Bonus Bugle – Too Much News #2

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to Bugle 4037 Summer Sub-episode A.

That's A for Apple, Argonaut, and or Axe, Ampazand and Andy's Altsman, who coincidentally is me.

The Bugle is on its summer holidays this week and next.

We're doing one of those trendy new action-adventure family trips where we try to lead an armed insurrection in rural Vauritania before installing ourselves as a dynasty of monarchic overlords.

Real fun for the kids.

Right, let's get stuck into this week's sub-bugle episode.

Some as yet previously never before hitherto for hereunder unpublicalised chunks of extra bugle featuring me as well as other people such as Hori Kondabolu, Anuvab Powell, Tom Ballard, Alice Fraser, Tiff Stevenson, Al Murray and Nish Kumar.

We will introduce you to Nish now with some biographical detail.

We'll have some Nish Kumar facts.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Nish facts, let's have...

I'm looking forward to learning these as much as anyone else is.

This is scrupulously fact-checked, as all viewboard facts are.

Nish is sixth in line to the throne.

That's true.

He hasn't specified which throne.

Throne of the United Kingdom.

And why is he sick in line to to the throne?

Let's have the next one.

After winning a competition on a cereal box to become the Duke of Deutsche.

The Duke of Deutscher is a nickname I use for my penis.

Nish Kumar is the subject of up to eight Destiny's Child songs.

That one is true, actually.

Eight Destiny's Child songs.

Let's have the next one.

Including Booty Lishes.

That is correct.

I don't think anyone was ready for this, Jelly.

For the benefit of the audio listeners, I just showed my ass to the audience to a response that could be best described as tepid.

Turns out they were more than prepared for this jelly.

Fact number three, Miss Kumar is not a war criminal.

Well, let's get a round of applause.

Very miss.

Wrong answer.

Full disclosure, that one is technically pending.

Fact number four, Miss Kumar has never romantically been linked with Vera Lynn.

Racist!

What is wrong with Vera Lynn?

She won us the Warnish.

What can I say, Andy?

She don't like chocolate milk.

Miss Kumar is allergic to evil.

It makes his beard and hair grow really fast.

He was bald and clean-shaven when he arrived.

Someone on the stage is bringing the bad stuff.

And one crisp fact,

Benches 525.

525 benches.

Sharing economy app news now.

And Al, I mean, we've reported on the Bugle before about amazing breakthroughs in the sharing economy, such as Foster Roster, the share parenting app.

and Mafioso Simple that puts together ad hoc crime gangs.

But you've actually found one that's maybe slightly more genuine than those two.

It's called Just a Baby.

Right.

And it's an app helping people who want to have just a baby to get together and make a baby.

Right.

Now there's some big questions with this, like, what the f ⁇ ing f?

Right.

I mean, this is...

So...

This is an app where you, you know, you put your details in saying,

I want to have a baby.

And then you find other people that want to have a baby and it matches you up.

And the idea is that you save time on the two years

having a relationship and getting pissed off with each other and then trying to save it by having a baby and then driving it completely onto the rocks by having a baby.

Right?

The idea is that your opening salvo is having the baby.

Right.

And the thing is, I could,

there's obviously some problems with this.

One of them is obviously, what if it's your thing?

Is you like knocking people up?

What if that's the only way you can get off?

Then this is the app for you.

Right.

But it's, this is, I mean,

do people really can't?

Are there other ways of doing this without reusing apps?

Well, it's Tinder minus the Johnnies, basically.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a great punk.

Breeder.

Breedo.

I mean, why they haven't called it Breeder or

something like that?

I'm out.

That's it.

I've all I've got.

Right.

That's all I've got.

But, I mean, it does, it is, it's amazing

the apps now that are bringing people together, these bizarre things.

You've got

Be My Biddy.

which pairs up people who want an extra grandparent with lonely old old women who can uh become their surrogate grannies.

Um

uh then there's well the cut culture sharing apps, people who like to appear like they're fully uh up to speed.

Well you've got Galleriesy, Pro Rawata and Surratate, who people who go to art galleries on your behalf and give you a a quick ten point uh bullet point list of uh things you can share at dinner party conversations.

And uh perhaps most uh most importantly, um Contagious.

Are you bored at work, stressed by deadlines, want a few days off sick?

Contagious pairs you up with someone

with a non-fatal communicable illness.

The premium Contagius service includes diseases requiring several months of quarantine.

So

it's, I mean, it's amazing.

Everything's there.

You can just, it's bringing the world together.

Jack and the team stalk as well.

If you enjoy stalking someone, but you don't have time to do it all by yourself,

it pairs you up with other similarly psychologically deranged people and you can share the workload.

It's a wonderful, wonderful world we live in.

Space potato news now, and

thank you, Hari, for bringing my attention to this story.

China is going to grow potatoes on the moon.

What a moment for humanity.

Potatoes on the moon.

And this is not important just for itself, Hari.

It's important for what it symbolizes.

All the other vegetables that might one day be grown on the moon.

For me, one small spud for man, one giant leak for mankind.

I mean, it's preparing for the inevitable, Andy.

I mean,

I mean, it's kind of optimistic news, you know, that somebody actually has a plan.

I mean, I don't know how long it's going to take because apparently they also brought silkworm eggs up there with the idea that the silkworms will hatch.

And I think their hope was to create a little ecosystem.

Right.

That would come as a result of the carbon dioxide released from.

I actually don't really know the science of it, but there's going to be some kind of ecosystem.

All I know for sure is that this will not lead to us living on the moon anytime soon.

So it feels like a desperate last-second attempt.

Right.

So, I mean, I was just looking at the moon the other day in the sky and thinking, hmm, oh, that place needs some silkworms.

You can tell from it.

That really needs a few silkworms.

To me, this looks like China almost getting complacent.

You know, it's taking becoming world number one superpower for granted now in the Trump era.

And, I mean, you'd have thought it'd be aiming higher.

You know, oh, great, we're going to the moon.

Well done, China.

You're a right little trainer superpower.

What are you going to do when you get there?

Oh, we're going to grow some potatoes.

Is that it?

Is that it, China?

That's not exactly grabbing the imagination of the world.

At least blow something up on the moon or play to your strengths and build a wall that can be seen from Earth.

That's the very least that people expect from China.

There are rumors that China, this isn't the extent of China's space plans, they're also on a similar level of excitement, plan to get to Mars by 2036 and build a shed and send a spacecraft to land on Pluto and leave a bucket on it.

Exciting times for Chinese space exploration.

And I guess, as they say, They've chosen to grow potatoes on the moon not because they are peasy, but because they are charred.

You're welcome, everyone.

You are welcome.

People say, We have to look at this positively from a free point of view, Nish.

We'll have greater national freedom.

We'll have carte blanche, people.

Sorry, we're leaving Europe.

We'll be able to drive the white cart.

We will be free.

We will be free from the liberating anchor of human rights.

free to enjoy the asphyxiating emancipation of higher carbon emissions, free to independently bend over and present our British backsides to the mercy of the international financial markets.

And at last, we'll be free to control our borders, to control immigration, so we can fulfil our long-held national dream of watching unpimped British strawberries slowly rotting in the fields every summer.

So we can calmly look up how to do an emergency appendectomy on yourself on Wikipedia instead of lying there helplessly as a professional but foreign surgeon waggles their scalpel on our undefended British government.

And above all, we will be free from the European Union undermining our British democracy, a deep, legitimate concern in this country.

For we are a nation with a first-past-the-post electoral system, an unelected second chamber of the House of Lords, and a monarch.

If there is one activity we Brits need no external assistance with, it is undermining our own democracy.

But the f out, Brussels!

Andy it is like the last night of the proms in here

I'm saluting I didn't even know I was doing it it was involuntary

I just slightly misjudged the length of rule Brussania there

Do you know who was sort of responsible for that front page?

George Osborne.

Yeah, yeah.

Gideon, please.

I think we should all refer to him as Gideon now.

Who now has about 55 different jobs.

I think he's working as a lion tamer for Jerry Cottle Circus as well.

Between him and Paul Nuttall, like the jobs we are going to do and the jobs we have done is pretty impressive, isn't it?

Did he just get an honorary doctorate from someone?

Osborne, yeah, well, I think he's going to do like half a minute's tutoring a month at Manchester University or something.

But

I mean,

it does slightly distress me the idea that basically he seems to have used having been in a senior position in the British government as a springboard to dicking around doing

doing stuff like an Austin Powers front page.

How has that it was taken

what other Chancellor of the Exchequer would have would have uh would have done would have I don't know F.E.

Smith back in the uh early days of the 20th century?

I don't know.

What the couple of Instagram posts if it had been around then?

I feel a bit bleak about it to be honest.

Well, I suppose now it's because I don't know technically how this works.

There's got to be a vote of no confidence for us to have another election, if we can take another election.

Right.

I mean, it doesn't need to be a vote of no confidence.

The Prime Minister has a face of no confidence.

Surely that should be enough.

It doesn't look good, like to get a vote of confidence from the DUP.

It doesn't look good to have to give to someone a billion pounds in order to receive their confidence.

Like, I don't think James Bond would be as cool if he found out he'd just been paying every single woman that he'd slept with.

That would be less impressive.

Andy, I have a question, more of a conundrum, really.

You know, I, Prime Minister Modi, was in Russia.

He visited a not a very well-known Russian leader called Vladimir Putin.

And the two of them had some intimate moments in a garden.

And our leader does that a lot.

You know, he's photographed often, because he's a single man, he's photographed often in gardens with lots of world leaders and despots holding hands, that kind of thing.

And there were a lot of memes about that, lots of memes about that.

And our leader has 30 million followers on Twitter.

And Megan Kelly, famous news host, former Fox News, now at CNBC, interviewed them, interviewed Putin and Prime Minister Modi.

And the first thing she, Prime Minister Modi asked her was, I saw your photograph on Twitter and you were holding an umbrella walking around St.

Petersburg.

And Megan Kelly said, oh, sir, are you on Twitter?

And that was a question, simple question, recorded on television.

And the Indian Twitter sphere went crazy.

You know, they put down their biographies of famous world leaders.

They went nuts because they said, How can Meghan Kelly not do her research?

How can she not know that our Prime Minister holds hands with Putin and walks around gardens?

How can she not know this?

What kind of

news show host is this?

I just want to know how you feel about this, Andy, about all of this, about

Prime Minister Modi walking around with Emmanuel Macron holding hands, hugging Malcolm Turnbull outside temples, wearing garlands, and having 30 million followers on Twitter who are like his Twitter brigade who immediately attacked Meghan Kelly, who I think

since that day has not been seen.

Well, I mean, it makes me feel quite jealous, to be honest, because our current Prime Minister, Theresa May, I mean, she looks like she doesn't really hold hands with anything at the moment apart from the concept of regret.

She, by comparison with Modi and his, what do you say, 30 million, 30 million followers, Theresa May, the de facto Empress of Britain, has 363,000 followers.

So, I mean, that is, that is disappointing.

And I'm just scrolling down through her Twitter feed, and

I can't see, I can't see her holding hands with Vladimir Putin at any point.

I mean,

there's nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Did she hold hands with Modi?

Because she went to India

last year.

I can't remember.

Was there a hand-holding incident, or was it like a game of scissors, papers,

well, sir?

I'm glad you bring that up.

Well, because you know, the Honourable Prime Minister David Cameron did play some cricket at Oval Medan in front of the Bombay High Court.

Theresa May wore a sari and went to a temple.

There was no handholding, but there was some sitting on a swing in Gujarat.

She was taken to Gujarat and shown some new

factories that were funded with British money, and she sat in a swing with Prime Minister Modi.

It's the same swing that Premier Xi Ping sat on.

So it's a famous swing, and I suppose

they went to and fro on the swing.

So that happened, but there was no handholding.

However,

there is video evidence of Theresa May holding hands with President Donald Trump as they walked to the Rose Garden.

Yeah, that was a famous, that was a famous one.

And also, the Twitter thing, it worries me, Andy, it worries me that the substitute wicket keeper of the Indian team,

the former Parthiv Patel, well, not the former, he's alive, but he was the former substitute wicket keeper, has 367,000 followers on Twitter.

So this is quite worrying.

This is very worrying that one of the leaders of the G7 countries has fewer.

And And with this latest sort of turnaround, she has now mastered something, if I can sort of slightly misappropriate a previous John Oliver Couch phrase.

She has now mastered what I think we have to describe as the f U-turn.

Because

it isn't just that she does a U-turn on things, it's that she manages to do it in a way which is as insulting to as many people as humanly possible.

Because first, there was the social care, the national insurance contributions and the budget, and with those two, she's just refusing to acknowledge that a U-turn took place.

With the election, election, she said there wouldn't be one, then she called one and then said she didn't want to directly debate anyone because people don't want to see politicians argue.

And as for Brexit, she campaigned hard for a mate and now is pushing for a Brexit so aggressive.

The brand Franz Ferdinand are going to have to change their name to Lord Kitchener.

A Dutch oven is going to have to be called an English bar gas microwave.

And French toast is going to have to change its name to weird bread.

Also played for Glamorgan.

Also,

the one thing she's sticking to, amidst all these U-turns, is the pledge to get net migration down to under 100,000.

That's the one she's standing by.

Just during the course of this gig, they've just released some more details on how they're actually going to do that because I've been accused of just saying it and not having any plans to do it.

And Theresa May says she's going to personally stand on the white cliffs of Dover,

growling and shaking her fist.

Put some flesh on those policy phones.

Yeah, I love.

That's the one that they won't let go.

We will, you turn on anything else, but foreigners can go f themselves.

And Theresa May is just one.

This is quite a big political award.

She's just won sneer of the year.

George Osborne had won it for the previous seven years in a row.

He was the federer of looking like a

There you go.

I do sincerely hope that brightened up your planet and or universe.

Next week, we'll be delving into the Bugle archives for a Bugle Best of August special.

Don't forget to book your tickets to see the live Bugles and the Edinburgh shows featuring not only me but many of the other Bugle co-hosts who have shared their unstoppable wisdom with us over the past nine months, including Alice Fraser, Tom Ballard, Tiff Stevenson, Nazeem Hussein and Al Murray.

Sorry if I've left anyone off that list.

Until next time, stay in school, keep off strychnine and trampoline with caution.

Bye-bye buglers.

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.