Bugle 4030 – AAA

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4030 of The Bugle, the universe's leading and only audio newspaper for a world almost narcissistically obsessed with its own visuality.

This is the show for the week beginning Monday the 29th of May 2017.

I am Andy Zaltzmann, comedian, non-functioning acrobat and demeritus professor of factuality from the University of Bilge.

Live from the emerging continent of Britain in London,

formerly known in ancient times as Londinium, before it was shortened to just the first two syllables because no one could ever get to the fourth syllable um without whomever they were talking to saying get the f on with it i'm f ⁇ ing busy uh it's another two-guest bugle buglers.

Firstly, on Bugle debut, almost 500 years since his appearance on the bugle was first leaked or foretold, whichever way you see it, by the 16th century soothsaying sensation, Mike Nostradamus, the Frenchy foreteller, the Provençal prognosticator himself, who wrote, the present time, together with the past, shall be judged by a great jovialist.

It points to one thing and one thing only, a great jovialist, one of Britain's finest comedians, who will judge the present time, i.e., appear on the bugle, the ultimate judge of the happenings and mores of the contemporary world, and who will also judge the past.

So it has to be someone who's also presented history shows on TV and written a history book.

So this is no surprise to anyone who's been tracking that prophecy since Big Nozza cranked out the cryptic and prophesized the shit out of it way back in the 16th century.

It's my old host from the bitter rival radio shows Seven Day Saturday and Seven Day Sunday.

They could never quite get on at the same time.

It's Al Murray.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Al.

Lovely to have you on the show.

And I've been introduced before to things, but never such length and

quaciousness.

It's really very special.

Yeah, I mean, that's basically most of the show done already.

No, anything to eat into my contribution, I'm happy with that.

And rejoining the bugle once again, putting me not here into Northern Hemisphere because she's very much on the other side of the equator.

10,509 miles away from this studio if you go in a dead straight line, which, if you're going by foot is not advisable.

Down the line from Australia, it's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Alice.

Hello, hello, hello, Andy.

How are you?

I'm very well, thanks.

Lovely to have you back on

the bugle.

Albeit that, I mean,

the previous times we've recorded, you have been, you know, feet away from me rather than ten and a half thousand miles.

So, um, but it's still.

It doesn't feel any different.

It doesn't.

That says a lot for what it's like being in a room with you, Andy.

You've been on this show for two weeks.

This is the, we're recording on Friday the 26th of May, exactly 200 years to the minute since 17 AD.

And Germanicus, the Roman army general and Julio-Claudian dynasty celeb, father of the notorious Emperor Caligula, returned in triumph to Rome after some victories over German tribes, including the Brukteri, the Cheruski, and the Chatty.

Genuine tribe, defeated convincingly by the cracked Roman legions.

The Chatty, in their characteristic chatty style just really sat around having a good old natural about stuff of no particular relevance gossiping about the invading Romans and their clever catapults and stuff exchanging cooking tips and dating advice and telling each other uh about what funny things their children had said and having a good chin wag about football and the pop charts while the romans eavesdropped from under their shields in their tortoise formation before savagely attacking the chatty who went down bravely if verbosely prattling on about how smart the Romans looked in their lovely uniforms and how shiny their spears were.

The Romans found themselves drawn into conversation by the chatty, but after a nice cup of tea and a catch-up, silenced their adversaries with brutal military might, even as they were being complimented on how efficient they were as a cohesive military killing machine.

Germanicus and his legions were unused to such loquacious opponents, especially after their tough winter campaigns against such tribes as the Grumpy in the northern Alps, the Sulky in what is now Blavaria, and of course the Solitary, the most antisocial of all tribes, albeit one whose military tactic of refusing any assistance and defending their own individual hut with a pitchfork and some fruity language, was of limited use against a well-equipped army of thousands.

Germanicus, of course, returned in triumph to Rome with captives from his campaign, some of which he gave to his little lad Caligula as a presence.

Might have shaped the lad's psyche a bit on reflection as he was given chieftains from the conquered tribes, the horny, the kinky, and the depravity.

Bit of history for you, Al.

You love your history, don't you?

Well, yeah, the things we don't really know much about back then, so you can say all this, and no one can really argue with it.

That's right.

There's much more missing than the stuff we know.

So fill your boots or your sandals on this occasion.

Can you fill a sandal?

Surely there's physical issues with that on there.

Philosophy hasn't got red there yet, the question of whether you could fill a sandal or not.

Matter of time, man.

In 1938, on this day,

the House Un-American Activities Committee began its first session.

mostly focused on cricket, snooker, and drinks in receptacles smaller than half a litre.

And today is National Paper Aeroplane Day in the States.

So happy Paper Aeroplane Day to all our American listeners.

Funny, isn't it, how metal, despite being heavier than paper, has ended up being used for making aeroplanes.

It's one of the great ironies of the world.

That is an actual mystery.

And Alice, I don't know.

It's National Sorry Day in Australia.

Are you aware of this?

Yes, I mean, has everyone been going around apologising for appalling historical crimes, which is what it was?

Everyone looks a little bit sheepish.

Right, okay.

Is that as far as it goes?

I mean, it's it's literally the least we can do do for you know hundreds of years of massacres and various oppressions but it seems also to be the most we can do.

Or the most we have done.

Yeah but sometimes less is more.

Maybe not in the middle.

In this instance I think less is very very much less.

And well it's the week the bugle for the week beginning the 29th of May and that means it's a happy hundredth birthday to John F.

Kennedy, born on May the 29th, 1917, supposedly the son of Joseph P.

Kennedy and Rose Kennedy.

Although I reckon the CIA gave birth to him secretly, or the mafia, maybe some shady Cuban society.

He's the youngest man that ever lived.

The youngest man ever to be born.

It's an amazing man.

Yeah, it's incredible.

Yeah, so many.

I reckon maybe he was Russian.

Probably.

I don't know.

It definitely wasn't his parents.

Just

for convenience.

In a Russian accent,

that makes it believable.

Right.

You say anything in a Russian accent that makes it believable these days.

Yes, that's the problem.

Yeah.

That's basically it.

Big Putin as the lobby at work.

Duh.

There we go.

Point proof.

As always, this section of the bugle is going straight into bin this week.

Summer fashion.

And we look at all the definite no-nos

for this summer's fashions.

Obviously, I'm right at the cutting edge.

of couture and clothing trends.

We look at the whale skin balaclava, wrong on so many levels.

Anaconda leggings, make sure they're dead first.

That's also anaconda leggings, the clothing item made of a massive snake.

Not the cornerback just signed for the new NFL franchise, the Portland, but the Portland Punks.

Their distinctive Mohican-style helmets could prove very useful in the NFL season.

We look at the breeze frock.

Breeze block dresses, of course, all the rage as brutalist Soviet architecture gets a catwalk makeover.

But they are at best impractical.

Other architectural fashion items coming out this summer.

The brikini

ditto.

Just make sure you use a good quality cement.

Also, the zucchini.

Corgettes just don't have quite the width as a vegetable to make the zucchini anything other than intimidatingly revealing.

I mean, look at other beach wear, including bread muda shorts, which might be okay on the trendy high-fashion catwalks

of Milan, Los Angeles, Tashkent, and Croydon.

But you wear a

Bread Muda shorts to the beach, and you are one hungry seagull away from a very socially awkward situation.

That section

in the bid.

Al, I mean, this is your bugle debut, and I think I've managed to break you before we've even got to the first actual story.

Yes, you have.

Right, yeah, but

no, this is good, because this is very enjoyable, because the boots on the other foot,

when we used to do Seven Day Us Sunday, I'd do the rambling monologues half-written thing.

Half-written.

Thank you.

I guess at least three times written.

Thanks for rounding it out.

It's nice to be on the receiving end.

So,

yeah, you've broken me already.

Let's have bread muter shorts.

Very bad for the gluten intolerant.

Yes, yes.

I do apologise to anything.

Parson celiac.

Yeah.

Performing celiac.

Parson celacac.

I don't know if you can have celiac testicles.

We're getting into a lot of can you fill a sandal and can you have celiac testicles?

Right, the bread basket.

I suppose it depends who the testicles are attached to.

I guess, I mean, that's so often the case, isn't it?

With testicles.

I mean, that's very...

I mean, or at the very least, who they used to be attached to.

Yeah.

Surely in bread muter shorts, your glutes look great.

Very good.

Thank you, Chris.

Very good, Chris.

When the producers are bringing puns to the show, we know we're reaching a very high peak of artistic achievement.

Time to bring your attention to a special Radiotopia-wide project welcoming a new show into the Radiotopia family.

The Ear Hustle podcast coming soon features stories of life in prison told and produced by those living it at San Quentin State Prison.

In support of Ear Hustle, all Radiotopia shows are releasing an episode in response to the theme doing time.

Check out radiotopia.fm to find all of the doing time episodes in one place or listen to some old Johnny Cash records.

Your call.

Have you ever done time, Andy?

Done time?

No.

No.

My wife spent quite a bit of time in the slammer, but that was as

a lawyer.

Before we get started on the show, TIS has been in Britain another week in which terrorists have inflicted utterly pointless tragedy on the innocent.

It's been another horrifically depressing week.

It was an act which, even within the moral compass of terrorism, a compass which points unerringly and and unremittingly towards total

was utterly horrific.

The response, as the response always is, dignified, defiant and heartbroken.

The response of politicians, the you know, the same old, we will not let the terrorists win.

I'm not sure this is even defiant, saying we will not let the terrorists win.

I think it's just basic logistics.

Because if you look at the latest opinion polls

that have come out, I was a lot of opinion polls around the time of the election.

Terrorism in general, the latest opinion poll, 0.00%

approval rating, rounding it down to the nearest one hundredth of a percent.

ISIS also, no real upward bounce at 0.00%,

even under proportional representation.

They would need a parliament with, what, hundreds of thousands of seats in it to even have a chance of getting in, and even then, no one's going to want to work in coalition with them.

Donald Trump described them as losers,

which suggests that he was listening to the bugle, I think we called them the same thing, just a few weeks ago.

Is this the first time he's had a point?

Trump.

Yeah, but I think one of the problems is he's called everyone else losers.

He's called absolutely everyone else losers.

So it

loses the currency.

It does somewhat undermine.

I mean,

I actually thought it was quite odd, that speech, the Trump speech, because I sort of thought, yeah, I kind of generally agree with most of that.

It's hard not to

disagree with it.

But the fact that the currency, he's used losers so much, I mean, everyone's a loser in his book.

It just you sort of think, well, all right.

And also, what I really want on occasions like that is sort of, is some rhetoric.

Right.

And dignity.

Dignity, rhetoric, stuff like that.

You know, understatement, even understatement.

You know what I mean?

We know, we don't need telling.

So I don't know.

Not everyone has responded with tolerance and dignity.

Some of our so-called newspaper columnists have been rather scraping the bottom of whatever barrel they currently live in.

And what I do worry is reacting to intolerance with intolerance, intolerance, because this is not like mathematics.

A negative times a negative does not equal a positive.

Intolerance times intolerance is just exponential intolerance.

I do wish we'd

certain people would grow up a bit in the wake of these

horrifying atrocities.

Alice,

speaking of which, there was certain columns in Australia as well that took, well, a kind of

almost jauntily dickish response to

this story.

Yes, in No Low Too Low News, Australian Literary Magazine editor Roger Franklin decided he was going to leverage the appalling tragedy into a petty political vendetta against QA, which is a Monday Night Light political debate programme that airs on the ABC.

So he wrote an opinion piece saying that had there been a shred of justice, the Manchester blast would have detonated in an Ultimo TV studio

because he wanted to punish the ABC for refusing to acknowledge the true causes of terrorism.

And I don't know, I contend that had there been a shred of justice, Franklin would have been sideswiped by a terrible case of colon evacuation, and the time he spent in the toilet pooping out his dreams would have been just long enough to make him think twice.

You know, maybe he'd think between spurts of hot rectal regret, oh, you know what's not actually cool?

Trivialising the murder of children by co-opting the weight of their senseless deaths to add force to a metaphor in a minor literary spat.

And then he would have wiped his bottom and not suggested that lefties and moderate Muslims being on television should have been the rightful rightful target of an incredibly wrongful attack.

I don't know.

Well,

so the shred of justice is doing a lot of work there for him, isn't it?

I mean, Jesus Christ.

Alex.

Yeah, I mean, it's...

You can be reliably relied upon to

bring some spectacular bodily analogies to...

Basically,

generally, pretty much your first full sentence on each bugle you've been on has rocketed right into the top five of

most

crudest things ever said on this show.

I'm sorry, I'm thought of as very well spoken in Australia.

Oh, no, absolutely.

The two are not mutually exclusive, unquestionably.

I just think his dig is the equivalent of responding to a bad history report card by suggesting that if there were any justice, Ms.

O'Brien would have been burned to death as a witch in Salem.

It's just completely disproportionate.

And the quadrant editor, so this is the magazine it was published in, he's a prominent historian, Keith Winshuttle.

He's a former ABC board member and author of the charming 2002 book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History.

He told Fairfax Media when they asked for comment, You're talking bullshit, don't call back, which is simultaneously a most charmingly Australian and insanely douchey way to respond to a call for comment.

Well, political campaigning has been suspended for most of this week

in the aftermath of what happened in Manchester.

So we've decided to take a quick trip round some stories from around the world that might not have hit the global headlines, beginning with this.

top story this week isle of man horse tram service resumes that al sounds like a cryptic crossword clue no it's it's an actual fact this is an actual news story so the news is that the isle of man well-known offshore tax area and motorbike holiday resort has restored its horse taxi service now that headline might in in itself make you think huh they're heading back to the 50s before may wins the election but no actually it's due to a temporary hiatus and the normal horse tram service is being resumed.

So it's not that they've brought back a tram service, it's that they've had to stop the horse tram service while the horses, because the horses have been poorly.

Apparently, the service was suspended because the horse was suffering a respiratory problem.

But the way this story was written suggests why.

The 140-year-old bay horse.

Well,

that's it right there.

Give the horse a break.

I mean, I got puffed out coming down the stairs to the studio, and I'm 49.

That horse is dragging tourists around, so he must be puffed.

Now, I think this might be a thin end end of the wedge planet of the horses warning sign.

The revolution, the uprising has begun.

Horses have had to put up with our bullshit since the dawn of time.

And of all places, for this uprising to begin, for symbolism to really kick in, the Isle of Man, where the horse revolution begins.

Ponies and horses, donkeys joining together too.

The three species of horse.

I think that's the three species of horse, isn't it?

Right.

Pony, donkey, and horse.

Yeah.

Rocking.

Rocking and rocking.

What about zebra?

Well, no, that's the forthcoming horse-zebra war that will occupy most of the third millennium.

But

I just, this story, it's, it's, because have you been to the Isle of Man, Andy?

I haven't, no.

Yeah, and I've worked there a fair bit, and it's

its own place, is how I'm going to put it.

Yeah.

Clarkson has a big house there.

They only gave up on birching quite recently, all that sort of thing.

So that there's a horse tram there isn't

a surprise.

Isn't a surprise, to be honest.

Right.

I I mean what else are they rocking over there like is it the iron lung I mean I want to see some old stuff come back I want to see the phonograph and the crossbow ballista and the telex

well it's the um well what I can tell you is the last time I went there in the window of one of the hotels or bars along the front in Douglas there's there was a great big gollywog type item in the window.

Right.

So I don't know.

Dated at best.

Yes, possibly.

I mean, I've always had a wonderful time there.

I'm not, I'm not, I come not to praise the other man, not to bury it.

But,

you know, I mean, although I do, there's retro aspects, like you're saying, Alison, I mean, asbestos, that's had a bad press, hasn't it?

Yeah.

It's bad in the long term, but in the short term, if your house is burning down, as threat term.

But yeah, but asbestos.

It's all about the negatives in the modern media, isn't it?

Yeah, we don't have to go so far back to have some good outcomes.

If we stapled phones back to the walls, you'd get fewer wankers texting and traffic.

and if we brought back trial by combat a lot of people on twitter would pull their f ⁇ ing heads in

the show i'm touring at the moment is called let's go backwards together yeah right and i propose returning to the 50s but with abs power steering pausable flat screen hd tv right faster over h in test cricket yeah

right on bullshit exactly exactly right on board exactly and the thing is the thing is is that's the i called the show that this time last year let's go backwards together and the touring manifesto last week was forwards together and you think you f ⁇ ers

you you f ⁇ us you're ripping me off here yeah but forwards and backwards eventually meet well this is the horseshoe theory of forwards and backwards isn't it

um i i'd be in favour of witchcraft trials coming back um yeah for the financial sector though because i i think clearly you know white-collar crime does not respond to the threat of conventional justice no well conventional justice doesn't seem to carry through for white collar crime anyway

that is true but if they were just going to get chucked in a pond at the first sign of uh misdemeanour i think you'd you'd see them fill in their tax returns more accurately.

A big pond in the city of London, that'd be quite a go up.

Actually,

that's part of the utopia, isn't it?

Right there.

Not like if you're not shorting stock, you sink.

Interestingly, the horse tram was first threatened with closure in January 2016 after making more than a quarter of a million pound loss the previous year.

You're playing these horses.

Well, exactly.

It's one of the first rules of economics.

Horse tram services don't grow on trees.

Very hard to turn a big profit off the horse tram.

It does suggest, I mean, the Luddites will rise again in their manually operated crank platforms.

Maybe this is the Isle of Man's attempt to, you know, it's a notoriously

dangerous place for high-speed motorcycle racing.

They have the TT places there amongst the most lethal sporting events in the world.

Maybe the horse tram shows that they need to slow things down.

It could definitely definitely be it.

I mean,

what's interesting is

it is several horses, and they've all got the same thing.

And I really do think this is the horse that's going to have

a cough.

Like that.

And they've been, I mean, this could be just horses swinging the lead.

This is why I'm concerned that this is the beginning of Planet of the Horses.

That is a legitimate concern, yeah.

Well, why not?

I mean, the last time I had a respiratory illness, I was a little horse.

Oh, yes, yes.

That pun is 10,000 miles away from us,

but I can still smell it.

It seems almost not worth going on with the rest of the show.

Latest fitness bulletins coming through, not just respiratory issues from the Bay Horse Tramway horse squad.

Rosie the horse tweaked a Fetlock yesterday trying to outrun a bus.

Prove that

the tram service can still cut it in the modern world.

Petula the horse, indigestion from over-grazing in between shifts.

They're very much overworked, these tram horses.

I mean, it's fine if you're Thomas the tank engine.

If memory serves, you do an impression of a horse.

Don't think I did an impression.

Did I not just interview a horse, Al?

I think you interviewed a horse.

That's right.

Yes, you interviewed.

Sorry, you didn't know.

Yes, you interviewed a horse.

I stand corrected.

I'll see see if I can get one on for next week's show.

Was that on your show?

He did that, because I think he's done that on the Bugle as well.

He definitely did it on my show.

We definitely had quite a long interview with the horse.

The horse had lots to say as well.

It was like the horse was in the room with us.

Yeah, for some of it.

Well, I'm a very searching interviewer.

Can I finish my fitness bulletin?

Yeah, sorry, yeah.

Absolutely crucial for people betting on the

horse tram races this weekend.

Bust of the horse.

Done his back during rush hour when they ended up with 50 commuters sitting on him.

Champ the horse, he could be out of tramming for a month after electrocuting his mouth on the overhead cables when on an exchange scheme with a tram from San Francisco.

It didn't work out either way.

An Isle of Man horse tried to breed with the San Francisco tram, ended up with a metal pommel horse, which is absolutely no use in Jim.

Are there any fancy trams in Melbourne, Alice?

Am I right in thinking there's a dinner tram?

Yes, there is a dinner tram for when you want to simultaneously have a romantic meal and go round corners really fast.

That narrows it down a bit, doesn't it?

It's a very specific audience of tourist shumps.

Let's move on now to a Brazil section and sensational Brazilian justice story breaking this week.

A woman who stole an Easter egg and a chicken breast has received a harsher jail sentence than people involved in essentially a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal.

Which I think tells you a lot about the way Brazilian justice works.

I mean I guess the problem for

she got sentenced to what, three years in jail and the problem is particularly with political corruption in Brazil, if you jailed every corrupt politician in Brazil, well you would end up with well a woman who'd just stolen an Easter egg as president probably.

So certain caps have to be put on it.

While we were off air during the hiatus last year, Dilma Rousseff, the former president, was

impeached.

And

at that point, 352 out of 594 members of the Brazilian Senate were facing criminal accusations.

Boom!

That is, I mean, that's impressive logistics.

It's good to be able to multitask as a politician.

That is impressive.

I think it's all about incentives.

Like, we don't want petty crime.

We want big, giant white-collar crime.

If she didn't want to go to jail for three years, she should have defrauded millions of dollars from the tax-paying proletariat instead of being one.

Well, exactly.

I mean,

there was reasons given in the debate in which Rusev was impeached.

This was from the parliamentary debate in which her fellow politicians gave reasons why they wanted to impeach her, ranging from

for the foundations of Christianity, for all Brazilian doctors, for the sake of the BR429, which is an interstate highway,

for, quotes, my unborn daughter, Manuela, that was a reason for impeaching the president, for my 93-year-old mother, who's at home, for my beloved military police of Sao Paulo.

I mean,

I've not heard military police described as beloved before.

That's a world first, right there.

For the truckers,

someone who may have just misheard the question, and

for the birthday of my granddaughter.

I mean, what kind of present is that to give to a grandchild?

Oh, what have you got me?

What have you got me, Grant?

Impeachment.

I've got a lot of new impeachment.

I wanted a train set or a bicycle.

Thing is, I'm quite happy with this woman going to jail.

This is someone sticking up for Easter.

A couple of months ago, we saw Easter under relentless assault by the forces of people who don't like Easter.

Political credit has gone mad, etc.

So, someone going to prison for stealing an Easter egg.

It's the Easter fight back starting right now.

I'm 100% behind this.

Right, so I get, I mean, I guess Brazil is famously a very Catholic country.

Yeah, and they're just digging in for Easter.

Someone finally sticking up for Easter.

So

bring back the real meaning of Easter, which is murdering a Jewish rabbi.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Was he a rabbi?

Jesus.

So he became a default rabbi.

He's a trainee rabbi, wasn't he?

He's one of the cool young rabbis, man.

But of course, I mean, in a Catholic country, stealing an Easter egg is, they do believe it is physically stealing the actual physical testicle of Christ.

Yeah.

Rather than the metaphorical testicle of Christ it would be in an Anglican country.

Yeah.

So that's, I guess, the big difference.

Yeah, Tranball substantiation, whatever it's called.

I couldn't actually pun that.

I just tried to insert a word and failed.

You're asking too much of me.

Sorry.

Yeah, you know, I think Easter eggs is good that Easter's sacred, man.

You know,

only two months ago, Theresa May deliberately misunderstood some publicity material to make a point about Easter so I think you know this is this but this is good the fight back starts here right what was the what was what was the Theresa May remember the Cadbury's the Cadbury's Easter egg hunt you

used to take take the word hunt as far away from egg the Cadbury's Easter egg hunt and

she said they've taken the word Easter off the publicity yeah with the National Trust and they hadn't right they hadn't done that and she'd been she was just sort of on manoeuvres you know like for traditional values or whatever, as far as I can work out.

And it caused one of those sort of one of those sort of our way of life is under attack type reactions when it fing isn't.

It fing isn't.

I mean, it's this thing, you know, like Christmas.

This makes me so angry when people are going about Christmas.

Oh, Christmas is under attack.

Well, is that why Christmas has swollen up in reaction to August?

Like as a sort of anaphylactic shock reaction.

Christmas is swollen to the to you know I'm quite happy for the Christmas to really start with Advent in December.

I'm quite happy with that, right?

That's fine, right?

But for it to be stuff to be in the shops in August, how can you possibly argue that Christmas is under threat?

It's obviously it's like it is, it's like it's swollen up in reactions and eventually it'll be Christmas all fing year in order for Christmas to defend itself.

It's a fing madness.

It makes me really angry this.

Evidently.

But God.

The song I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Every Day.

Well, of course, it's economically illiterate.

I mean, it would be total chaos.

It's utter chaos.

Because there'd be, because if everyone's off work, who's making their presents?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean,

it's always the economics of this ideal.

I mean, it's like.

Christmas Every Day would be my nightmare.

It would be a nightmare for you, Alice.

Oh, yeah.

I hate Christmas.

First of all, I hate fun.

And second of all, like, how many drunken aunts can you take out of the bushes?

Like.

Another very interesting philosophical question.

But who sang that?

I wish it could be Christmas every day.

Roy Wood always sang.

Roy Wood.

Yeah, yeah.

It's Wizard, isn't it?

Roy Wizard.

Isn't that like the bad thing about Nania at the beginning?

No, it's never Christmas.

Never mind.

Retracted.

It's interesting that since that song was released in what must have been the mid-1970s, Christmas has expanded.

It's gradually.

Does this make this the most influential song ever written?

I think possibly in a thousand years' time,

we'll look back.

They'll look back and go, yep, that's it, that's

the only economic and social naivety.

The nostril dharmas of capitalism.

You've got to stop being so idealistic as a species.

Alice, there was another

Brazilian story that you found about an enormous piece of bling.

Yeah, miners found a 1.3-metre-tall emerald weighing more than 270 kilograms in Brazil's northeastern state of Bahia.

I don't know how that's pronounced.

It was about 20 days ago.

They were miners of the Bahia Mineral Cooperative, which is the most effective cooperative I've ever heard of.

If it's anything like the university housing co-op that used to meet in a cafe near my house,

it would probably never have got past the debating phase of getting that thing out of the ground.

But I'm against it, really.

I'm against that big an emerald existing.

I mean, what are the risks of RSI to someone wearing a ring with something that big on it?

The wrist strength alone would require the wearer to be, if not a giant, at least a giant wanker.

I mean, yeah, it's not the most romantic gift, is it?

A

270 kilogram jewel.

You can only use it for one thing, which is beaming a laser through it to blow up the moon.

That's what an emerald that big is for.

That's why I got you on the show, Al, to bring that level of scientific expertise.

The perfect gift for Blofeld.

Exactly.

This is a Bond plot

jewel, isn't it?

What I love about massive diamonds or massive bits of jewelry, or what precious stones, whatever, is how they value them.

Because it's worthless.

A great big emerald is worthless, essentially, isn't it?

You can't use it for anything.

What can you do with it?

So what they do is go, yeah, 300 million.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely 300 million.

Yeah, yeah, definitely 300 million.

Yeah.

And you've got to go along with that or the whole of the economics, the world economic system collapses, isn't it?

Because all valuations are essentially based on that, aren't they?

Yeah, that's what it's worth.

Don't give the secrets away or the whole thing will collapse.

Exactly.

It's teetering on a knife edge, isn't it?

Yeah, it's for firing, it's for beaming a laser through and exploding the moon.

I mean, Alice, you mentioned it wouldn't work as a ring.

I think it's a necklace as well.

I mean, that is too heavy, you know.

It's too heavy for anything.

Yeah.

I've got this lovely necklace, darling.

Oh, okay.

Ow.

I think I put my back out.

It's like having two Samoan rugby players around my neck.

Oh shit, I've gotten the wrong way around.

Oh, sorry.

Votasala eva of Fotasala.

Could you just unclasp yourself and pop down, thanks?

I wonder how Emerald is getting on as two crash ball centres.

That's a little rugby job for you.

Not enough that rugby and jewellery get put together in

the same joke.

No, no.

Another world first.

I'm certainly glad you tackled that topic.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Don't apologise, Alice.

Don't apologise.

Be proud.

It's an affliction that we are very open about on this show, the predilection to pun.

We don't judge people.

In fact, we praise people for it.

Also in Brazil, a 16-year-old footballer has just been sold for £40 million.

Don't tell him.

That's the key.

Just don't.

16-year-old boys are f ⁇ ing arseholes.

And the last thing you need to tell a 16-year-old boy is, hey, you're worth £40 million.

Because of the sheer arseholery that that will deliver.

Right.

And then when he turns 19 and becomes a prick,

a dance as old as time itself.

I mean, you mustn't, that information needs to be kept from him.

Right.

He's known as Vinicius Jr., who does sound quite like a old Roman emperor.

Oh, Vinicius Jr.

Now, I mean, it is getting ridiculous football transfer fees and younger and younger.

We've previously reported on the Bugle on how top clubs have bid in the region of £5.4 billion pounds for one of Cristiano Ronaldo's testicles, whilst Lionel Messi has been offered twice that sum to have gender reassignment therapy in order to mother a joint Messi Ronaldo super football baby.

And Real Madrid and Chelsea are now in bidding wars for the DNA of some of the top footballers from history.

Primo

Sclazzatini, the agent for Diego Maradona's DNA, has been hawking around a vial of the 1986 Argentinian World Cup winning genius's flob, scraped from the pitch during a match between Napoli and Juventus in 1987 when Maradona spat in frustration at not being given a penalty.

That vial of Maradona flob going for £150 million

on the market right now.

So we need it's getting absurd, frankly.

I mean even the made-up ones are getting out of control.

I'm jealous of this kid.

When I was 16, I was, I don't know, busy reading bad fantasy novels in the library at lunchtime and being bullied, not necessarily in that order.

What were you doing when when you were 16, Andy?

I was mostly looking up cricket statistics.

I've not changed a lot over the years, to be honest.

I had a pretty glamorous teenage.

I was sitting in my bedroom looking up batting averages of players who've died decades before I was born.

That's why I was such an unstoppable teenage hunk.

This is the stuff that isn't made up in the show.

Sorry, I've accidentally shared a fact.

But the transfer is not going through right away.

It's going through when he turns 18, right, in July 2018.

And I mean, that's great if in that time he doesn't get a girlfriend or find out that there's something else to life outside kicking a ball around in a square.

Don't say that.

Don't say that.

This is a sport-worshipping show, Alice.

You can't say that.

He could get into breaking bad or something, you know.

There's all sorts of temptations out there, aren't there?

What if when he turns 18 he turns out to be a bit shit?

Well, that has happened in football history before.

But I guess

what then happens to be a problem?

I guess

they then compress him using geological forces, try and make him into a large emerald and then

flug him off.

But I think that's basically where this giant emerald came from, from crushed, disappointing teenage footballers.

So that's what Brazil is selling?

Emeralds, 16-year-olds, and white-collar crime?

Yep.

That's it.

Flamingo news now.

Oh, God.

I've been waiting all my life to hear those words.

Well, scientists have confirmed that flamingos expend less energy standing on one leg than in a two-legged stance.

Well done, science!

Which, I don't know, it just confirms my beliefs about flamingos.

I've always been against the flamingo as an animal.

I'm very pleased to find out that not only are they smug, flashy, pink, flying swamp horses, they're also lazy, flashy, pink, flying swamp horses with spindly legs and a bad attitude.

Cerise wankers with judgmental eyes, that's what they are.

Also, that was a line in the Labour Party manifesto about the Conservatives.

Well, I just like how very specific the scientists have got on it.

There's a Dr.

Matthew Anderson, who's an experimental psychologist who specialises in animal behaviour, and he described the team's results as a significant step forward.

But he said, They begin to answer the question of how flamingos are able to rest on one leg.

Importantly, these authors do not examine when and where flamingos actually utilise the behavior in question, and thus this paper does not really address the issue of why flamingos rest while on one leg.

I mean, I know the answer, it's because they're rosy, self-satisfied wanker birds with their tiny heads up their own butts through the power of their stupid long necks.

Why are you?

I mean, you're the most virulently anti-flamingo person I've ever come across, Alice.

Yes.

I mean, was there some kind of childhood trauma in which you were attacked by

flamingos?

I just had a recurring nightmare about flamingos, maybe.

Right.

We need to analyse this.

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

Well, I, yeah, yeah.

Somebody who has a recurring dream about being attacked by flamingos?

Well, I think they don't like flamingos.

That's what I'm going with.

The thing with this story is, I just think, why does everything have to have a scientific reason?

Right.

Buy out science.

Right.

Start explaining everything.

God.

Can't flamingos just do what they want without seeing scientists go, oh, I reckon I know why you're doing that.

Shut up, science.

Well, I can see this being exploited by the government because, you know, they've already said they're going to stop children having school lunches on the grounds that a hungry child is a happy child.

But you know, maybe they they can use this science as proof that children do not need feeding.

If only they stood on one leg instead of two, they will use up less energy and we can save millions of pounds for the exchequer to spend on

more more.

You belong in a think tank.

Right.

Thank you.

Is that a compliment or an insult

um so lesson for the world motorbikes consume way less fuel when you're doing a wheelie and uh unicycling is technically the most efficient form of transport for the entire world and jake the peg was uh enormously overefficient in energy that's right

brings us towards the end of the bugle we'd have actually a bumper crop of emails this week but we have uh as ever overrun slightly um And

thank you for a couple of factual errors picked up on from last week.

The artist Basque, not French, as I erroneously stated, but a Haitian-born New Yorker, as I pointed out by several people,

including Diana Madden from California, who says that error is making me question all your cricket assertions.

So

don't start doing that.

And also,

the people who pointed out that the area of the cat swing, as defined last week as 2 pi brackets cat plus r, that would only give the circumference or kitty cirque, as John in Pimblaco says.

And actually, what I wanted was pi brackets cat plus r squared.

It was basic mathematics, and I apologise wholeheartedly.

So,

do you welcome this kind of criticism, Andy, or are you anti-semantic?

That's good, Alice.

That is very good.

Thank you, you're welcome.

With a bugle, we do pride ourselves on rigorously fact-checking

everything.

John from Pimler Coke points out that pie brackets cat plus R squared

contains the apparently prophetic prediction of a future World Cup.

2 cat R plus R R

equals 2 cat R ha.

As in...

I mean, I've been outpunned by, I think, four people on the show today.

This is a fucking disaster.

I'm going to have to wrap it up.

Thank you very much for listening.

Buglers, Alice is coming to Britain in the summer.

We'll be performing throughout the Edinburgh Festival.

Al, have you got anything you want to plug to our listeners?

Well, I've got a couple more weeks of tour left, but you sound really enthusiastic.

If they could not come, I could have the night off.

Can we do a reverse plug on that?

Another guest fitting into the bugle history of rampant self-promotion.

Another Nostradamus quote to leave you with, a most stupendous and astonishing event will occur.

Very soon afterwards, the earth will tremble.

Can only possibly be referring to my forthcoming political animal gigs at Soho on the 29th of May and the 3rd of June.

And my satirist for high gig at the Underbelly on the 23rd of June.

I mean, clearly, that's, you know, the world's going to tremble, and a stupendous and astonishing event will occur.

No doubt.

Yeah, can't argue with that.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Al, it's been a delight having you on.

Live off the first time.

Do come back.

It's been a delight having me on.

Alice, thanks once again for your glorious contribution from the the southern hemisphere.

Buglers, I will be back next week with Bugle Live from Soho featuring Nish Kumar.

Until then, goodbye.

Goodbye.

Hi Buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.