Bugle 4029 – Electile Dysfunction

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers!

And hello again, in case you missed that first bit, and welcome to issue 4029 of The Bugle, the officially sanctioned historical record of phase 76 of the history of the universe.

I am Andy Zoltzmann, live in London, also in London, albeit a slightly different part of London, two meters away across a desk.

It's the Susie Quattro of satirical quamedy, Nish Kumar.

Big intro.

Big intro.

Well, I see you and Quattro as, you know, Peace and a Pod, Andy.

Peasing a pod pod.

I'm probably peas and a pod, me and the quat.

Me and the cum quat.

In fact, kumquat is the name of my double act with Susie Quattro.

Really?

That conjures up a whole load of extremely disturbing images.

How have you been?

It's been a couple of months since.

Yeah, it's been a while, Andy.

Yeah, how have you been?

I've been

on your travels.

I've been hemispheres.

I've been crawling back.

Crawling back, yeah.

This is my third hemisphere of the last month.

Southern,

northern and

eastern.

Which side of Greenwich are we?

Western.

How is Australia?

They like cricket over there.

They do like cricket.

Yep.

They like cricket and white people.

They like cricket and.

And you're bringing bugs.

That's right.

Yeah.

They like cricket and keeping people unnecessarily on small islands.

What have you been at?

Have you been any more globe trotting?

Have you been hanging out here just soaking up the election?

I've been to a little place called Croydon a couple of times, Andy.

Sweet.

I made a glorious return to the football pitch this Tuesday.

Massive stuff, Andy.

I would describe my performance as sporadically effective.

Coming in off the left, playmaking force.

You know, they don't just call me Riyad Mairez because they're being lazily racist.

Let me rephrase that.

They do call me Riyadmares because they're being lazily racist.

I forced a penalty with a spectacular chip from 30 yards that was handled by one of the centre-backs, who later claimed that he was in goal, which led to a slightly contentious moment with the referee, i.e.

a collective decision made by all of the players.

Stepped up, missed it, then

five minutes later, forced another handball.

and stepped up, sent the keeper the wrong way, slash the keeper tripped over and I kicked it the other way, depending on who you talk to.

Sporadically effective is what we want on this show if we can maintain that form.

This is Bugle 4029.

4029, incidentally, the average estimated time in nanoseconds between Donald Trump opening his mouth and someone somewhere in the world saying, oh, what now?

Also, the number of people on average it takes to change a light bulb if you include everyone involved in the manufacture, transportation and retail of the light bulb, including the mining and creation of all the constituent parts of the light bulb, as well as the one or more people required to actually insert the light bulb at the bulb interface.

This is the bugle for the week beginning Monday, the 22nd of May.

On the 23rd of May, a couple of sensational anniversaries to mark this week.

On the 23rd of May, 1533, the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.

Ouchie.

The Pool's panel verdict was no score draw.

One of the biggest breakups in romance history.

They didn't just have to split up their music collection, which, of course, was trickier in the early 16th century.

Yeah, absolutely.

Who takes the loot player and who takes the loot?

Yeah, well, exactly.

You can't both have Brian.

Henry VIII was in favour of chopping the loot player in half.

Although he's half of a person, generally just around the neckline.

Yeah.

And also very hard to play a half clavichord once you've karate chopped it to pieces.

But they also had to split an entire religion.

They split Christianity.

Which is rather trickier than a load of CDs.

So, yeah, it causes ructions that reverberate to this day, the old split of the Catholic Church and the Church of England.

They've been married almost 24 years before the split, and Henry packed another five wives into the last 13 and a half years of his life.

That dude loved getting married.

Serious speed wifing from the big lad.

I imagine by the last wedding, his toast had lost some of its enthusiasm.

For better or worse, but let's face it, for worse.

The Catherine of Aragon breakup took eight years from 1525 to 1533, basically, from when he first started getting the hots for Miss Boleyn.

And he got quicker at that.

He got quicker at ending his relationships.

Kind of 21st century Tinder style, although he tended to swipe downwards rather than sideways.

On the 23rd of May 1618, the second defrenestration of Prague precipitating the 30 Years' War.

Wars had some proper length in those days.

Life was slower in those days.

Yeah, your 100 Years' War, your 30 Years' War.

People took their time.

They're sweet.

It's like Tess cricket.

You've got to allow narratives to form.

Exactly.

We can't have any of these 20-20 wars we're having these days.

Have you ever defenestrated anyone?

If I have, then I've done it unwittingly and would like to apologise.

It was, yeah, the first defenestration of Prague in 1419.

This is the second one on the 23rd of May 1618.

Three men lobbed out of a window 20 meters above the ground in a protest about Catholic suppression of the Protestants.

They survived, these three, 20 metres off the ground, they survived the fall, depending on, well, it depends on who or what you believe.

The reason for their survival was either divine intervention

or landing in a massive and quite literal pile of shit.

Or possibly both.

Is that true?

Did they land in a huge pile of shit?

Well, either they were saved by the Almighty Lords or they landed in a massive pile of dung that happens to be on the ground outside the window.

He moves in mysterious ways, He saw those people falling and he was like, get me some dried fruit.

Stat.

Get me some dried fruit and a black coffee.

I've got believers to save.

There must have been some slightly awkward conversations with the Almighty afterwards, you know, the survived men.

God, thanks and all that.

But

next time you're going to save us from plummeting to our deaths, any chance that...

And look, look, I'm not telling you how to do your job.

But if there is an alternative to the massive pile of shit as a means of breaking the fall, I mean,

it would just be a pretty...

Look, I'm delighted to be alive, don't get me wrong.

But how how about a fing trampoline, mate?

Or a bouncy castle, or even a pile of cardboard, but as I said, thanks.

God, children's birthday parties would have been very different in those days if that was the bouncy castle.

Happy 8th, Alan!

Here's a huge pile of shit.

Simpler times, Nish.

People would have been happy with it.

Rubber to take off your shoes first.

Defenestration, I believe, is sadly an underused form of political protest these days.

Yes, yeah.

I mean, in a truly free and open democracy, there should be an official window above a government-maintained pile of dunk where you should be able to shove your elected representatives whenever you like.

Until then, our democracy is a sham.

Well, it's e-defenestration now, isn't it?

Everything's electronic.

So you have to throw people, I guess, out of using Microsoft Windows.

I guess that's very much like what you've done there, Nisha.

Oh, God.

I think I've caught your

punning.

There's a pun later on that I've got planned.

Oh, oh, right, strapping everyone.

It has been an increasing incidence of this, of

the guest co-hosts bringing their own puns.

Yeah, don't think I didn't hear that.

Don't think I haven't listened to those, Andy.

Yeah.

It's contagious.

It's like bringing your own tennis videos to Roger Federer's house.

You are the Federer of puns.

No, I didn't really mean it in that way.

I just meant I've got a lot of puns.

Oh, right, sure.

It definitely came across like that.

Oh, well, but you know.

Unless Roger Federer is also famed for his massive collection of tennis videos.

I'm pretty sure he is.

But he must have, I reckon he's got to keep videos of him, of his own matches.

I mean, maybe not actual videos these days.

Yeah.

Federer still loves a beta match.

That was,

who was, that was Joy Division song.

Anyway.

As always, the section is going straight in the bin.

And this week, to commemorate another anniversary, as we record, tomorrow, the 20th of May, 1875, was the signing of the meter convention by 17 nations, leading eventually to the establishment of the International System of Units.

They standardised the meter, and our section of the Minister Week is looking at now obsolete former units of measurement, including units of length, such as the worm, which proved too variable, dependent on such things as worm diet and worm childhood, squiggliness of worm, and whether the worm was or wasn't busy having sex with itself, very much depending on how hot your worm was.

Another distance that's sadly gone out of use is the Flob Royale, which is the

distance the 12th century French king Louis VI, also known as Louis the Fat, could spit from a seated position on his throne.

Now, this was reset every year on January the 1st.

He did a New Year's flob, and it varied considerably depending on all kinds of factors, especially if the windows were open and how much you'd eaten over Christmas.

Another sadly obsolete unit of length, the Schweinfleisch Gewurst Langemeter, briefly used German measurement tied to the length of the standard hot dog sausage.

The problem arises with this when an outbreak of the incurable pig shrink virus resulted in the sausage being reduced in length by an average of 40%, causing total mayhem in the German tailoring industry, particularly with trousers.

So, when people ordered their standard leg length in Schweinfleische Gewersch Langemeters,

they came back because of that, they're only now 60% as long as they used to be, reaching just below the knee camp, hence the invention of the Lederhausen.

And Lederhosen, of course, literally means lighter hogs.

Area, units of area, the cat's wing.

Oh, there's more.

There's more.

The cat's wing.

That was enough room to, that's where the phrase, enough room to swing.

Sure, enough room to swing a cat, yeah.

Calculated by the mathematical formula 2 pi brackets cat plus arm.

Came to Britain with the Normans in the 11th century, of course.

Of course.

They love swinging cats at the Normans.

And they measured people's properties for the doomsday book using cat's wings.

And the average house size then was just 2.4 CSs.

But then property was taxed for centuries by the cat's wing, and hence eventually the British aristocracy thought, f it, we need to find some bigger cats, hence the empire, and all those tiger skin rugs.

I've never seen a man look more pleased with himself.

Well, I've had a long week

out on tour, and this was this was a that was a that was a 3.30 a.m.

Units of luminosity, the Joan of Arc, the fairly self-explanatory,

uh, speed, the uh,

the hobbling pope.

That is,

it used to be illegal in 16th century Europe to move faster than a hobbling pope.

And this dates back to when Pope Julius II broke his toe, kicking a bin on the way out of the Sistine Chapel after seeing for the first time what Michelangelo had done to his ceiling while shouting, quale parte di cane jocande snooka non capici, translated as what part of dogs playing snooker did you not understand.

And the unit of silence, son, if you can measure silence, that's the ZDEG unit, the Zoltzmann debut Edinburgh gig.

Not the worst gig I've had.

The very first proper gig I did outside a student venue in Oxford, and still the purest silence I've ever experienced.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh,

Kumar's had a couple of Z-Degs this week.

Good lord.

I think

I did one two days ago that measured on the Richter scale of Z-Degs.

Anyway, that section, well, the rest of it in the bin.

Top story this week: electile dysfunction.

Very good.

Very good.

There you go.

I learned from the best.

That's a Billy Bragg album, I think.

It's a Billy Bragg.

And it's election season in the UK.

Theresa May has called a snap election.

And the phrase snap election is definitely the most fun thing about the whole election.

It is going to be a sobering few weeks for this country as the British public faces a choice of a person they don't really trust and a person they don't really like.

We are not so much stuck between a rock and a hard place as we are stuck between a rock that we think may have sympathised with the IRA and a hard place that may be trying to kill old people.

Yes, the election no one wanted called for reasons no one particularly wants to think about.

With the results seemingly so forgotically conclusionised, is that a technical term?

That Theresa May could spend the next three weeks in a cryogenic freezer without it affecting the result.

If anything, in fact, her poll ratings might actually go slightly up as it would make her seem a little bit warmer than she generally does.

Burn on you, May!

Take that!

This week, it's been manifesto week.

When they don't really put the manifest into manifesto, obfusgesto, perhaps,

would be maybe a slightly more appropriate

term.

All the parties basically been accused of turning back time to various degrees.

The Labour has been accused of wanting to take us back to the 1970s.

The Liberal Democrats quite openly want us to take us back to the 22nd of June 2016, the day before we voted for whatever the f Brexit turns out to be.

The Conservatives essentially seem to want to take us back to the late 16th century when we had an all-powerful female monarch and no one else was allowed to say anything.

I got their election leaflet through my letterbox and it had the word strong and stable leadership.

I mean, it was like Bart Simpson at the start of the

episode.

Just all over the front page.

And then pictures of just no one but Theresa May.

We should establish for non-British buglers because people in Britain are so sick of hearing that phrase now.

Strong and stable is very much the catchphrase of this election campaign.

It's very much the eat my shorts for the post-9-11 era.

It's strong and stable leadership.

That's the message that Theresa May is trying to ram home by literally saying it at every conceivable opportunity.

It's numbing the effect of it.

Strong and stable leadership.

Strong and stable leadership.

All good work and no play makes Theresa a dull boy.

All good work and no play makes Theresa a dull boy.

And UKIP want to seemingly take Britain back to about 5 billion BC

before the purity of this nation was sullied by the evolution of life.

UKIP is still disputing the outcome of the Battle of Hastings.

Set it up.

Set it up to the TV umpire.

Exactly.

That arrow was fired from an offside position.

Yeah.

There was an extraordinary spectacle this week because the leadership debates are no more.

We tried it for a bit and now we've decided that we've had enough of seeing our political leaders actually debate with each other.

So yesterday viewers on ITV were treated to a debate between all the leaders of the major parties except Labour and the Conservative Party.

Because Theresa May said that she wouldn't appear and Jeremy Corbyn said, well, if she's not doing it, I'm not doing it in one of the classically more infantile responses in British politics.

Right.

I think I was out of the country when she decided not to take part.

That's right.

The kind of party line is that people don't want to see politicians squabbling, to which your answer is, they don't call a f ⁇ ing election.

Another explanation I've heard is that they just couldn't find an extension cable long enough so that they could plug her in.

I've watched Westworld, and I know you don't want a robot running out of batteries halfway through doing something.

Yeah, exactly.

It wouldn't be ideal for the TV viewers if Theresa May has a fly land on her eyeball and doesn't flinch.

So the leadership debate happened without Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May, who, again, for non-British buglers, are the only two people who mathematically can possibly win this election.

And I was searching for an appropriate analogy.

And unfortunately for me, the only one that came to mind is that this debate would be a bit like if we had a debate to establish your best bugle co-host and then didn't invite John.

Look, we know who you're all going to vote for, but if you couldn't vote for him, who would you vote for?

It's like having a political debate in a parallel dimension.

As a result of which, the TV audience was around about eight, I think.

The coverage of the election so far has been very positive for Theresa May.

The Daily Mail led with a front page that said, alast, a PM, not afraid to be honest with you.

Now, this may have something to do with the fact that the Daily Mail maybe just believes Theresa May's political positions are the right direction for this country to go in.

It may have something to do with the fact that James Slack is the former political editor of the Daily Mail, who is currently Theresa May's official spokesperson.

But I cannot wrap my head around this idea that she is somehow honest.

Bear in mind that this is a Prime Minister who repeatedly stated she would not call a general election this year, who has subsequently called a general election, and who supported the Remain campaign in the EU referendum and is now pursuing a Brexit so hard that it's likely to force Preta Monge to change its name to Food in it.

The Conservative manifesto had, well, I mean, there's some interesting things in.

Sure,

it was a spicy affair.

Some, I mean, one odd thing was that this place to clamp down on electoral fraud.

Yeah.

The electoral fraud that has been such a problem in this country that no one has noticed it happening.

I've given a shit about it.

I think it was something like 21 complaints.

Yes.

Microscopic.

My last Edinburgh run generated more complaints than that.

Unless it means the kind of electoral fraud that leads to Labour and the Conservatives getting massively over-represented in Parliament due to our first-past-the-post system.

The kind of results that would cost hundreds of millions of pounds, dollars, whatever, of bribes and backhanders in other countries.

You get it for free over here

by just by using some quirky 18th century mathematics.

Or the electoral fraud that fills our second chamber with 800 representatives who have received a collective total of zero votes.

That also looks dodgy.

Look, Andy, remember the old British political saying, it's not corruption if the person doing it is a rich old white man.

I believe that's written in Latin on the Houses of Parliament.

It is true that the checks for ID at polling stations are not the most rigorous in World Democracy.

You could basically turn up.

You find someone sitting there with a printed electoral roll with everyone's name and address on.

You could basically go up and say, I am Brigadier Lord Minky Hound Gravel Shit, and I demand my ballot paper now.

What's your address, please?

It's 49 billion Testicle Street.

I don't know that street.

It's on the new housing development.

Look, I'm just here on the just cross that name out and give me a paper.

I'm not sure I've ever turned up with my polling card and, you know, you just sort of say your name and they let you in.

I think I might try this year to say my name is Jennifer Anniston and my address is the flat above central perk.

See how far that gets me.

So the manifesto itself, there's a couple of key issues that they're trying to push.

One is obviously immigration, which is just constantly being the two conversations we have are about immigration and how we'd need less of it.

And the other conversation that we have is how we never talk about immigration.

That's pretty much our national political discourse.

Summed up in a brief soundbite, right?

The Conservatives are pledging to reduce net migration to below 100,000 per year.

But interestingly, this is something that has been sort of mooted around Brexit.

But interestingly, Michael Fallon, who's the Defence Secretary, was interviewed about this on Newsnight and he refused to call it a policy.

He instead referred to it as an ambition.

That's where we are now, Andy.

The Conservative Manifesto is essentially a wish list, which at this point you've got to treat like New Year's resolutions.

We all know that they're going to be broken within a month, but it's tradition, goddammit.

Fundamentally, manifestos are not so much promises or pledges as the kind of stuff that you put on an online dating profile

just to get things moving.

That's exactly.

And you hope you suck people into a long-term relationship and then it becomes too much hassle to complain about the lies that began it.

Yeah, exactly.

And judging by sharing too much,

judging by their manifesto, the Conservatives are swiping far right.

The Labour manifesto

had a promise to not raise taxes for the lowest 95%

earners and only to raise taxes on the top 5%.

This was variously interpreted as Labour wanting to tax the top 5% of earners a bit more, Labour wanting to tax everyone a bit more, and Jeremy Corbyn wanting to establish gulags in Cornwall and force everyone to work on collective farms.

What's that?

You want a one-way ticket to Siberia Parkway?

Sure thing, Conrad.

Hop on, vote for me.

It very much depended which newspaper you read.

Obviously, the sums don't add up.

That's fine.

Sums never add up.

Any half-decent mathematician will tell you that.

That's, yeah, any half-decent or, you know, 45%.

There is about as much chance of Labour winning this election as there was of Britain voting to leave the EU and Leicester City Football Club winning the Premier League and America voting for a regurgitated carrot chunk from the Bowser B.

Elderbub as its president in the same year.

And only two of those things happens, of course.

Obviously, Donald Trump is not actually a regurgitated carrot chunk from the bowels be altered bubbly metaphorically that's a different matter but not literally

yeah some of the press coverage of uh old uh jeza corbs as you've alluded to has not been uh particularly favourable um the evening standard which is a circular paper that runs in london uh led with the headline comrade corbyn flies the red flag which is really beyond parody like at this point in terms of alarmism uh it also uh what adds spice to it is the editor of the Evening Standard is one George Osborne, former Chancellor and Conservative Minister.

At this point, the relationship between our political establishment and the press is seedier than Jeremy Corbyn's window pot.

The interesting thing is, I know we've been talking a lot about how Labour have almost no chance of winning.

They have had a pretty good week in the polls.

Now, obviously, we know from everything that's happened in the last 18 months that you can't trust polling.

No, and also that is a bit like Captain Scott having had a good work, a good day on the way back from the South Pole, isn't it?

Still got a, where's it going to end?

But there is this sense of a sort of resurgence off the back of the manifesto.

I don't know whether this is because it does seem like in terms of what we know about what the British public wants in terms of access to free healthcare and investment in education, that a lot of Labour's policies currently chime with a huge amount of what the nation thinks, or whether it's because Jeremy Corbyn has lowered expectations to such an extent that the fact that the manifesto was largely written in complete sentences, everyone's like, well done, Jeremy.

And then he pulled a slightly gangster move this week.

I don't know whether you, did you watch Theresa Maybe interviewed by Robert Peston?

I didn't see that, no.

She was being interviewed by Robert Peston on the ITV News, and they had this feature on it where everyone could ask questions via Facebook Live because everything is terrible.

And they opened it up to everyone to sort of weigh in and Robert Peston was looking at the list and he said and now

we got a we've got a question coming from Jeremy Corbyn in Islington.

Corbyn asked a fing question via Facebook Live of Theresa May.

Right.

In what way is that a gangster move?

Do gangsters now perform most of their transactions via Facebook?

Is this out of the loop?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's how it works.

You're much closer to these.

Much closer to the street.

Yeah.

But yeah, he asked her a question about

why she wouldn't debate him.

And it is starting to look bad because, as we've all established, the country does not seem to trust Jeremy Corbyn for whatever reason, in spite of the fact that his policies are polling pretty well.

But I think it is starting to dawn on people that if Corbyn is that bad and May is still scared of him, how shit must she be?

Like, how bad must she be if she's worried about being seen on the same platform as him?

Another Labour policy is to renationalise the railways.

Sure.

Which is another thing that divides opinion in this country.

Largely between people who use the railways and people who don't use the railways.

I mean, the railways have their glitches currently, as my late appearance in

this podcast.

I don't know.

If you could just cut out the silent 15 minutes before I turn up.

It wasn't silent, mate.

I was doing some classic top-level riffing.

Definitely cut that out.

Renationalising railways, is it going to make things better?

Yes.

No.

But at least when your train doesn't turn up or is so full that you've got to sit on someone else's shoulders who's taken a dump in the toilet, at least you know that the state is losing money rather than some businessman somewhere making a fing mint on it.

Well, exactly.

We actually spent as much money subsidizing our railways, I think between the years of 1996 and 2010, as France did on its entire nationalised railway service.

And French tickets on average are considerably cheaper than our tickets.

And when you think about privatising the railways, when you reflect on it, it does seem like a nonsense thing to do.

Because the whole point about privatisation is that it's supposed to provide competition, but you can't have competition.

Like there's only one f ⁇ ing track.

Like you can't race the trains.

So what we've done is instead of having one big monopoly, we've got a string of big monopolies that have no...

Like the only way for you to compete is if you're trained to Bristol as shit is to go well I'm going to Scotland That'll teach you Bristol train company

Well, we've much more to talk about with regard to the election including the Conservatives very high-profile reform of social care which is I think making people quite afraid of the concepts of death.

But we will talk about this in a couple of weeks at the the live bugle at the Soho Theatre.

That is now sold out due to a colossal public demand and millions of people wanting to see it and B it being held in quite a small room but there is another live bugle at the Underbelly on the 13th of July also featuring Nish and Helen Zoltzmann my sibling time to move on to across the Atlantic and the trumpet section

is Trumpeachment gonna happen?

Are we gonna see James Comey and the giant impeach?

Could Comey take down the comover?

Could the FBI bring the end of the FBI?

And obviously, we know what the F stands for.

The B can be whatever you want, and the I is probably idiot, but I'm sure there's alternatives for it.

These are such weird times.

There's no way that Trump doesn't own one of those t-shirts that says FBI and where it stands for female body inspector.

There is no, there is simply no way.

If he doesn't own one, it's only because he doesn't know they exist.

I mean, we need to look for the positives when it comes to that.

I mean, Trump has not brought, he's not brought an excess of dignity to the office of president.

That is probably the most polite summation of Donald Trump's period as president of the United States.

On the positive side, it used to be if you're walking along the street and you trod in a massive pile of dog shit,

that was quite an annoying part of your day.

Now, if it happens, you look down at your shoe and you think, that's amazing.

My shoe has more dignity than the leader of the free world.

So it's turned negatives into positives.

He's got to take a lot of credit for that.

Yeah, there's been more developments in the Trump Russia scandal this week.

At this point, it's so hard to just to keep pace with what's going on because it seems like every single day an accusation is made, it's then refuted by the White House spokespeople.

And then the next day, Trump says something that forces the whole accusation to to be reopened again.

But they have now appointed a special counselor I believe is the title.

Which news breaking actually he's already been fired and Donald Trump has instead now appointed a new FBI director to head up the investigation into links between Trump, the Trump campaign and Russia.

This will be led now by Mickey the Magic sock.

Holding up his hand with a sock puppet on it.

Donald Trump said Mickey the Magic Sock is completely impartial.

He's what this country voted for.

By the way, Ivanka designed the sock, $30 for three pairs.

Amazing socks.

Robert Mueller, who is the former head of the FBI, is now the special counsel for the Russia investigation.

And at the moment, the questions that he needs to establish are whether there was any Russian interference into the election.

And one of the other key things that needs to be established is was James Comey, the former director of the FBI, fired because he was investigating the Russian scandal.

And there's been a sort of alarming development in the middle of all of this

because we're finding out more and more about Comey's slightly fractious relationship with Donald Trump in the lead-up to his dismissal and it was so fractious that James Comey once tried to avoid Donald Trump by attempting to blend into the White House curtains to avoid being noticed

well this is there is some proper cartoon hiding going on because didn't Sean Spicer hid him

hiding in the bushes yeah but this is even more extraordinary

The New York Times has reported that Mr.

Comey, who is six foot eight inches tall and was wearing a dark blue suit that day,

said that he tried to blend in with the blue curtains in the back of the room in the hopes that Mr.

Trump would not spot him and call him out.

Now, Andy, I'm showing you a picture of that.

Would you say that James Comey is wearing a considerably different shade of blue on his suit than the curtains?

Yes,

it's not super camouflage, is it?

It's like a three-year-old playing hide and seek.

Yes, but but he's one of America's top spies.

That's reassuring.

No wonder they spent ages trying to find bin Laden.

They were all busy disguising themselves as sofas.

The strategy didn't work because Trump saw Comey, called Tut by name, and then apparently blew him a kiss.

Which I guess is a little bit like Michael and Fredo in the godfather part two.

At this point it's getting so farcial that when the inevitable reboot of all the president's men for the Trump era is made they will not need to call Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in they simply just need to get Will Ferrell and John C.

Reilly and turn the whole thing into a slapstick comedy it seems to be taking its toll on the Trump Meister General for the first time because at a commencement address this week he claimed that no politician in history has been treated worse or more unfairly now I mean forgetting the raft of assassinations and imprisonments that various politicians across the world have endured, his immediate predecessor was subject to constant accusations that he had not been born in America because he was black.

And Donald Trump should have known about that because those constant accusations were made by him.

And in Trump's Trump's close personal friends news, Nigel Farage, who is Trump's sort of sassy British sidekick, said that he will pick up a rifle rifle and car keys if Brexit is not properly executed.

Kharkies as in K-H-A-K-I-S rather than his C-A-R.

He's just going to go for a drive and calm down.

Yeah, his exact quote was, if they don't deliver this Brexit that I spent 25 years of my life working for, I don't recall the ballot paper saying, do you want to vote for Nigel Terra Brexit?

I'll be forced to Don Kharki, which was his mafia name, I believe, in his days in Sicily, pick up a rifle and head for the front lines.

Yeah.

He did defend himself by saying it was a metaphor,

get a life to someone who'd complained about it.

But it does make you think, exactly, what front lines is he talking about?

Well, the thing is, if the battle happens in London, Kharki is not going to be very good for camouflage.

That's very true.

He should probably disguise himself as a building or a Russian oligarch shopping for a flat or a football club.

He's pretty much dressed as that much of a man.

But also, if,

and it's a big if, Britain does descend into civil war,

it's much likely to be more of an amorphous guerrilla-style combat without defined geographical front lines.

Yeah, and also,

where's he going, Nish?

Is he going to the Syrian front line

again?

Kharki, probably not advisable.

We want to go to more kind of desert combats there.

And also, whose side is he?

Presumably, he will be on both sides attacking the innocent people in the middle of the Syrian crisis, the worst and most dangerous of all people in the Syrian struggle, the potential refugees.

Also, regardless of, if I ever found myself in a war, I'm not sure an ex-stockbroker who seemingly spent the last 20 years downing five pints a day as his five a day is going to be a particularly useful soldier.

Like that man is gout with arms and legs.

But it's just what a week for Trump and his best mate Farage.

At this point, Farage and Trump are to unimaginable stupidity what Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal were to playing tennis.

Art news now and big money transfer.

Picasso's famme assiz robe bleu or seated woman in a blue dress.

Big money transfer, 35 million pounds.

It's gone for a painting of one of his former lovers, Dora Maher.

You've got to ask, so where will femme assiz fit in the Chelsea lineup no?

It's very difficult to say.

Can it play in a 4-2-3-1 system alongside Van Gogh's Sunflowers?

Are we looking at kind of squad rotation?

Yeah, it's a big call to have Matic, Cante, and the Picasso painting vying for that holding midfielder spot.

Also, an untitled piece by Jean-Michel Basquiat, the French artist, that's gone for £85 million.

Wow.

The first post-1980 artwork to smash the £100 million barrier.

Shows if

you're old enough, if you're good enough, you're old enough as an artwork.

It's a Paul Pogbett of paintings.

That's right, you know, you're investing for the future.

That is going to

do a job for a long time, that painting.

I can see it fitting in on the left-hand side of a big gallery wall, to be honest, untitled.

In a free role, maybe next to a big old-fashioned Target Man up top.

Maybe

a great big Renoir.

Yeah.

Or, you know, you want to go old school, a Rubens.

You brought a couple of nifty little houses doing the mid-wall donkey work.

It

could be a very successful signing.

Yeah, it sounds very much like the job I did at football on Tuesday.

Sport news now and huge news niche for London as a sporting entity.

The mascots have been unveiled for the 2017 World Athletics Championships to be held in August in the great city of London 2012.

The two mascots for the World Athletics and the Para-Athletics Championships, Wisbee the Bee and Hero the Hedgehog, following on in the proud footsteps of Mandeville and Wenlock, the 2012 mascots.

Yeah, yeah, those weird penis aliens.

Yes, well they were modelled on fossilized mammoth sperms in fact

that were found on the site of the Olympic Stadium.

Let me just descriptively show you the two mascots on your audio screens at home buglers.

Hero the hedgehog.

Just imagine a 1980 soft rock star crossed with a hedgehog and then dressed like a 70 year old retired weirdo on holiday in Florida.

Bingo, you're in.

Perfect animal to be a mascot for big sporting events, the hedgehog, because it has a propensity to curl up into a tight ball and hide itself from the real world.

Sport is my hedgehog, which I think was Barack Obama's first book.

Hero the Hedgehog's inspiration, his mother, although he does admit she could be a bit prickly.

Thank you very much.

Wisbee, the mascot for the World Parat Athletics Championships, also held in London this summer.

A bee missing four and a half of its six legs

with the one and a half it has intact surgically attached to its abdomen rather than its thorax, the traditional place for bee legs.

By way of compensation, it does boast two human-style arms and have a running blade, which is a nice touch, but you would have thought of limited value to a creature best known for flying.

It also, the worrying thing for me, Nish, is that Wisbee does have a sting.

I'm sure everyone is hoping it's not deployed during the course of the championships for obvious reasons.

I mean

kids don't want to see a mascot getting a bit scared, lashing out with its sting, and then just slowly dying on the track.

Wisbee's likes, pollen, flowers, hanging out in hives, and matriarchal monarchies.

Wisbee's dislikes, rolled-up newspapers, and wasps.

Too much guilt by association.

But I hope they enjoy the celebrity and stardom while it lasts, Nish, because sports fans' affections are fickle when it comes to mascots, as Mandeville and Wenlock would testify.

Mandeville, tragically, I mean, it's now almost five years on since his heyday, heyday, fell upon very hard times after London 2012, blew all his Olympic earnings on drink, drugs and cosmetic surgery to bleach the embarrassing blue pigmentation all over his crotch, was thrown out of the Brit Awards last year after turning up drunk and demanding to do a duet with the singer Pink, claiming the two had briefly been an item.

Currently reported to be considering a career change.

Mandeville and retraining as a traffic cone.

Whilst Wenlock, sadly not much better, spent eight months in prison after urinating through the railings at Buckingham Palace in 2014 while

shouting, remember me, Lizzy, we gigged together two years ago.

Somewhat recovered after going to a rehab camp with other obsolete mascots, including Zakumi the Leopard from the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa, who narrowly escaped death at the hands of poachers, of course.

Word is the pelt from a genuine World Cup mascot can fetch up to $9 million in China, where it's used in traditional medicine as a treatment for ambivalence about pointless pursuits.

I think the Conservatives are trying to re-legalise mascot hunting

as part of their manifesto commitment.

Well, no one wants to see another Ronnie the raccoon from the 1981 Trinidad.

Also in rehab, he spent a bit of time with his hero, in fact, Naranjito, the 1982 World Cup Orange,

who was hideously exploited

in the 1990s by illegal Quantra traders.

It's terrible what happens to these creatures.

Your emails now, and this came in from Kelly on the subject, and this got my attention instantly Nish actual academic research into bullshit.

My ears are burning

Kelly writes dear favorite bullshitters a friend of mine sent me this article aptly entitled on the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit

I'll give you a quote

in research because that see that's a dick move to send that to you I'll give you a quote from the best abstract I have ever read writes Kelly although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, right, right from Aristotle to the present day.

Yeah, absolutely.

Its reception, brackets, critical or ingenuous, has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation.

Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit,

which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful, but are

actually vacuous.

That is a dangerous road to go down.

Oh, God.

Kelly says, I wanted to share this with you all because, aside from it being an interesting read, it has to hold the record for most uses of bullshit in a peer-reviewed article

a total including the title of 197

uses of the word bullshit that is incredible that's that's a lot that's a lot of bullshit 197 of course ironically uh michael vaughan's high score in test cricket the former england cricket captain

Anyway, do send your emails in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

But it is great that bullshit is finally getting the academic record.

recognition.

Yeah, I feel like that we should share that on some sort of uh on the website maybe.

It does feel like it's finally the academic justification this podcast has demanded and frankly deserved.

Yeah, because I think bullshit's it's it's had a got a bad rap in this age of fake news.

Yeah, yeah.

Well it's a much it's a much nobler pursuit.

Yeah it's a much nobler fake news.

It was fine when it was just you bullshitting but when it was the President of the United States it starts to become a bit more of a problem.

Vote Zoltzman.

Vote Zoltzmann 2020.

The campaign starts now.

I'm gunning for a position as Veep.

Nish, great to have you back.

Thanks very much.

Nish will be back on in two weeks with the live bugle.

Yeah, can't wait.

From Soho Theatre, which we will put out

highlights of as the regular bugle for that week.

As well as the live bugle.

Also Soho Theatre, Political Animal on the 25th and 29th of May and the 3rd of June.

I'm doing another Saturdays for High show at the Underbelly on the 20th of June.

Nish, you've got anything to plug?

I've got a show at the Bush Theatre on the 3rd of June at 6:30 p.m.

It's a new hour of hot comedy

from

a man who in no way has to Google himself to find out where his gigs are that week.

That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

I'll be back next week.

Until then, Buglers, goodbye.

Bye.

Long bugle today.

Long bugle.

Long bugle.

And we also managed to get through that Comey Curtains thing without any point saying pull yourself together.

That is an opportunity, Mitch.

Maybe.

Just tag that on the end.

Right at the very end.

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.