Bugle 4039 – Apologies to South America

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Please now welcome Andy Zaltman.

Thank you.

Hello, Buglers.

Hello, Scotland.

Yes,

for for the first time, this is the most northernmost live bugle in the history of the universe.

In fact, the first live bugle ever to take place north of where Roman Emperor Hadrian took one look at you locals, thought about it for two seconds, and said, wall, big f ⁇ ing wall.

Great.

So there we go.

So this is the first, also the first ever.

Chris, I think we can just fade the music down a little bit there.

We have...

I couldn't find the volume control, Andy.

He's playing and playing.

That's what we pay him the big bucks for.

Hello, buglers.

Hello.

This is Chris, the producer.

He is up at the back.

Key buglers.

A dance as old as time itself.

This is the first time I've done a live bugle at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

There's about 300 people in the room today.

If you could all announce your names individually, that would help fill the hour.

300 people, that's approximately 300 times more people than paid to see my first ever Edinburgh show.

On day one of my debut show, Andy Zoltzman vs.

the Dog of Doom in 2001.

There were, in fact, more people in the cast than in the paying audience.

Me and a chap called John Oliver, offstage, I don't know what happened to him, but um, the uh

Witzer Splitter, that's it.

Yeah

Little Stevie Splitter himself, so um

with his green card, the shortest resignation note in history.

Um

um

uh which means that uh so threat uh one person in 2001 on day one of my show, 300 people here, which means that when I come back in 16 years' time for Andy Zaltzmann's Bob Sled mayhem,

they will have to build an extra tier on the Murrayfield rugby stadium because that 68,000 capacity is not going to cut the Zaltz mustard.

Also, this is historically the first live bugle ever to contain absolutely no lies.

That didn't last long.

And also the first live bugle ever to feature the word acrobat, plus the first bugle in the history of humankind to feature a tank full of performing sharks and seals doing an interpretative dance on the cruelty of the natural world that also functions as a satire on the predatory exploitation of capitalism.

Hang on, I'm just hearing that after the dress rehearsal this afternoon of that section, it will in fact be just the sharks.

Just a tank of slightly portly sharks.

I'm now hearing that the tank had a leak.

There are no sharks.

Shame it was a good tank.

World War I Schneider CA1.

Classic, classic tank.

Above all, this is the first live bugle ever to take place during the immediate aftermath of a retaliatory American nuclear strike on North.

Sorry,

that's the script for next week's show, my mistake.

Sorry.

This is the fifth live bugle, the fifth visual version of a show that was existing perfectly well as something invisible and non-visibility dependent.

and is currently being performed in at least three more dimensions than is strictly necessary, by which I mean thank you for coming

also doubling up is issue 4039 of the bugle 4039 coincidentally the estimated number of times during President Trump's news conference on Tuesday that White House chief of staff John Kelly was seen to mouth the words oh for f's sake

We are here in the Newtown Theatre making this the first bugle in more than 10 years to take place in a room with an enormous pipe organ.

I don't know if, can you see the pipe organ?

It's slightly hidden behind the curtains.

A sensation.

There was one before,

the Never Broadcast Pilot Show that John and I recorded in St.

Peter's in the Vatican.

Never seen a pope that cross.

Anyway, but

the origin of the pipe organ, of course, goes way back to a Carthaginian military with Hannibal when he was elephanting the shit out of the Alps on his way to Rome.

He noticed that different sized elephants sneezed at different pitches if you tickled them on the trunk.

They

lined them all up and managed to play out a tune.

But anyway, so it's great because I'm a qualified pipe organist.

So, hang on, I'm just gonna

give it a go.

I'm just gonna play the pipe organ in a few short seconds, Chris.

I'm just gonna play the

pipe organ.

Let's get right back here now.

I'm about to play the pipe organ, Chris.

I'm now sitting at the pipe organ.

Oh, there, I'm playing the pipe organ.

Right, I think that joke's got as far as it can possibly go.

A lovely little visual joke for the listeners at home.

Right.

Well, I enjoyed that.

Good.

And on this day in Any Guesses, People?

The year 963, of course.

Correct.

Nikephoros Phokas was crowned Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

Well, there we go.

That's right.

Nikephoros, of course, was renowned for his super high-quality efforts on the battlefield.

Popping up with some cracking military victories, including capturing the Syrian city of Aleppo,

during which he stole

2,000 camels.

You're a weird crowd.

Weird.

He concentrated on military success at the expense of his people's well-being.

He started a war with Bulgaria.

This is how it all starts, people.

This is how it starts.

It's that easy.

He loved his wife so much that when he died, he swore a vow of chastity for the rest of his life.

But then he remarried

and still kept that vow of chastity.

His second wife, unsurprisingly, got quite pissed off with him and had him assassinated

before his head was paraded on a spike.

It's so easy to manipulate a crowd.

Anyway, so

a contemporary description of Nikephoros by a chap called Bishop Luprand described him as a monstrosity of a man, a pygmy, fat-headed and like a mole with the smallness of his eyes, with a disgusting short, broad, thick, and half-hoary beard, disgraced by a neck only an inch long, with bristly hair, an extensive belly, and very long of hip, considering his short stature.

Also, clad in a garment costly but too old and foul-smelling and faded through age.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm sick of male politicians being judged on their appearance and what they wear.

Sickens me.

Can we not judge Nike Foros Foros on his brutal military tactics and his despotic rule?

The disgusting bristly head, short-necked, fat, short, pig-eyed, untrendy bastard.

Sorry,

I'm a product of my times.

As always, some sections of this audio newspaper are going straight.

Oh, Lord.

Touch me, I'm real.

This week.

This week, in the bin, a holidays in sunny North Korea section.

Now, someone emailed my satirist for Hire Show, which I'm doing in the afternoons during the festival, saying he'd been on holiday in North Korea.

Although he did have the decency to put the word holiday in inverted commas, which is basically saying I'm involved in high-level state espionage.

Basically like someone going on holiday to Moscow in the 1970s with a suspicious collection of new pens and 14 passports.

Which what happened to my great-uncle Subtifugio?

He used to work for MI6.

They went through a phase of giving their spies Brazilian footballer style nicknames.

Try and bring a bit of glamour and flair to the espionage business back in the 70s.

He worked with Espiono Genho,

Moletta, Narkow, Sherlockerson,

Undercovera and Dick.

Great days.

A lot of flair, a lot of flair.

Didn't always get the results, but they're great to watch.

Also in the bin, a special pull-out supplement with all the news from the World Preemptiveness Championships, which are taking place next week.

Terrific performance from America's

Kennethina Twerple of the Boston Anticipators.

She'd just taken gold this afternoon.

Also, on the 10th anniversary of the credit crunch beginning, we interview a leading global banker on what the banking sector and capitalism in general have learned from their mistakes.

Here's a sneak expert of that interview.

There you go, that says it all, really.

So,

right now it's time to introduce our guests.

Now, you've already been partially introduced to the disembodied voice of Chris, the producer, the man, who on a weekly basis transcribes what I say, goes home, and does an impression of me reading it out into his special tape recorder, then splices it in with whatever my co-hosts have said.

But you know, my initial contract with the Times so that they weren't allowed to use my actual voice.

You've got to have all these haggles.

I mean, John was similar.

He wanted a unicorn and a mermaid in his recording studio in New York City, and man, was he cross when they tried to compromise by giving him a narwhal and a centaur.

Anyway, but

where did this sentence begin?

Anyway, it's far the back of the room, the sunny listening of sound levels.

So next time you complain that it's too loud or too soft, it's probably because the mob got to him.

Little joke for 1960s boxing fans there.

It's Chris the producer.

Give him a round of applause, there we are.

And

who

triathloned his way here?

I actually got the train, Andy.

Oh, did he?

I arrived at Edinburgh-Waverly

in shorts and t-shirt.

Well, that was naive, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Has anyone got a jumper?

And joining me this week, a woman who has firmly established herself in the vanguard of lapsed Jewish Catholic Buddhist bugle co-hosts.

Right at the very top, in fact.

A woman whose name suggests she could easily be Scottish, but isn't.

Who could easily be Australian and is fresh from not being embroiled in the controversy over Justin Gatlin's winning the world 100 meters

final in London because she was already up here at the fringe doing her show Empire at the Gilda Balloon I have to shorten these introduction it's Alice Fraser

Hello Andy!

Yeah, the name Fraser is a lie, which is why I wear the clan badge.

My grandfather was a Jewish Czechoslovakian man called Adolf Friedenberg

and he came out during the war and started making ball bearings for the RAF at which point they were like all a bit awkward signing the invoices

so he just he just changed it to the most Anglo name he could think of which was Andrew Peter Fraser and

so that's my story

Top story this week.

We are still here.

We are still here.

You seem to greet that with the same level of enthusiasm as the military excesses of Nico Forrest Focas.

There has been no global conflagration, no thermonuclear festival of boom death, no destruction of our species, planet, and everything we hold dear, information correct at the time of recording.

Good news for me because there's a test match

starting tomorrow.

Alice, are you pleased that the world did not end over the last seven days?

Well, I've been at the Edinburgh Fringe, so usually about an hour before my show, I'm wishing it would all explode.

So, Guam is still calm.

Kim Jong-un is not about to storm Santa Monica Beach in LA out of a decommissioned 1960s Soviet inflatable dinghy, which is, I think, the extent of the North Korean Navy base.

If the world gets beaten by Kim Jong-un,

we need to take a long hard bath with ourselves as a species.

And part of the reason for Armageddon avoidance this week is because Donald Trump,

God rest his soul,

if it ever existed.

Which looking unlikely.

He's been rather preoccupied this week.

He spent the week firing not physical rockets at Pyongyang, but metaphorical rockets at the smouldering wreckage of his own presidency while strafing the concept of presidential dignity with his trademark rotary cannon of

blasting the last traces of hope from the soul of sensible America with his thermobaric penis bomb of cantankerous quackery.

I've no idea if that even makes sense.

What a culprit to say it.

Alice, have you enjoyed Trump's action this week?

Yes, I have.

He inflamed tension after this rally with the white nationalists in Virginia by saying both sides were to blame for the violence.

His statements were condemned by some Republican leaders and praised by white supremacists.

Before he was sulkily forced by public pressure to admit that Nazis are probably not good, and then he plugged his golf course.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke applauded Trump for his honesty and courage.

And Richard Spencer, the head of a white nationalist group and famous punch in the face on live TV receiver, wrote on Twitter that he was proud of Trump, which

is like getting your cheeks pinched by an elderly relative whose hands are covered in human feces and is also a violent racist.

How much empirical research did you do for that line, Alice?

Too much, too much.

Look, I mean, on the one hand, it is.

It is.

It is.

Yeah.

You do conjure up some really horrific images.

It's understandable from Trump's point of view.

We live in a very sensitive world, and he didn't want to be accused of perpetrator blaming.

The PC Brigade would be all over him if he starts blaming, hinting that the people responsible for something terrible happening to other people are in any way responsible for what they themselves actively did.

You know how the media reacts these days.

But eventually he did, as Alice said, tell the far-right Scheisticles they had been a bit naughty.

But it was not the most convincing of criticisms it was about as convincing as an eight-year-old boy forced to say sorry for stealing his sister's last fish finger and I have researched this

and saying I'm really sorry whilst eating the fish finger

and obviously reading off an auto cue

We do keep an auto-cue in the kitchen just for such moments.

I mean, the words looked okay on paper, but he didn't exactly give it the full Marlon Brando-getting character and say, like you mean it.

But it didn't last.

And he was basically back yesterday to blaming both sides.

And to be fair to him, that makes him 50% right, which is way more right than he usually is.

Yeah, usually, yeah.

I mean, I enjoyed the fact that the white supremacists were carrying tiki torches like a dorky advertisement for a garden furniture warehouse.

They were just shouting Nazi slogans at protesters and synagogues and presumably passing birds that looked foreign.

And Richard Trumka, who's the president of the AFL-CIO Labour Federation, he resigned from Trump's American Manufacturing Council, which I mean is great, but also, like, why now?

Like, that's like joining a gardening group, going to the floor yard, and then after three and a half hours of looking at delicately arranged rose dioramas, suddenly storming out because you've realised you don't like mulch.

The British prisons minister, Sam Jeemer, said after this that Trump was losing his moral authority.

Which

was rather like accusing Steve Bannon of losing his sense of fun and his insatiable joie de vivre.

Like accusing lonesome George, the late former Galapagos tortoise, of losing his world pole vault record.

The only thing Bannon's ever lost is his foundation.

Or accusing Helen of Troy, the mythical ancient Greek war-provoking stunner, of losing her MacBook heir.

heir.

Because, in the words of Muddy Waters, the fount of all blues truth, you can't lose what you never had.

Now, this is clearly not true when it comes to the global banking sector, in which

you can not only lose what you never had, but also lose what everyone else did have at the same time.

But it is not true when it comes to Donald Trump's moral authority.

Not everyone's been disappointed with him, though.

Some people quite happy with it.

In particular,

he's been cheered every step of the way by the ghosts of his White House predecessors, James Buchanan, Andrew Jackson, and Warren G.

Harding, as they excitedly celebrate finally being bumped down the worst presidents ever list.

Do we have any white supremacists in, by the way?

Don't put your hands up.

I mean, I don't think I could ever be a white supremacist.

I mean, I find it hard enough deciding whether I preferred Spanish or Italian ham.

So

reaching a firm conclusion on which race is superior to all the others, I think, is going to be beyond me.

But I do think dogs are better than cats.

But

testify.

And also,

Trump's reason for not coming out more strongly, more quickly against the actions of the white supremacists was because he said he wanted to think about it and find out all the facts.

before commenting.

Maybe it shows he can learn.

But I said there's a lot of hypocrisy in the the world.

I see hypocrisy everywhere I look.

For example, for example,

the art world.

Very hypocritical.

You put a cow in formaldehyde, it's considered art.

You put formaldehyde in a cow, the police become involved.

Alice, you are the official Bugle correspondent for A, modern communications technology, and B, people sending unwanted pictures of their junk to other people unsolicited.

Have you got any stories covering both of those this week?

Oh boy, do I.

In unexpected penis news,

a new trend emerging in New York City has seen men using Apple's airdrop feature to send pictures of their penises to unsuspecting passengers on the same train.

So these horrible people with their horrible penises have been using the airdrop feature,

and then you like you get a ooh, a message, and it pops up, and it's the digital equivalent of leaping out of a bush and flashing someone.

On the other hand, what is art?

Perhaps this is the new wave of the avant-garde.

Nudes throughout history have been provocative statements.

Isn't this just the equivalent of a dick Picasso?

You...

Oh, God.

Oh, boy.

Strammy.

You should be pleased to receive a Vincent Van Koch in your iPhone

during a boring commute.

You don't know that this dick pig isn't the Leonardo DaWinky of the UA

They're putting the disgust into Edgar Dega, the man into Manet, the hoof into Damien Hurst,

the pork into Francis Bacon, the hump,

the hump into Marcel Duchamp.

And in reality, the unhappy recipients of these artistically edgy man-rodins

haven't got a firm grasp on their privacy settings.

Look, there is aggression on both sides.

As I believe, Donald Trump recently and so correctly said just before he plugged his golf course over the murdered body of a young lady.

Well, that ended less cheerfully than it had begun.

It's the Buddhist in me, Andy.

Like life.

Sorry, get a bit philosophical with you.

I ran into my dad once as a kid and I was like, dad, death.

And he was like, yes, Alice, life is suffering and and then you die, happy fifth birthday.

Well just show that, I mean just it's it's too easy to make this make I mean you've mentioned all the great dicks of uh art.

I mean Michelangelo, yeah, it took effort, didn't he?

You had to sculpt an authentic looking William Balls out of a piece of marble and now it's just a phone, we've lost our edge as a species.

Wasn't he the one who j said that it was waiting to emerge from the rock?

Well that was his excuse, wasn't it?

I mean a lot of people through history have done what rocks have told them, them so.

Let's move on now to Britain news.

Chris, give us a f ⁇ ing jingle.

Sorry.

So the government is now...

Are you Brexit fans, by the way?

Are you enjoying Brexit, Britain?

Give me a cheer if you were in favour of Remain.

Give me a cheer if you were in favour of Leave.

Who would have thought it?

Who would have thought it?

In this live podcast recording at the trendy Edinburgh Fringe Festival?

I don't know how many concentric bubbles we can be in at once,

but reality is a comfortingly long way away right now.

It's a Venn diagram that just looks like a hypnosis coil.

The government is continuing to basically riff out

Brexit's

improv politics at its worst.

Apparently,

they're trying to get an interim customs deal.

Always goes down well with the public.

I mean, it's not really giving the Brexit voters what they wanted, which was the instant economic ruination of this country.

The government has a duty to deliver on what people voted for.

I mean, essentially,

it's an interim deal.

I don't know how much good it's going to do long term.

Essentially, it's like putting on a jock strap and a box before jumping into a crocodile pit.

It might not do much good long term, but it will help if the croc goes for a nutshot with its tail to get things started off.

Could you, what's your name?

Colin.

Colin, where are you from?

Kansas.

Kansas?

Okay, so you've got an objective view on this.

Colin from Kansas.

Did you vote in the Brexit election?

In the Brexit vote?

No, no.

Why not, mate?

This affects the whole world.

Let's get in.

No time for this level of out.

Find the fing way.

I've voted in your elections because I don't give a shit.

So what's your solution to Britain's current Brexit problem?

I don't have one for Britain, but Scotland could always just go independent and move back in.

Scotland, what go into, please, Scotland, on behalf of all right-thinking English people,

never leave.

Please,

please, never leave.

Have you looked at how blue England is

on those maps they published the morning after elections?

Please.

Please never leave.

What about you?

Where are you from?

I'm his brother.

I'm from the South.

Oh, you were on my show yesterday, weren't you?

All right, welcome.

You sat in the front row there as well.

I guess if you're going to come all the way from Kansas, you want to see me in all my 3D glory.

I think you were in my show the other night.

Yay!

We were a front row there, too.

Concentric rings.

Because you were on the bugle.

Do you work for the CIA or something?

She was on the bugle previously.

Yeah.

So we saw her here because...

Right.

I love the Bugle listeners coming to my shows because half of you guys like me and the other half are like...

But very polite, very.

In other,

any comments on Brexit from the Australian perspective?

I mean, from my perspective, it's almost like you're subjecting yourself to the authority of the EU in exchange for not having any power in the EU.

It's like a friends with benefit deal where you get all of the upsides of a relationship without any of the work or actual benefits.

It's like the Netflix and chill of international relations, by which I mean you guys are likely to get f but you're not allowed to talk about your feelings afterwards.

As I believe David Cameron himself said on the day before

in

other politics news, Big Ben is going to be silent for four years.

The celebrity Westminster clock is

being sacked for four years

whilst it's being repaired.

I don't know how we're going to tell the time.

Now,

it's going to be very difficult in Westminster because

they have a problem with keeping up to schedule.

I mean, the House of Lords, for example, is routinely 150 years behind the time.

I hope they replace it with a giant novelty alarm clock.

I want them to replace it with an aggressive man called Ben who just walks around going bong.

In Australian Go Back to Where You Came From news, Deputy Prime Minister and all-round loud cockhead Barnaby Joyce has been outed by the New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English for being a secret New Zealand citizen.

So Australia has a law requiring elected representatives not to hold dual citizenship, which is a terrible idea in a country that makes a hobby of seeing how quickly it can get rid of its people in charge.

So someone outed a Green Senator for having a dual citizenship, and since then it has been like a bloodbath, because Australia is a country where everyone's a relatively recent immigrant.

You have toilets here that are older than the first building in Australia.

So we've had five prime ministers in three years, and now it's just a game of dual citizenship dominoes.

Dual citizenship dominoes in the Senate.

Two Greens had to resign and then there was like great scorn and mockery by the Conservatives and then people started checking with their mums and found out that a one nation senator and also Barnaby Joyce our current deputy prime minister is potentially in the firing line.

He's a man who up until now was most well known for charmingly flushing a toilet during a radio interview

and using his maiden speech to call abortion the slavery debate of our time.

So

sorry, you might have to go back on some of this.

He flushed a toilet during a radio interview.

Allegedly, yes.

Right.

Was this in a radio studio?

Does he...

Does he...

There now is a picture of...

Is that a llama, Chris?

Yes, it is, yes.

That is.

That's Barney.

So the next Prime Minister, we think.

Right.

He's looking at it like that because he's a New Zealander.

So you're not allowed to be...

You're not allowed to be an MP or a government minister?

You're not allowed to be a senator, yeah, if you have a dual citizenship because they worry that you might be a sneaky spy for New Zealand.

Without wishing to be too cynical about it and acknowledging that I do come from Britain, is it not a bit late to start worrying about whether white people in Australia are real Australians or not?

Is that not

shooting the horse after the door has bolted?

Quick fact now, an acrobat is an ancient Greek flying rodent that's been nailed to a hill.

Thank you.

It's fashion news time now.

Alice, you're also our fashion correspondent.

Oh, am I?

Good.

Well, it's not going to be me, is it?

Let's be realistic about this.

We've managed to get through the first eight years of the bugle with no fashion correspondent.

Well, in telling women how to have bodies news, New South Wales Australian Medical Association President Dr.

Brad Frankham has claimed that the use of overweight models in a sports illustrated catwalk show sends an unhealthy message to women.

I presume the message is that women are allowed to be fat while walking a short distance in spandex underpants, as long as they're still unfeasibly good looking.

He likened the use of overweight models to sending women down the runway while smoking cigarettes, claiming the brands are using overweight models for shock value, which is totally true, of course.

The last time I saw a fat woman on the beach, I was so shocked.

I had to have a lie down and then a nice swim and then reapply my sunscreen before some more lying down and then some fish and chicks.

Modern model Robin Lawley has weighed in on the debate about runway size by saying she knew the models and they were all very healthy and that Dr.

Brad was a dick bag.

I mean,

she didn't say the last bit, but she was thinking it very loudly.

Lawley, who's a plus-size model, which is to say about normal size for a human lady, except more marketably proportioned, has said, It's nice to have a range of different bodies on the runway, completely missing the fact that models are meant to look like grumpy teenage coat hangers with a heroin addiction.

I think models are very inspirational.

They inspire the youth to stare blankly into the middle distance while covered in oil, relaxing their mouths, and looking half like they're about to fall asleep and half like they want a fing car.

You've basically just

summarised the life and career of Dick Cheney there, haven't you?

I think it's time for

audience QA.

So Chris

is going to be

have any of you seen Chris before?

This is what he looks like.

This is

this

is the visual version.

I met Chris just outside.

I was waiting and just writing some stuff and i was writing a pun and he walked past and saw my expression and was like alice because you could see the pun face he cringed it was monstrous it was the same as his face it was the very same face

he knows that face

you will soon know that face

let's have a

will the uh pink ball still swing after 20 overs right okay now this is

This is obviously the big issue we've been skirting around here on

this week's Bugle.

There's obviously a lot of minor things happening in the world, but the really big story is

Day Nights Test Match Cricket coming to England for the first time.

Test mates begin.

That's why I'm so delighted that Armageddon hasn't happened.

Tomorrow, as we record in Birmingham, first day nights cricket.

Great news for cricket fans and vampires, I guess,

who've been previously marginalised from watching Test Match Cricket.

Let's do a quick straw poll.

Give me a cheer if you are a cricket fan.

Congratulations on your correct lifestyle choices.

Hands up if you are not a cricket fan.

What the f are you losers doing with your lives?

Right, any other questions?

My hair has been receding since I was a kid.

Right.

I just wanted to ask,

anyone who can see me can see that.

I don't have a lot of it right now.

But I just wanted to know, as you get balder, does life get better?

what are you

what do you

what what are you implying here this is uh I'm just I'm just saying this is an this is an audio show I know I know that was my special secret but as as a man with a seemingly wonderful life right

but the correlation would seem that I also have a good life ahead right well the thing is you're you don't know about my the current state of my hairline I do not have a receding hairline I have a de-receding hairline non-existent hairline.

I had male pattern baldness as a baby, and

it's moving forward.

And

by the time I'm 85, it will be, I'll just have a beautiful, full, luxurious face of hair.

Andy, you have exactly the right amount of hair, it's just innovatively distributed.

That is a really impressive way around that problem.

Any other questions?

Any other questions?

Yes, a couple up there.

Oh, look at that.

That is a born triathlete.

He's leapt up the stairs and he will swim back down them before cycling onto the stage.

Should Donald Trump decide to start a nuclear war, will he be able to stop making those stupid hand gestures long enough to actually push the button?

When that's...

Well, I assume he's practiced.

I mean, I can't imagine that, you know, he went through, because they do, they presumably are, as soon as he won that election, you know, he gets all these

briefings right through the day, what he's going to have to do as president, all these daily, and admittedly d clearly didn't listen to any of them.

But there must have been some kind of physical pressing the big red button.

Pressing the bit.

I imagine it's like a giant mushroom-shaped thing, and he's gonna go for the two-handed

flip of the hair.

He basically, and most still photos of Donald Trump look like he is playing darts.

And I found that slightly reassuring.

I don't know.

Although, the problem is, when he's playing darts, I imagine that he's playing darts.

There we go.

There's proof.

There is proof.

Now, what you have to imagine is a dart in his hand and on the wall a map of the world.

Then

you start to worry.

There's a couple down here chris alex salmond has got a

a show at the fringe yep should theresa may come up here and visit

so has anyone been to alex salmon show

no

it's hard to get you to you got to swim upstream

oh yes

not technically a point but a proper joke so uh well done that's no place for that really on the show alice So, right.

It's a special Venezuela section.

Because, well, Venezuela seems a bit of a mess right now, and Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, he's been criticised for not criticising President Maduro.

He still condemns violence committed by any side.

There we go.

But I mean, I don't know what you think of Maduro.

Have you got any Nicholas Maduro fans in?

Well, I mean, the thing is,

Corbyn has been reluctant to say that he is a dictator or criticised.

But as the old saying goes, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

Especially if it has violently repressed any other birds at the duck pond from saying it's a duck.

And is wearing the same kind of bushy moustache that certain other famous proven ducks from history have

worn.

warned I mean there is certain amount of evidence that Maduro is a dictator for example he's ruled by decree without the approval of parliament for the last two and a half years

he's dependent on the military for power and also but set against that there's this crucial piece of evidence that Nicolas Maduro is not a dictator because an opinion poll showed an opinion poll in Venezuela showed that 63% of Venezuelans think Maduro is a dictator

which proves that he is either not a dictator or he is a f ⁇ ing shit dictator.

Because if that kind of opinion poll is being published, he is falling down on the job.

If he'd been a real dictator, that would have been in the 0% region at the very highest.

Also, there's been three reports now from the Organization of American States

into Maduro's government's naughtiness,

accusing them of authoritarianism, brutality, and repression.

And as Oscar Wilde himself said, to have one report accusing you and your government of

authoritarianism, brutality and repression might be considered unfortunate.

To have two does start to look just a little bit despoty.

And

to have three, well, it is surely just a matter of time before someone pulls down a giant statue of you in a symbolic moment of revolution.

Now, I should point out also, I'm not saying when I mentioned the moustaches earlier on, I'm not saying if you have a bushy moustache, you are necessarily a dictator.

What I am saying is that if you have a bushy moustache and you've had three independent reports saying you're a dictator,

it does start to look like you might be a dictator.

His predecessor, Hugo Chavez,

which long-term buglers will probably remember him, he apparently shut down 34 radio stations when he was president, but Jeremy Corbyn explained he just really hated Ed Sheeran.

But anyway,

like all Game of Thrones viewers.

But anyway,

I know a South American guy who's been to Venezuela.

In fact, he'd visited every single country on that continent.

But it's not just South America,

he once went on a holiday tour of the historic cities of Italy.

He loved it.

Apart from the fact that he was terrified of canals and would break down in fits of tears whenever he saw one.

He was a real Venezuela.

He worked in the riot police for a bit, invented a new way of policing involving

policing riots, including the quick policemen running at protesters with battens, then passing the battens onto the stronger policemen who would whack the protesters, kind of like a cross between a charge and a relay, a kind of Chile.

He claimed to have fought against the communists in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s.

I said, really, have you?

And he said, sure, in Am.

I said,

I said...

I said, now for anyone listening to this at home, Chris is responding to the, well,

we'll put this up on the Facebook page.

The pictures that are getting far bigger laughs than the jokes are getting.

You have more puns than I have pictures.

Anyway, he said, yeah, sure and numb.

I said, I don't believe you.

But peruve it.

But anyway, he got in trouble eventually.

The South American government forces tried to arrest him.

He was always afraid of this, so he had a very well-defended house.

Took them half an hour with a battering ram to get into his house.

But eventually they got through into the entrance hall.

Phew, Phew, they said, that is a heck of a door.

Anyway, once they got in,

the authorities confiscated everything, even his pet talking bird.

But he didn't want to let them take it.

He clasped it to his chest.

His chest.

But the chief of police said, let the parrot go.

Why?

No, why?

He interrupted.

Anyway, his.

here, his wife, his wife is a very odd lady.

She kept all her underwear on the shelves underneath her two windows.

She had one shelf for her knickers, and the other was her bra-sill.

Bra-sill.

But anyway, they can confiscate everything, as I said, including one solitary woolly ankle-length boot.

The chief of police again said, I'm going to have to take your ugaway.

Your urgaway.

Your ugaway.

Anyway, she got frantic when that happened.

I need a brew to calm me down immediately, she said.

I need an urgent tea now.

Sorry,

I need an urgent tea now.

An urgent tea.

But my mate.

Anyway,

but he said he wanted a pint.

He said,

I'm a guy and I need a beer.

Guyana need a beer.

And his mate Alphonse was with him.

He was worried too.

He said, I'm a French guy and I need a glass of wine.

so my mate sat down drinking his uh drinking his pint, but it was a miserable pint, it was a real glum beer.

Glum beer, glum beer,

but uh, of course, uh, ended up getting pissed and arguing about who owns islands in the South Atlantic.

Eventually, he decided to settle it by

throwing a bit of cutlery in the air, and whoever it was pointing at was the winner.

He was not happy with it, but his mate said, Come on, let's do it, let's just see where the fork lands.

Right, and I realise that might be considered controversial in some circles.

So, right.

That brings us to the end.

Oh, thank you for staying, by the way, for the last five minutes.

Particularly you, Alice.

You could have easily scuttled up a control.

I should have.

Now, I've got an endorphin hide from the pain.

Now I'm going to.

All right, I think that's it.

There were some other things we were going to do.

Oh, including, well, Armageddon may or may not happen.

But it might not be in the way that we're expecting, because scientists have discovered 91 volcanoes underneath the Antarctic ice sheet.

So, surely, I mean, it's always the quiet ones, isn't it?

That is the continent you least expect.

Yeah, there's 91 volcanoes just sitting there like a bad curry that the Earth ate a couple of million years ago.

The ice caps are the equivalent of a quivering sphincter that's temporarily holding back a public transport disaster.

Classic Fraser bugle.

Classic.

We will leave you on an Alice Fraser Sphincta reference.

You missed my flamingo rage.

But we'll get there some other time.

Thank you for coming, Bugles.

There is another live bugle on the 27th featuring Tom Ballard and Al Murray in this same room.

You can see Alice at the Gilda Balloon at 10pm at the Gilda Balloon.

It's not like this.

You can see me doing Saturdays for her at the stand at 3pm.

It is quite like this.

only with marginally fewer sphincter references

thank you very much for coming thanks to the Newtown Theatre for having us

until next time goodbye buglers

thank you thank you

hi buglers it's producer Chris here I just wanted to very quickly tell 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.