at the same time.

Well, I mean, you can do anything with video editing programs now, so I'm fully expecting to see a YouTube trailer by the end of the week.

Whatever is going on my IMDb page, Andy.

Right, that's it.

You've just got to look full, Mish.

That is

all that counts.

So, this is Bugle 4048.

We are recording on the 3rd of November 2017, making it exactly 60 years, Nish, since Leika, the Soviet space doggy, the animal Neil Armstrong always dreamed of being, went for her very last walkies, a non-voluntary rocket walkies into space, as previously disclosed on the Bugle.

She was, in fact, following another rocket that had a stick in it.

Laika is now sadly assumed dead but still holds the world record for most confused animal ever.

One assumes that Leica's final thoughts were something along the lines of, this is hot, way too hot, but also weird.

This is very weird, especially because I am a dog.

Amazing to think as well that we could put a dog in space 60 years ago, but today penguins still can't fly.

Almost as if they don't want to.

Also, this weekend, and this is our section in the bin this week, it's November the 5th on Sunday, on the 5th of November to be precise, which means in Britain it is fireworks nights, bonfire nights, Guy Fawkes nights, or however you want to label it, when we fondly remember our favourite national act of thwarted terrorism by making things go bang and waving glowsticks in the air.

It was in 1605 that Guy Fawkes, heir to the famous Cutlery dynasty from memory, was caught guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder.

Now,

that's a lot of gunpowder, Nice.

That's pretty tricky to pass that off for personal use.

Especially when you were guarding it under the houses of parliaments.

Anyway, it was a...

Yeah, weird storage space.

Really weird storage space, Guy.

Guido, I'm sorry.

We're not on that terms yet.

It was a big, big crime in Britain now, some 412 years ago.

Proof, if anyone in America still needed it, that you really need to stop Muslims coming into the USA.

I know it's a bit of a logical leap, but hey, that seems to be all the rage these days.

To mark the occasion of Guy Fawkes Nights, we are presenting an audio fireworks night safety guide.

Number one, do not attempt to blow up parliament.

Number two, do not get caught being involved in a plot to blow up parliaments.

And number three, do not get hung, drawn and quartered if you have an intolerance to pain and or death.

With concerns that fireworks could cause serious health problems if smoked like a cigarette, we review the latest e-fireworks to hit the shops.

And most importantly, this, very important, for your own safety on fireworks nights, we have provided for you a bugle audio firework recognition test.

Now, it's very important to know what is a firework and what isn't.

No one wants a mix-up between a firework and, for example, a carrot, a puppy, or a bunch of flowers at a wedding or funeral.

So, we're going to help you learn to tell a firework from something that is not a firework with our simple bugle is this a firework practical quiz.

Simply listen to the following five noises and tell yourself which one is a firework.

Is it noise A?

Is it noise B?

Is it maybe noise C

is it noise D

or is it noise E

so those are the five options write down your audio answer with your voice now I've got a good feeling about D Andy well Nish,

you are right the correct answer was in fact D.

D Yes!

D was the firework.

And if you got that right, you've won the right to shout bang

on the 5th of November at a passing stranger.

Incidentally, A, of course, was the former United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, learning to play the violin.

Of course,

violin playing is hard for everyone, even Ban Ki-moon.

Well, and also, he's got a bit more spare time on his hands now, so it's, you know, it's one of those things he's always wanted to do.

And it's a shame, actually, that he couldn't do that while he was Secretary General, because, because, you know, with all the sad stories in the world, if he could have accompanied his speeches with some mournful violin playing, then who knows how much more he might have achieved?

That might be more of a useful contribution than the UN has made in several situations around the world in the last 10 years.

Noise B, that was someone playing snooker, specifically the Pope knocking in a blue off its spot to leave his opponent requiring snookers.

Noise C, that was the Queen on horseback, chopping a large butternut squash in half.

And E, Noise E, was an imagined reconstruction of what would have happened had Elvis Presley ever catapulted himself into a lake.

So well done, if you correctly recognise D as the firework.

That section was entirely in the bin, of course, so you haven't listened to it.

Top story this week, release the files!

Release the files!

There are so many secrets lurking around in the world today, Nish.

So many conspiracies that haven't yet seen the light of day.

So many facts concealed in elaborate webs of secret lies.

Personally, I've always wanted to know the truth behind whether Abraham Lincoln faked his own death and actually lived out his days as a country singer in a Chinese restaurant in Mexico.

I want to know how come Canada is so big, whether the CIA killed the Queen Mother, whether karaoke was intended for military use, and why ships float when they're so fing heavy.

But we have finally

been given some files people have wanted to see for what a long time, or quite a short time actually, in the case of the Russian influence on the US election.

Also, we now know exactly the same as we knew before about the Kennedy hit and some quality stuff on Bin Laden that we'll come to later.

But Nish, back home in Britain, how has the Russian troll story

affected the British people?

Well,

it's sort of affected the one British person in a slightly strange way, and that one British person is me.

Because

I was getting the underground the other day and I saw an advert on the tube.

I've taken a photo of it because I genuinely thought that I was hallucinating.

I saw an advert for the Russia Today news network.

Now, this is a news network that seemingly has strong ties to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.

And I think as of this week, Twitter has said that they will be banning Russia Today from their platform.

So imagine my surprise when I saw an advert for Russia Today that said, watch RT and find out who we are planning to hack next.

Now,

that is either a very risky joke

or

the most brazen thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

I was absolutely in shock.

Like, I had to, I photographed it to make sure that I wasn't going mad.

But that is really fairly brazen.

Laying their Cold War reenactment cards very firmly on the table.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know whether this is sort of general revenge for the release of the movie The Death of Stalin, which came out this week.

Is he dead?

Stalin?

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

Spoiler alert, warning buglers.

Yeah, I do apologise.

I'm delighted.

I didn't like him.

That's not what I've read on the Daily Mail comment for him, Saltzman.

Another Stalinist podcast host.

The Russian trolls hiding under the bridge of America's failing neurotic political and media complex have,

as we basically knew, pumped out a veritable mega splurge of hogwash during the build-up to the so-called election of Donald Trump.

The deluge of deceit apparently reached over 120 million American Facebook users.

But did it affect the election?

As the old saying goes, it's not lies that fool people.

It's being part of a completely dysfunctional political and media system that depends on the spread of misinformation and the manipulation of truth that fools people.

So it may be some time before we know exactly the impact it had.

The poor little social media companies who hosted the bogus Russian bullshit have been told off by Senate.

So no doubt they will move heaven and earth to make sure only pure sweet facts are ever shared on their sainted networks again.

The

general counsel for Facebook said, in hindsight, we should have used a broader lens.

There are signals we missed.

Signals such as an absolute tsunami of obvious propaganda and payments made in Russian rubles.

That's the thing that I that absolutely blows my mind.

American political adverts paid for in rubles.

This is not the finest espionage ever conducted.

They may as as well have paid with a check made out by Vladimir Vutin.

It's not subtle.

And also they're talking about how they need to build sort of more, you know, complicated algorithms in order to spot some of this fake news.

I had a sort of quick flick through some of the articles that were released as part of the senatorial hearing.

I mean really

a three-year-old could have caught some of this shit.

Like, especially a news story about Denzel Washington surprisingly coming out in support of Donald Trump.

And that came from a website, this is genuinely true, that's called AmericanNews.com.

These people are not even trying, Andy.

For a long time, so Facebook, Twitter, and Google have all found themselves in front of a Senate subcommittee this week to explain their role in the Russian affair.

Facebook in the past denied any wrongdoing, with Mark Zuckerberg suggesting that the site had not influenced the election at all before starting his backtrack in September when he he released a sort of very strange, straight-down-the-camera, semi-hostage video looking thing where he apologised for Facebook's role and said there will always be bad actors in the world.

To which Nicholas Cage presumably responded,

too right, brother, before going off to star in National Treasure 7, this time the treasure is friendship.

One of the interesting details that has come up this week

regards Paul Manafort,

who is currently looking at a pretty hefty rap list.

Yeah.

Manafort was briefly Donald Trump's campaign manager during the build-up to the election last year.

In the past,

he's got an interesting CV.

He was a lobbyist for such upstanding international citizens as Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, ex-Zaire boss President Mabutu, both black belts in the art of authoritarianism, and Viktor Yanukovych, the ex-Ukrainian leader, currently evading trial on a high treason rap.

So, I mean,

he's worked for some

curious gentlemen in his career.

Is he just very forgiving, Andy?

Are we being harsh on Manafor here?

Maybe he just really believes in giving people a second, third, fourth, and fifth chance.

He now stands accused of links to the Russian mafia, money laundering, high-grade bullshittery, and

letting out his flat as an Airbnb rental.

Now, that's just my favourite thing.

I mean, it's possible as a perfectly innocent explanation.

Clearly he's a very busy man and actually it's a good way to meet people from around the world if you have a range of guests coming in for just a couple of nights to have a look around New York.

And if you've got a spare couch,

why not monetize it?

Even if you have worked with President Mabuto and Ferdinand Marcos.

Listen, Andy, I'm not telling you what to like in your life, but I mean, I love the Airbnb detail.

It's not my favourite detail because my favourite detail of all of this is the allegation, which has still not yet been substantiated, that Paul Manafort, one of the things that's come out is people have got into all of his computers.

And one of the allegations is that one of his passwords is Bond 007.

Which, I mean, is obviously a spectacular detail.

But it also fundamentally suggests that if all of this stuff that he's been accused of is proved true, then Paul Manafort has really not understood the point of those James Bond films.

Unless he thinks that the whole thing is a cover and Bond has been a double-double agent for the Russians the entire time, he's really not worked out what's going on.

Well,

that would be an awesome reveal in the

next Bond movie.

What a reveal.

Well, I mean, I suspect if America keeps successfully meddling in all of Western infrastructure, there is a chance that the end of the next Bond film is going to result in Daniel Craig ripping off his mask and it being Vladimir Putin in the end.

I'm not sure Daniel Craig's got the body to play Putin, has he?

He's not got a sort of un-Putinian face.

Well, yeah, he could easily pass as

a Russian, Mr.

Craig.

It's been a tricky week for Facebook, Google, and Twitter

with sort of various

new allegations coming to light, but also a general sense that these people could have done something to intervene if they weren't so busy making f tons of money.

And when it comes to the behavior of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, obviously this is a very complicated issue.

We're getting into tricky areas where how do you sort of regulate these kind of unregulatable media behemoths?

But I think the one thing that we can all agree on is that MySpace, Bebo, and Ask Jeeves are all feeling pretty f ⁇ ing smug this week.

We're all going to have to go back to them and they're going to be like, well, well, well, look look who's come crawling back.

You thought you were too good for us and now Western civilization is in danger.

Let me tell you, Andy, I did an experiment where I tried to find all the facts for this bugle on Bing and we are in for a dark future.

That thing is not easily usable.

In slightly better news for Twitter,

yesterday night, I guess you were awake for this, Andy.

You were possibly watching this unfold in real time.

Yesterday night, Donald Trump's Twitter account was deleted for 11 minutes.

Oh, what a sweet 11 minutes that was.

I was actually planning on going to bed and then I saw his Twitter had been deleted and I obviously decided to stay up.

And I'm really happy I lived through really the happiest period of the last sort of 18 months.

And it turns out, did you read about this?

It turns out that they thought it was, you know, some sort of computer error.

And twitter said oh there was a mistake but then twitter themselves corrected their own previous statement because it turns out that a an ex-employee on their last day of work decided to give their co-workers and by extension the entire rest of the world the mother of all leaving presents

They basically deleted his account and then walked out, presumably flipping the double birds as they went.

And I imagine they will, if not walk into any job they want, they will be walking into as many free drinks as they can possibly handle.

I mean, you are in America, Andy, so currently you are top of my list of suspects.

Have you been moonlighting at Twitter by any chance?

Nish, you are attributing me with a far greater degree of technological expertise than I can possibly claim, as the contents and presentation of my website would vociferously testify.

Fair enough.

Duly redacted.

In other releasing the files news, a load of info on the John F.

Kennedy assassination has been released, and these what appear to be completely unexplosive documents have revealed that John F.

Kennedy was indeed killed in November 1963.

It was not, as conspiracy theoreticians have suggested, filmed in a studio.

You can see flags waving in the wind in the background.

It's an obvious setup.

That's now been disproved.

It was not moaned down by the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

And he did not die of food poisoning just before being shot after eating a poisoned fish taco placed on him by the Mexican mafia.

It turns out that it basically

does seem to be that...

it happened pretty much as people have said it did.

Or maybe that's just what they want you to think.

Yeah, I mean, my only thing with this is: if there is some sort of grand conspiracy going on, I strongly doubt there is a file where someone has written the entire thing down.

In

like, I really feel like at no point

is there going to be a detailed breakdown of, like, look, this is basically the real story.

It was aliens.

Yeah.

Well, I guess until we get all the files from Roswell, then we're not, we're just not going to know.

More More excitingly, I feel, is the cache of files that has been released about

everyone's favourite ex-terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

This is quite extraordinary stuff.

They've released all of their files about what bin Laden had on his computer in his compound, and it's really revealed some truly extraordinary details.

He turns out to be quite the film buff.

He has the films cars and Ants on there.

Nish, you know what question is coming next.

Did he have one or both of the Smurfs movies?

Or even the Love Guru?

I mean, I don't think even Bin Laden would stoop that low, but did he have the Love Guru?

Imagine if it turns out Bin Laden was a huge fan of the Guru.

Or,

perhaps more likely is the guru the thing that turned him against western civilization

is it is it what i'm not saying that that's what happened i'm just saying we need to release the files um he had a lot of tom and jerry cartoons yeah uh which to me fits perfectly with his profile you know an endless cycle of violence and vengeance to no discernible purpose but you know

i think he saw it as a training manual i think the worst thing the thing that made me most actively angry, was that he, one of the films he had in his fold, was the documentary, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?

The Morgan Spurlock documentary.

And that is a real

you to the west.

As if he hadn't done enough.

The idea that he's just sat there watching that movie and intermittently giggling to himself and shouting, I'm right here, baby.

BL's back for good.

There were also instructions for mending socks.

Which I mean, she says, good.

It shows he's not a wasteful man.

We throw away far too much stuff.

I mean, I'm not saying that justifies everything else that he did.

But, you know, if he's not, you know, needlessly wasting perfectly reusable socks,

I guess

that is, you know,

a crumb on the other end of the seesaw that admittedly has the weight of the universe on it.

Also, instructions for how to crochet a flower.

Which is lovely.

Maybe he was mellowing in his old age.

Well, you say that.

also, they also managed to find a load of the video games he had on his computer, one of which is the first person shooter Counter-Strike where soldiers battle terrorists in urban warfare, which is something of a busman's holiday for Bin Laden.

I'd suggest he got more sort of active relaxation from Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy VII, and several Dragon Ball Z titles.

There was also a viral YouTube video entitled Charlie Bit My Finger, Finger,

which is

a video of

a small child with an even smaller brother who is technically a baby.

And the child puts his finger in the baby's mouth, and the baby bites it, and then the child said, Ow, that really hurt.

And then says, Charlie bit my finger.

And I guess, you know, again, in the bin Laden continuum, it shows that if you, you know, you keep risking pain, eventually it will come back to bite you.

So

but also, what struck me about this Nish was that this video video had had 855 million views.

Now,

that is too many views for a child biting another child's finger.

What has happened to us as a species?

Charlie bit my finger was the first sign that things were going wrong for Western civilization.

I think Bin Laden was probably watching it.

looking at the number of hits and thinking, well, my work is done.

It wasn't just all children's videos on YouTube, Andy.

The one thing that has not been released is Bin Laden's seemingly extensive collection of pornography.

Right.

It turns out that Bin Laden had quite the porn stack

on

his computer.

And apparently a men's interest publication called Bro Bible

has in the past filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the porn collection that has been denied.

I mean,

what are they trying to hide?

I don't know whether they're trying to establish common ground with him retrospectively.

Right.

But

it is starting to seem worryingly like whilst he was in hiding, Osama bin Laden was not living a wildly different lifestyle from me

on a day-to-day basis.

Osama bin Laden was living very much like a self-employed stand-up comedian.

Right.

Googling his own name, watching cartoons, and furiously masturbating.

But

some of the articles I read about it said that there's not the suggestion that he was necessarily watching all of this himself, but the reason there were so many kids' cartoons was that he was living with his family at the time in his secret compound in the Bottabad, which, I mean, that must have...

There must have been some awkward conversations with his dad.

Dad, what do you actually do?

I know that's a question I've had to field.

And it can be awkward.

When you have an unusual line of work,

I was recording some stop-motion animation videos of potatoes playing cricket for

a series of

videos during the Cricket World Cup.

Yeah, I don't know why you felt the need to justify that sentence to me, Chris, or indeed the buglers, Andy.

I would say that if you asked either of us, or indeed anyone who listens to this podcast, what do you think Andy Andy Saltzman is doing with this time currently?

Near the top would have been he's making stock motion animation of potato cricket.

So, my children got back from school while I was still mid-shoot,

and

just the look of kind of confusion and even disgust in their young eyes.

This, this is you are, this is no kind of role model.

Um,

The CIA claimed.

I really did not think when I sat down at the start of this that this episode would culminate in us both finding common ground with Osama bin Laden.

Well, yep.

I think that's worrying for everyone.

The CIA said it had released the trove.

Trove.

It has to be a trove, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Quotes, in the interest of transparency and to enhance public understanding of al-Qaeda and bin bin Laden.

Bullshit!

The CIA released this trove because it's funny and it makes him look like an idiot.

Say that.

Just say that.

Lay your chips.

We would all have more respect for you if the CIA would sort of say, look, this is not relevant to anything, but God, he was a fucking weird.

This week, we saw the spiritual descendants of Bin Laden's trademark brand of total

at work in New York with

another truck attack.

Now I was in New York

that was the day, I hadn't the day I did my gig in New York, and I saw the reaction of the people of New York, which seemed to me to put even more effort into their Halloween outfits.

Aside from the immediate tragedy of it,

it just emphasized again

just quite how unwinnable this crazy war that these people are fighting is.

When in the streets after this attack, I saw a grown man dressed as a banana, I saw a dog in a witch's outfit, and I saw an 80-year-old woman dressed as Wonder Woman.

You cannot beat that, Mr.

Terrorists.

You cannot, you cannot beat that.

It's genuinely life-affirming stuff.

I read one of the reports, and

this is a kind of full extract from a Guardian journalist who was on the scene describing the sort of spirit that was evident after the attack,

when a million New Yorkers sort of turned out for the annual parade.

And this was a conversation with one of them.

I'm not going to let terrorists stop my life.

One reveler dressed as the fish in finding Nemo told The Guardian.

You, ISIS.

They just have such different attitudes to clothing, and I don't think they can ever be reconciled.

You just got schooled by Nemo,

a character in a movie your fing hero Osama bin Laden probably had in his fing wank shed

Sleazy does it.

Andy, there's a lot of stuff coming back from my childhood.

The remake of Jumanji, the remake of It, and this week, the return of good,

old-fashioned Tory sleaze.

Conservative Party sex scandals were as much a fixture of my childhood as Christmas.

And now they're back.

They're back, Andy.

How many Christmases did you have every year?

What, two.

White one and a brown one.

You have white Christmas and you have brown Christmas, brackets the Vali.

Come on, Saltzman.

You know I'm a proud multicultural citizen of the United Kingdom.

Michael Fallon, the now former Defence Secretary, has stepped down from his post amidst sort of accusations, which he still denies about sexually inappropriate behaviour, because the sort of ongoing rumble of the discovery, which seems to have shocked an alarming number of people, that men are the absolute worst, has rumbled into the political sphere in the United Kingdom this week.

So, Fallon still denies doing anything, but has admitted that his behaviour fell short.

So, it's not really clear what's happening here.

And a specific allegation, which he also denies, has been made regarding Andrea Leadsom who's a Tory minister and was one of the candidates who was deemed too crazy for the post that was eventually won by Theresa May

because and we I think we may have discussed this on the bugle she lost a huge amount of credibility when she said that she should be prime minister because she had children and Theresa May didn't and that played very poorly with humans

so

The incident in question is supposed to have happened, alleged to have happened six years ago at a parliamentary meeting when Andrew Leadsim complained of having cold hands.

And the allegation is that Michael Fallon replied, I know somewhere you can put them to warm up.

Right.

Now,

okay.

I have never claimed to be the most sexually experienced man,

but leaving aside the obvious.

I'm sure Wikipedia will soon set that to rights.

God,

a storm is coming, Andrew.

But is he, I mean,

leaving aside the obvious sort of, you know, it's inappropriate and this is exactly the sort of stuff that shouldn't happen.

Is he asking her to put her hands up his butt?

Really?

And secondly, is that a thing?

Right.

Listen, I'm not naive.

I know about fisting, Andy.

But I was always under the impression that that involved a sort of in-out motion rather than a kind of temporary storage.

Right.

And the in-out motion surely wouldn't do a huge amount for the actual temperature of Leadsum's hands.

Right.

So is this some sort of weird sexual fetish that he has where he sort of plays a reverse Pinocchio where he gets someone to put their hand up his butt and he pretends to be a puppet?

Is that what's happening?

Well, I mean, what some kind of like satirical comment on the

powerlessness of the modern politician.

Yeah, there's not enough satirical comment in sex scandals, I feel.

I think, I mean, alternatively, just those simple words, I know

somewhere you can put them to make them warm.

Is that what he said?

Precisely?

Yeah, I know somewhere you can put them to warm up, is the allegation.

I mean, it could possibly have been that he was just about to say the radiator.

No, I mean, why do we always assume something

you know, base and sexual about these things?

You're right.

I've jumped to hands up the butt straight away.

I read that and I was like, hands up the butt.

Right.

See, I wouldn't necessarily have gone there.

I'd have,

yeah, I've gone either radiator, possibly

some kind of, you know, Arga stove or maybe

Tenerife.

All of these options.

But

you've gone for hands up the butt.

I've gone straight to hand up the butt.

I've got, I've, yeah, I mean, well, that's maybe the difference between you and me, me, Andy.

I'm a millennial.

I've been exposed to a wider variety of extreme pornography, so, you know, it's warped my consciousness.

I mean, this is what evidence of everything that's wrong with my generation, I think.

Is this still the bugle?

I've absolutely no idea.

It is, it's been kind of depressing to

see just the sheer volume of sex pests that there are in the sex pestilential corridors of power.

But there is some hope.

Coming here from the USA, the US Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, has claimed that fossil fuels can stop sexual assault.

So

all we need to do...

I mean, this was kind of, you know, the whole British parliamentary slea scandal was made inevitable when Thatcher shut down the mines.

So they've brought it on themselves in many ways.

Rick Perry, a climate change sceptic, which makes him about as qualified for his job as I am to be coach of the Chinese synchronized swimming squad,

said from the standpoint, he was talking about about how I'm going to take one quick issue with that Andy you are more qualified to do that job because you don't fundamentally believe that the Chinese synchronized swimming squad does not exist

you you at no point have you ever gone on the record and said that it's a myth dreamed up by the liberal media

anyway and he said um talking about how you know electricity can clearly help uh you know and he said this from the standpoint of sexual assault when the lights are on when you have a light that shines the righteousness if you will on those types of acts now technically it's not a sentence that makes any sense

but it seems to me he's suggesting that uh that and he's uh yeah so he's he's continuing from the standpoint of how you really affect people's lives fossil fuels is going to play a role in that so but only fossil fuels nish light from alternative energies does not work it is not righteous enough righteous light only comes through fossils which have had millions maybe even six thousand years to absorb the love of god um i don't know i'm not not a scientist.

If anything, geothermal.

Perry drunk.

God knows.

But it's only fossil fuels that could possibly work.

Geothermal power just aggravates the male libido coming straight from the hot, nurturing bosom of Mother Earth.

Oh, God, yeah.

Help me to control my urges, Lord, with a burning keg of oil.

And as for wind power, oh, the way those turbines shake their booty.

And the sun.

Oh, the real hot stuff.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

It's been absolutely another incredibly depressing week.

And given that, you know, the extent of the scandals, we still, we still don't know a huge amount about the accusations that are flying around because a lot of them are traveling on a supposedly secret WhatsApp list of uh male perverts that's being kept.

And it's currently, I think it is available for you to read in America legally.

It's currently violating libel laws in this country, but I believe in America it is available.

So on your way out from the airports, Oltzman, if you can, as discussed get me one of those massive toblarones and wang us a copy of the

Sex list that would be absolutely great.

Pick that up on the way out.

It's a classic duty-free gift.

Well, we are about to run out of studio time here in

Boston.

Just a quick reminder to all of you that you'll be able to see both Nish and

me and Alice Fraser in the live bugle in Leicester Square on Thursday the 16th of November.

So please buy as many tickets as you can feasibly handle for that.

And also as part of the Radiotopia fundraising drive, we have a special bugle deal.

You can buy your own pun run, your personalized pun run,

to help contribute to the Radiotopia fundraiser.

Please,

all your contributions will be hugely

appreciated to keep this wonderful network of podcasts thriving.

So that is all.

There's quite a lot left over for next week, including some exciting pyramid news.

I'll be back next week with Anuvab Pal, then the week after, as I said, Nish and Alice in that live bugle in London.

Until next time, goodbye.

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.