Bugle 4041 – A flood of news, and floods

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and the warmest of all possible welcomes within the subset of token greetings at the start of podcasts to issue 4041 of The Bugle, the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a world of increasingly unapologetical visual visuality.

This is the Bugle for the week beginning Monday the 4th of September 2017.

I am Andy Zoltzmann, the undisputed Grand Master of Grime, taking a week off and redefining London's urban music scene to talk to you people, you're welcome, about everything from global news to the rules of cribbage, from world events to whatever the hell plankton do on dates and whatever it is must seriously work.

There are trillions of them, the horny little blighters.

Who knew being a microorganism could be so damn sexy?

Anyway, it will be more of the former in both of those cases, more global news and world events than cribbage and plankton dating.

Anyway, I digress.

I'm here, live and kicking like a dusty snooker ball in London, the former current and future capital of the United Kingdom.

All of those within the space of that sentence, too.

That's how quickly things happen in this city.

I'm back from Edinburgh.

Thanks to everyone who came to see Sachirist for High Political Animal and the Bugle Live shows during the fringe.

And joining me this week.

Still hanging around our hemisphere.

When is someone going to build a wall around the equator to keep this hemisphere safe for genuine northern hemisphericans?

Our latitudinal Northic culture is big.

I'm sorry.

Anyway, I mean, welcome once again to the one remaining voice of 70 in this wonky old world.

It's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Andy.

Hello.

Welcome.

Welcome to London.

How was Edinburgh?

Oh, you know, exhausting, excellent.

I had a ball.

It was so much fun.

I did your show, Political Animal.

I did your show, The Bugle.

I did my show.

So you're going two for three.

That's pretty good.

That's the big three.

That's all you need to do in Edinburgh.

Yeah, political animal.

I think that pretty much solved every single political issue in the world.

The power of satire to 30 people in a room late at night.

Oh, they looked like they were enjoying it.

Except for one person who looked like they really weren't enjoying it.

But I think they're compulsory in Edinburgh.

You need one person in the audience to just be the fun and hope killer.

Oh, right.

Was it only one?

I think there's always one.

Oh, right.

I think there might have been an administrative error because they seem to have been sending slightly too many of those for me over the years.

Anyway, at this point, I was also supposed to be introducing Anuvab Pal live from Mumbai, but sadly, due to the flooding in Mumbai, having a bit of a physics-related disagreement with his recording studio and equipment, he can only join us briefly by phone later in the show.

Also, secondary problem, he himself osmosed like a potato.

He's now 30 foot high and 15 foot wide and goes by the name of the mega spud.

That's not actually true, of course.

He actually dissolved because he is in fact made of salt.

That's what Anuvab means in Indian.

But he will be appearing as a solution later in the show.

That's not true either.

In fact, he sprouted gills and swam off to form a new civilization.

Just like the Kevin Cosner voice in his head told him.

The point is, a slightly damper than average Anuvab pal will be joining us briefly by phone later.

And you can also see him live on the 17th of September as part of the live Bugle Show at the London Podcast Festival at King's Place in London.

Several other fantastic radio Tokyo shows also podding it up from the 15th to the 17th details on the internet, or just ask someone in the street who looks like they might know.

Later in this show, we'll be reviewing the opening round of the 1978 Soviet Politburo karaoke tournament.

Could Foreign Affairs Minister Andrei Gromyko, with his almost erotically sensuous baritone rendition of the 1968 Ohio Express hit Yummy, Yummy Yummy, see off the challenge of Volodymyr Scherbitsky's more contemporary, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, easily the most upbeat rendition of a Leo Sayer single by any serving member of the Soviet hierarchy at that point in time, of course.

And with the always groove away Yuri Andropov's up-to-the-minute take on Funkadelic's album track Pro-Mental Shit Backwash Psychosis Enemy Squad, brackets, the doo-doo chasers, the 10-minute lead-off number on side two of their new One Nation Under a Groove LP that is, of course, viewed by many as having been instrumental in the gradual collapse of the Soviet Union over the following 10 years.

Would that charm or split the judges?

Well, whatever.

When you're up against the close harmony duo of hardline second secretary Mikhail Suslov and chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikolai Chikanov, laying down frankly anything from the Everly Brothers Back catalogue.

Well, you better bring some serious musical chops.

Oh, Andy, I can tell your feet are back in your native soil because, well, you're sprouting some good bullshit.

Right,

how is anyone ever going to go to one of our live shows if you put an actual fact between Anavab's turned into a potato and Leo Sayer is a communist?

Like, where?

I'm also saying he's a communist.

Where are people supposed to believe

that sang his hits in the 70s?

I'm sure that is factually correct.

So it's me who's inaccurate now.

Yes.

Of course, whoever gets through the first round, Communist Party, Bolshoi Chizovich, Leono Brezhnev.

He, of course, awaits in the final.

I'll give him a bite through the early rounds, of course,

Big Brezh.

Will he be reprising his winning 1977 version of Buddy Holly's Every Day?

Viewed by many as humorously referring to one or both of his own impending death and or global nuclear conflict.

Every day, it's a getting closer, growled Brezylad, as he was known in Yorkshire.

Of course, he fronted his own cover span, The Grateful Red.

Anyway, look, I digress.

Also, we'll be attending the launch later in the show of the Secrets new Royal Navy spy ship, HMS Undercover, the 68,000-tonne full-metal espionage warship that is going to be sneaking its way up the Volga River towards Moscow, disguised as a giant duck, to keep an eye on.

Oh shit, I've blown it.

Sorry, everyone.

But first, well, this is the bugle for the 1st of September.

On this day, Alice,

1715, the death of King Louis Extra Intravenus of France.

Sorry, Louis XIV.

Oh, that's a Roman.

Sorry, Louis the Fourteenth.

Also, of course, known for his scientific experiments to cross-breed his favourite feline domestic pets with animals from his top military cavalry regiment, hence his nickname, Louis Cat Horse.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm here all week.

Anyway,

Louis XIV,

Ila Poppe san clogs, or Ila Poppe sit clogs, I forget.

On this day, just 302 years ago, Le Wois Soleil, the sun king, after a reign of 72 years, the longest of any major European monarch, for now.

Getting a bit twitchy, Louis.

Lizzy's coming for you, sunny boy.

65 and counting for Betsy Q, the queen of all the Britons, Queen Elizabeth the unremittingly alive, and if I may say, Queen Elizabeth the considerably less horny than Louis XIV, with his ludicrous number of mistresses and his love of eating chips, cheese, and gravy.

Or, as it was immortalized in a 1970s Bonie M.

Disco hit, the roi rois poutine.

Well, Alice, you brought puns last time you were on the Boogle.

I did.

You won-upped me, Andy.

We come for the king, the king comes back, right?

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

The BBC Radio 3 starting a slow radio season featuring the chanting of Benedictine monks and a walker

stomping 200 miles through German countryside.

So

we're going to follow this trend now.

We're going to have a competition, a slow audio competition.

Can you tell us what this noise is?

Is that A?

Theresa May settling down to hibernate for the winter.

hoping everything gets better in the meantime.

Was it B?

A poorly attended meeting of the World Wrestling Society?

Was it C?

Highlights from the 1983 World Hide and Seek Championships.

Was it D?

A bear shitting in the woods.

Was it E?

Donald Trump shitting in the woods.

Or was it F?

A bear hiding from Donald Trump in the woods and shitting as a satirical repos to the President's term of office so far.

Send your answers on a postcard to yourself and if you get it right give yourself a year off work.

That section in the bin.

What was your question going to be?

What?

You look like you were about to ask a question about...

I was about to ask you what the answer was.

Top story this week, Russia-US tit-for-tat.

Diplomats bat.

As we know, international diplomacy is the subtlest art, balancing complex market issues against political stakes in a delicate dance of refinement and subtle insinuation.

Here's a quote from a BBC article.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out a tit-for-tat response after the US expelled 35 Russian diplomats amid a row for hacking.

That was dated 30th of December 2016.

New news is that the US and Russia have decided to spit the dummy with slobbering glee and challenge each other to the international relations equivalent of schoolyard name-calling.

Donald Trump's administration on Thursday ordered Russia to close three diplomatic facilities in the US as the diplomatic spat continued to escalate.

There's been a conference call with reporters stressing that the United States was just responding to the Russian desire for parity in the diplomatic relationship, which is like how they get,

you know, get gender parity by making men feel insecure about their tummies as well, rather than not selling makeup to women.

It's our hope that the Russians will recognise that since they were the ones who started the discussion on parity, we're responding and complying with what they required of us, said the official before going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Look, as someone who travels between countries for work on the reg, the idea of reducing the number of embassies and consulate just means you are building the environment for fewer but more overworked staff to deal with your lost passport or international crisis.

This is not a good thing.

Yeah, it was interesting, this phrase, that the decision was made in the spirit of parity.

That's

just so lame.

Well, it's diplomatic code for your being dicks, so we are also going to be dicks.

So it's the counter-dick move, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a positive spin on just like hoarding toilet paper in your room because your flat mote won't buy any.

That is.

And also, spirit of parity has not exactly been a prime driving, defining force in either American or Russian politics.

I mean the last time they exhibited the spirit of parity was the Cold War.

Yeah I guess the Russians did give it a go.

The spirit of parity even being so fair as to very fairly shoot all members of the Russian royal family together at once.

Men, women, boys, girls.

Really, in some ways an act of ahead-of-its time feminism.

But I mean their little cracker at the spirit of parity, well, they f ⁇ ed up something rotten, if I may briefly summarise, the entire history of the Soviet Union.

The problem is they binged out on the spirit of parity and it left them with the babushka of all bureaucratic, autocratic hangovers.

They were given until Saturday to clear out of the

consulate in San Francisco and two annexes.

The annex in Washington, D.C.

and I mean, the fact that the Russians have annexes.

I mean, that sounds dodgy, doesn't it?

Yes.

Yeah.

I just love how quickly this has changed.

It was only in 30th of December 2016 where they were saying Russia would not stoop to the level of irresponsible diplomacy that Trump was.

And how quickly the tables have turned.

Yes.

Although, I mean, for Russia to say it would not stoop to that level was probably fair on the grounds that it was already below that level.

Already below.

You can't stoop upwards to something, can you?

No, not unless you're upside down.

Well, that's a classic Australian response.

See everything through that crazy prism.

Gravity no longer applies once you're past the equator.

The response from the Russian staff in San Francisco was,

why San Francisco?

It's really nice.

I'm going to be posting to somewhere like f ⁇ ing Lagos now.

I'll get a domestic posting in Novozibirsk.

Whereas in San Francisco, I could be watching Andy Zaltzmann on his US tour in October.

Dates to be confirmed in the next week or so.

I mean,

do we still need diplomats, Alice?

I mean,

you're a...

Well, as somebody who's well-balanced, I would say yes and no.

Very good.

It's me applying for the job.

I mean, surely Trump's patent brand of undiplomacy has rendered them kind of obsolete.

I think now we don't need official diplomats.

You just need either hype men, just like standing on a balcony of a US embassy in foreign Istan or the kingdom of a broad attainer or wherever Donald Trump has just aggravated, slagged off or verbally jibed at this week, shouting, Yeah, yeah, and grabbing his stars and striped nutsack.

Or you just need an army of national state apologisers, which I think we briefly considered in Britain when the empire started falling apart, just holding up a sign saying sorry again, like someone at a golf course with a quiet please notice.

Look, I think with Trump and Putin, they just need to bring it down to what they really want, which is both of them arm wrestling.

But Trump with like a big man behind him holding his arm to give him extra support.

That is a lovely image.

A quick North Korea update now.

And, well, Kim Jong-un, he still hates the sea, as discussed last week.

by Mr.

Al Murray.

And to complicate things, he's now trying some trick shots.

He's flown one over Japan, flown a great big missile over Japan, one of the most populated countries in the world.

I mean, Alice, what's your take?

What goes through the...

You're a professional psychoanalyst, aren't you?

Sure, why not?

Okay, good.

In your scope of the definition of facts?

Sure.

I mean, what is going through the mind of

Kim Jong-un?

It seems to me that he's stuck in some kind of eternal spoilt childhood or at best indulged in some kind of power masturbatory adolescent delusional role play.

I mean, this is the nuclear brinksmanship version of the kid's game Piggy in the Middle, right?

He's just gone, can you catch it?

No.

I don't know.

They've made no secret of their intention to develop these kind of nuclear-tipped missiles and they've recently threatened to turn Guam into a nuclear green paste, which would be devastating and a grotesque waste of innocent human life, but also allow you, Andy, to coin the phrase Guam Camole.

Thanks.

Well, thank you for leaving that one to me, Alice.

I'm appreciated.

Look, Trump said that talking is not the answer in terms of his relationship with North Korea, but I think, I mean, that's the motto of his presidency and his personal life.

Yes.

Well, I mean, that's self-knowledge, isn't it?

Yes, I think.

Clearly, he's processed all the information.

He's realised that whenever he talks, it is not the answer.

As a psychoanalyst, I believe everything Trump says is a coded cry for help.

But in good Trump administration form, he was immediately contradicted by his own administration with General Matters saying we are never out of diplomatic solutions.

So look, I don't know.

I don't know what any of it means.

I don't think anyone knows what any of it means.

I think North Korea will just keep flinging things into the air with the gay abandon of someone with diarrhea upside down.

Like it's it's just and it's all as in that metaphor it's all just gonna rain down shit on everyone.

I think with Kim though

I think is he just bored?

When he presumes he sits around in North Korea complaining, oh, there's so little to do in North North Korea, and his advisors say, yes, boss, I mean,

that is true, boss, but other countries seem so much more exciting than here.

Yes, boss, I mean, you could, what?

Well, I mean, you could try to encourage what?

You know, maybe allowing, you know, a few things like three, two, one, wiggy!

Look at him, go!

Splosh!

Bored again.

I'm bored again.

Yeah, I think he's bored.

I think he's completely surrounded by yes men.

And as with all yes men games, it ends up in nuclear war.

All yes men games.

All yes men games.

Including sexual consent.

Well I wasn't expecting that bit to end like that.

But anyway.

In Australian news now, Pauline Hansen has made a cameo appearance as a ring card girl during race eve festivities for the Birdsville Cup.

Following on from her stunt wearing of a burqa into Parliament, a Queensland senator was ringside when Fred Brophy's boxing troupe opened its first night in the far west Queensland town that will host 7,000 racegoers on Friday and Saturday.

So Pauline Hansen strode through the ring like an 18-year-old girl with no self-esteem that is deep inside her and was declared to be the hero of the town for the night.

Ringmaster Fred Bofy declared, we love you in the outback, you're a fair dinkum Australian.

I think the whole of Australia would like her to stay in the outback, wouldn't they?

Yeah, I think the whole of Australia would like her to stay in the boxing ring one way or another.

Can I just

pick up on something there?

You appear to just casually gloss over the fact that this took place in a town called Birdsville.

Yes.

Right.

It's named very traditionally after the fact that everyone there is doing the rude finger at all times.

This sounds like a very bugle cut.

We'll have to take a live bugle to Birdsville at some point.

It's a rude finger to common decency and racial diversity, basically.

This phrase, you're a fair dinkum Australian.

What exactly is

fair dinkhum?

I mean, it's because

this is a word that exists only in Australia.

I mean, does and does dinkum

I mean, it only goes with fair.

Can you have unfair dinkham or any other form of audience?

No, it's only fair dinkum.

So, as with many true blue Aussie things, fair dinkum is a phrase that's got obscure origins.

It's either from the West Midlands in the UK or Chinese merchants during the gold rush.

That's a big either or, that, isn't it?

Big either or.

They average it out.

Yeah, I think the general sort of folk etymology is that it was from dingum, meaning like good gold, during the gold rush.

Anyway, it's used to mean real, authentic, or solid.

And when applied to Pauline Hansen, it means real, as in real dickhead, authentic as in authentic idiot, and solid as in solid bowel movement of the oh god, what did I eat variety?

The pictures of this

event, I mean, just it does appear to be just a load of people in civilian clothes with boxing gloves smashing each other's faces in.

Yeah, it's very traditional boxing.

Right.

I mean, it's a step up on Mayweather against McGregor, I guess.

Yeah, look, I'm all for people punching each other in consent squares so long as they're not punching, as with Mayweather, their wives or girlfriends or other girlfriends or.

Now,

an immigration story from Australia, and unusually,

they've stopped someone going into Australia who is white.

Yes, yes.

What's gone wrong?

Very exciting.

We're expanding our opportunities.

Prominent anti-vaccination campaigner Kent Hecken Lively, clearly a made-up name, has been denied a visa to enter Australia by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.

I think if you want to know the kind of scope of it, he's an anti-vaccination campaigner and he uses sort of toxic anti-science arguments.

He's among a growing movement of people who are suspicious of vaccines, who've been multi-handedly responsible for bringing back a measles epidemic.

Woo!

I don't agree with him being banned, actually.

I believe if we introduce Kent Hecken Lively in a small amount, it'll make the people of Australia more resistant to future Heck and Lively look-alikes and more able to reject their feverish arguments.

I'm not taking a jab at parents who are concerned about the health of their children.

I don't want to needle the sensitive feelings of mumps and dads who are concerned about the potential implications of excessive vaccinations.

I'm so sorry, Andy.

No, no, I don't apologise.

Oh, Chris is leaving.

Chris is leaving the building.

He's had enough.

I understand their desire for a simpler time.

Iron Lung for a safer world, too.

Look, it's a hipster longing.

I think it's a time that never existed with vinyl record players and polioid pictures.

I just think they need to face vax.

And if courage lives in their hearts, they need to collar up.

I'm sorry.

Anti-vaxes are creating large spaces in society where herd immunity no longer protects children, whether you're in the park space or a mall area.

I'm done.

I'm done.

I mean, on most shows, you would probably have to leave the building now, but on this show, you, Alice.

I'm sorry,

I came early.

I had too much time on my hands.

It's that easy.

Just know, Andy, at least Alice has the decency to do them quite quickly.

Yeah, I should lean into them more.

I need to learn from you, Andy.

That's how people start.

I mean, if you listen back to some of the early pun runs on this, they're pretty rapid as well.

It's very hard to pull it back.

Yeah, I've got to work on my technique.

So now it's time to cross to Mumbai, the now underwater city in India, and speak to Anuvabh Pal.

Anuvab, describe the situation in your flood-stricken city.

Well, all I can tell you right now, Andy, is

if Noah, if Noah is

known for the ark in your part of the world, if he came here, he'd be like, there's some pretty serious stuff going on here.

I can't build anything anything that'll fit all these people.

Most of my neighborhood has been washed away.

I think my family are somewhere near Shanghai now, carried by the South China Sea.

Yeah, it's, I don't know why this happened because we have top-notch infrastructure.

You know, I think anything built in the 1600s, like your palaces that were built in the 160s, they're still there.

I don't know why our drainage that was built by you guys in the 1600s can't withstand a little bit of the monsoons.

I don't understand why.

But I think whatever rain Houston did not want, it outsourced to us.

So we got some of that.

And yeah, we got some of that.

And yeah.

Right.

And I mean, who's being blamed for this?

Because, I mean, it seems to be, I mean, true in politics the world over.

When something like this happens, we have to find someone to blame rather than the water itself.

And is anyone being,

having the finger of blame jabbed in their eyes right now?

Andy, let me tell you a thing or two about the Indian Meteorological Department.

A fantastic state-of-the-art organization immediately abandoned their headquarters at the first sight of it.

Now, I know traditionally in the Western world, in your part of the world, people

want forecasts.

I believe the weather is forecast.

Yes, right?

Here we look at weather as more as a historical thing.

Once it's completely flooded, our meteorological department says, ladies and gentlemen, it's flooded.

We don't look at the prescient value of weather.

We look at the documentary value of weather.

That's a much more objective way of doing it.

Less state-of-the-art, more state-of-the-obview.

We think so.

We think so.

You know, anybody can say this might happen.

We say, this happened.

And I think that again, again, we're so far advanced than the West when it comes to things like this.

One thing I have to say about the Med Department, though,

once they're predicting stuff that's going on right outside, they are fairly accurate.

And it's a kind of art

that I think some of the greats that

Van Gogh and Picasso can learn from.

I think it's not easily done.

So yeah, between the Med Department and the Municipal Corporation, they have done a fantastic job.

Is what I'm trying to say.

Oh, that's good to hear.

I'm sorry you couldn't join us for the whole show, but you will be here in London in two weeks' time for the live bugle on the 17th of September.

That is correct, Andy.

In fact, now that the airport is shut, I am getting on the great Eastern

East starboard ship that's going to sail across the Cape of Good Hope.

So I should be with you in a couple of weeks.

Excellent.

I look forward to it.

It's boarding right outside my apartment right now, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Haruba, thank you.

Have a lovely voyage.

Bugle money section now.

And well, where else to start then with the Brexit negotiations that appear to be foundering on the classic dispute point in any divorce proceedings of cold hard cash.

It's very hard to keep track, Alice, of exactly what's going on.

There has been no decisive progress, which is good.

That is what we voted for as a nation.

We were told that we would muddle through to a vague and unsatisfactory conclusion, and that is exactly what the government is giving us.

So that's fine.

Now, for those of you who've not been keeping track of what's going on in Europe, from the website of the government's Ministry for Extinging the EU, or the MFGTFOTEU, to give it its full name, a full question and answer on the current state of the negotiations.

So, what next?

How much is it going to cost?

What does Britain want?

And what does Europe want?

How long will negotiations take?

And exactly what aspects of the future relationship between Britain and Europe are being discussed?

F ⁇ off!

What is the most likely scenario to emerge at the end of the process?

Oh no!

I'll f ⁇ ing no!

No one f ⁇ ing knows!

F ⁇ you!

So that I mean that is straight off a government website, and that shows right to the very top there's a level of uncertainty.

I mean, I blame government censorship for the fact that that sentence didn't end.

F ⁇ you, Chris.

David Davis, the Minister for Getting the F ⁇ out of the EU,

said that the EU needs to be, quote, more imaginative and flexible

in the negotiations.

Well, I guess in the diplomatic gymnastics required to dismount this smoldering pommel horse of a process, you need to be imaginative.

I guess you've got to be pretty imaginative to imagine a situation in which this does not go steamingly tits up.

That's like a Yelp review for a sex worker.

Yes,

I'll have to take your word for that, Alice.

Thank you for doing that research.

We've all got hobbies.

And I think we've shown we're flexible in Britain.

I mean, many countries doggedly stick to wanting to do what's in their best long-term social and economic interests.

But we have flexibly triple-piped back somersaulted our wayo off that tediously conventional, predictable diving board into the concrete swimming pool of freedom.

As I said, many divorces get mired up in

money, and this is the world's most complicated divorce case in any case.

Further complicated by the fact that the partner who filed for divorce was at least 48% still in love, or at least willing to give counselling a go, which might have been a first step worth trying.

Also,

this isn't like an ordinary divorce, and we've been kind of logistically sewn together like some kind of bureaucratic human-centered bit.

Let's not push that analogy too far.

But anyway, I mean,

it's all comes down to my.

And we're an aging nation.

We want to get out.

We want to f around with other trading blocks while we're still young enough to enjoy it.

Yeah, I'm down for you guys

getting it back on with the Commonwealth, really.

I'd like free access to the UK.

Yes, it wasn't always a two-way access process in history.

In order to ensure that businesses and individuals face that cliff edge from the existing relationship to the future relationship, we all want to do illegal activities.

And it is outrageous.

A deal that is right for the United Kingdom, but also develops a deep and special partnership with North Korea.

You can't be a member of the single market without being a member of China.

In secret money news, the US Secret Service has warned it will run out of money to pay its staff by the end of next month because of the expense of protecting President Trump's family.

I think this is fantastic.

It makes me wonder what does less funding for the Secret Service look like?

Do they take it out of the service or out of the secrecy?

All I want to see is two giant men in wraparound shades running alongside a big black car, but instead of a black suit, the one on the left is just in his runging gear, and the other one isn't a giant man because they can't afford to.

It's just a slightly pudgy but enthusiastic intern called Alex who can't keep up with the motorcade.

I mean, if they take it out of the secrecy, then maybe we'll start finding out the uncovered secrets of the US history.

Maybe we'll find out who shot JFK.

Look, I think many people who have claimed that they voted for Donald Trump not because they're racist, bigots, or anything like that.

They've said it's a way of shaking up the corrupt institutions.

And to be fair, maybe it's more efficient than armed revolution in the streets as a way of bringing down the government.

You don't need to shoot the president from a grassy knoll.

You just need to elect a glassy knob.

Like, don't have a revolt in the streets, just have a revolting slug in the sheets, as Melania says.

So, I mean, I guess the obvious solution to this is some kind of crowdfunding appeal to pay for the US Secret Service.

But, I mean, then what's going to happen there?

Is it just going to be, give us money we won't say for what?

Yeah, well, just lay it on the cards.

Do you enjoy the comforting feeling that shady forces are taking on the baddies with legally dubious, if procedurally necessary, subterfuge?

Do you want leading public figures to have to walk around in karate kit ready to take on any potential assailant because they can't afford a security detail anymore?

Do you want to still see serious-looking men in black coats talking into their sleeves while trying to look as if everything is perfectly normal and normal people talk into their sleeves all the time?

Then please contribute to the giveusommoney.com fundraising page for the US Secret Services.

If you want future TV series about American spooks and spies to be any good whatsoever, because they will be somewhat undercut if the opening scene is a man busking on a sidewalk with a sign playing, please help raising money to go undercover in a Mexico-Russian arms for drugs cartel.

Please, please help.

How do you feel about waterboarding?

Don't tell us, we'll find out.

Trump smashed the equivalent Obama spending over eight years, the cost of the security services travel agrarian with his family in a single, in under a year.

Trump has or Trump has smashed through that, which is, and bear in mind, of course, Obama was a devout Muslim from Muslimistan and had to go to Mecca every fortnight.

So Trump's travel budget has now cost more than the entire Apollo program, the Vietnam War, and the entire US nuclear arsenal combined.

That is a lie, but when it comes to forces about politics and how much things cost, he started it.

But for the same money, they could have actually built a suspension bridge all the way from California to Guam.

Is that also a lie?

I don't know.

I think somewhere in the hinterland, isn't it?

They could certainly have started.

I mean, yeah, what I like to think of is all the Secret Service men running beside the cars.

They have to have like

marathon runners' legs by this point.

This is very good for fitness, very bad for everyone else.

And this is all in the context of Republicans recently suggesting cutting almost $1 billion from federal disaster relief to pay for the president's border wall, though now that an actual federal disaster has happened, they're backing off with the rapidity of a pickup artist who's tried to neg you and suddenly found out you actually have some self-esteem and a black belt in jiu-jitsu.

Circumstances have changed significantly since the bill was drafted earlier this summer, Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing said on Wednesday, wiping sweat from her brow.

God, take a compliment.

We just didn't think you were the kind of girl to have major national disasters.

Your emails now, and a few of you sent in emails on this subject, including Alex Sheets,

who says, hello, Andy.

In the enclosure link, you'll find a great headline.

Closest approach ever by a large asteroid won't end life on Earth, but probably should.

If you read further, you'll learn this asteroid is named after none other than Florence the Hot Stuff Nightingale.

Oh, yeah.

And it's coming past today as we record.

Big flow, the rocky flow, is zooming past just 4.4 million miles away.

Oh, yeah.

I can feel the raw eroticism of that rock from here.

Clean hands, warm heart.

Tattoo.

You

only really saw it when she wore low-cut tops, though.

And this email,

hang on,

this email came from Liz, who did not want to give her

full name, understandably.

Hello.

Hello, Chris, Andy, and Pooh Admira brackets, I assume.

I'm a bugle.

Correct.

You guessed the wrong.

You guessed the right co-host.

I'm a bugle reporting from the ragged that was once the functioning city of Houston, Texas.

Due to Hurricane Harvey, writes, Liz, our plumbing system is not working in our house.

Stranded on the second floor, we had to make do, brackets, do, with the double O.

I shit in a quart-sized Ziploc baggie.

Oh, no.

That was uh, that was another Kenny Rogers son, I think, was it?

Uh, I shit in a quart-sized ziplock baggie whilst listening to your podcast.

Is that a compliment or an insult, Liz?

Oh, man.

Um,

uh, P.S.

My family is safe with plenty of food and water.

I'm just waiting it out.

So

thanks for that.

Yes, I guess the logistics of

pooping in a Ziploc bag.

Look, you've got to make sure your labelling is correct.

That it's not.

You don't want to put that in the old Carbonara bag.

Testify.

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

Football and the transfer window slammed shut last night after a characteristic flurry of activity.

On the final day, Chelsea re-bought four of their own players off themselves for £190 million.

Time will tell whether that proves to be a good deal or a bad deal for the Londo Russian franchise.

Whilst rivals Arsenal have paid £29.95 for a commemorative pictorial coffee table book about their victorious league-winning unbeaten 2003-2004 season that they bought from their own club shop, Crystal Palace bought famous American attorney Lucilius Gramchansky after misunderstanding the fans' demands to go out and buy a really world-class defender.

Whilst Belgian side Genk, in their efforts to become the most monosyllabic outfit in world sports, have brought young Brazilian stars Hunk, Bulk, Shark, Youch, Lung, Sledge, and Crapson.

Those youngsters, of course, represented by the top Brazilian agents, been very

busy in this window, the top agents from Brazil, including Intermediao, Negocialdo, Go Between Yo, and

Thievo da Silva.

West Ham, they bought Elsie Sniddles after the 83-year-old toddled past their training ground on her way to the post office yesterday.

She'll cost the hammers up to £18 million from the Grannex residential care home in Romford, depending on appearances.

Italian giants Juventus, they played £74.3 million for nought-year-old Massimiliano Mozzarelli after the newborn baby twitched his one-day-old leg in a classic startle reflex and inadvertently kicked an apple out of the fruit bowl next to his mother's hospital bed into a nearby surgical bin.

Great strike from the young lad.

One for the future for the Bianco d area, though he might be a bench option in the Copper Italia.

Bayern Munich reported to have offered Olympiakos 125 million for former Greek deity Apollo, the versatile multifunction god of, amongst other things, knowledge, light, healing, and oracles.

The Bundesliga Giants will, of course, be hoping he doesn't bring any deadly plagues with him though, as was his occasional want back in his pomp.

Although some fans not happy with their club for signing someone who famously, allegedly turned a woman into a shrub.

Is that the kind of behaviour you want in a top-level footballer?

What kind of role model is that for the fans?

But it's a results business and football and morality.

Currently, well, they have a similar relationship to former Antarctic explorer, turned human ice cube impersonator Robert Scott and the Andromeda Galaxy.

They are a long way apart and largely unaware of each other's existence.

Paris Saint-Germain paid some chap called Alfonso $1.2 billion for first dibs on all children born in South America.

Newcastle United have played $12 million for Bertrand Gladge, the fictitious footballer I've just made up.

So there's at least some transfer action for the Toon Army to get excited about.

Whilst Real Madrid have bought a hot dog with ketchup, mustard and onions from a fast food van outside the Borussia Dortmund Stadium in Germany for a reported 32 million, just to stop Barcelona buying it first.

Los Blancos also rumoured to have bid 65 million for the severed arm of St.

Vincent of Saragossa.

Currently on a long-term deal with Valencia Cathedral, the third century limb, of course.

That could pave the way for the Galacticos to bid for the saint's leg from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris as they attempt to piece the influential martyr back together.

Barcelona themselves slapped in a late bid of £250 million for the concept of hope, despite the now largely discredited emotion having been out of the limelight in football for some time.

That's all your transfer window news up to date.

That's beautiful.

That's all for now.

Our thanks as ever to the Knight Foundation.

I wear Knight Foundation every day.

It keeps my face looking like a suit of arms.

Alice, it's been a delight to have you on, as always.

You've got a show coming up in London.

I do.

I have a show on the 9th of September in Camden at the Camden Head Comedy Club.

You can look that up on my website.

Also, I did a podcast with you, Andy, but my podcast with you, which is much less funny and much more tea-based.

It's called Tea with Alice.

So you should listen to that if you want to hear Andy not bullshitting for more.

Don't give it away.

uh so we'll be back next week with nish kumo and uh and tom ballard and i'm hoping next week i will announce the full dates for my us tour which will be happening in october uh going to uh many of the places i went to last year and hopefully a couple of new places as well um

and uh so full details of that imminent and please buglers do come along to those gigs because uh well i guess that's quite soon really isn't it so it would help if you buy some tickets for example um that's coming up next week.

Until next time Buglers, thank you for listening.

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.