Bugle 4021 – Geertcha

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and a relatively warm welcome to issue 4021 of The Bugle, the world's predominant vestibulary of Glender Talk.

I claim that title, no one else has, so it is ours.

I'm Andy Zoltzman, the 21st century British Minio di Battiolucci.

Who is here, you ask?

Yes, exactly.

And I am live in London, the capital of the former United Kingdom, now the capital of the...

Still waiting to get the name change formalised, but that is basically what we are becoming.

And joining me for this issue for the week beginning Monday, the 20th of March, 2017.

It is the world record holder.

for most syllables in a surname by a bugle co-host.

Although he's only that because John Oliver, the previous record holder, never used his full quadruple-barreled birth surname of Oliver Khomeini Gorincha Drump.

Sorry, that was never supposed to come out, was it?

Sorry.

Anyway, it has a fascinating family history.

Shame we never talked about it when we had the chance.

It is the quadricylapic quipster himself, Hari Kondobolu.

Hello, Andy.

How are you?

I'm very well, thanks.

How are you?

I'm good.

It's St.

Patrick's Day here.

It's St.

Patrick's Day there as well, right?

That's a holiday that's celebrated in both of our countries.

Yes, yes, it is.

Yes.

You can't move for people dressed as snakes running away.

Well, I find the history of St.

Patrick's Day fascinating because, you know, the myth is that St.

Patrick got rid of all the snakes from Ireland by getting them drunk and pushing them off a cliff, hence the massive drinking.

I don't know how the vomiting fits in,

and the dying of the river's green, but certainly that should explain the drinking.

I also like St.

Patrick's day because uh do you have this expression everyone's irish on st.

patrick's day yes yes i think it's fascinating because you know the irish uh in america became white around the 1800s or so um so that means that we all get to be white for a day which is fascinating because i mean no one's tried this but you you should be able to commit tons of crimes and get away with it today.

Like today would be your day.

And I would suggest don't go with the petty theft.

All right.

Go with the money laundering, the embezzling.

Like, go for the big money.

You have the day.

You have the hole to maybe stop drinking around noon and start thinking about white-collar crime.

Right.

You've got to, I mean, that's the key.

The color of the collar is absolutely key

in the crime there.

Well,

Dying Rivers Green, they do that in Chicago, don't they?

Is that just a Chicago thing?

I mean, in New York, they're green, but I don't think it has anything to do with St.

Patrick's Day.

Right.

I mean, is that just some kind of

fungal infection in the river?

You know, the usual

bodies being thrown into the river after mafia hits, you know, whatever that leads to.

Right.

Okay.

I mean, does a body give off a particular green substance after it's been after it's been the recipient of a mafia hit rather than any other form of slaying?

I mean, does that.

Look, I'm no expert on the matter.

I just say things from my mouth and hope that they might be right for the hour.

Well, I mean, that's basically how, I mean, as the path of top-level politics in America is based, isn't it?

So, yes, I'm right.

Those are facts.

That is correct.

If you say they're facts, we cannot argue with you, Harry.

But also,

snake juice is green, isn't it?

That's why, so I guess maybe St.

Patrick did a trial run of

drowning snakes in a river before chucking it up.

Snake juice is green?

What colour is their blood?

Do they have blood?

They must have blood.

I don't know.

I don't know if snakes have blood.

I mean, science has never investigated that.

Hari, I should explain.

Andy has this weird thing where he can't tell the difference between snakes and kiwi fruit.

I'm sorry to bring that up then.

Well, they do share

about 1% of the same DNA, I think.

And I'm terrified of both.

Snake, I don't know about, I mean, no one knows if snakes have blood.

That's not the kind of thing that you can possibly discover.

But on my stag do many years ago with uh the aforementioned john oliver uh and uh a couple of other friends there was a heated debate that did involve money changing hands in a bet over whether or not snakes have lungs

so um but um that's that's the kind of level of science we operate at in britain so this is bugle 4021 coincidentally 4021 the number of diners who rated their meal average, below average, or poor at the feeding of the 5,000, according to recently discovered customer satisfaction survey results unearthed at an archaeological dig in the Sea of Galilee region.

Complaints included, quotes, disappointingly bland, unoriginal, unadventurous, a hackneyed fish and bread recipe, seriously small portions, that was quite a common complaint, and also someone who wrote, if you weren't sitting near the front, you were lucky if your meal was even lukewarm.

And even if Luke, the gospel hack from the press box, hadn't kept the food huddled inside his tunic, it wouldn't even mean that.

And that is the origin of the term lukewarm.

it's basically the body temperature of a gospel writer um

four thousand we start with a lot of facts in this show i don't know if we can keep it up

4021 also coincidentally the number of times since the 24th of june 2016 that former prime minister david cameron has woken up at night in the middle of a dream about being physically assaulted by a cumberland sausage a baguette and a souvlaki read into that what you want and um coincidentally the number of consecutive games of who's the biggest tool in this conversation won by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage before his famous meeting with Donald Trump last year.

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

A couple of sections in the bin this week.

Gardening.

I'm not sure we've ever had a gardening section in the bin on the bugle, but this week, shouting at flowers.

Does it make them grow quicker?

Does your shrub hate you?

How to deal with a bereaved dandelion after you've just mowed the head off its best friend and we also review the latest range of wi-fi enabled bird tables that allow birds to nibble at some seeds whilst checking google maps for up-to-date winds and traffic information on their migration paths also we look at the latest must-have accessories for your garden this week mud we advise you where to put it under your grass or all over the patio you decide and also in this section i'm in a free we are giving away a free audio garden accessory choose from one of the following A singing bird,

a wind chime,

an escaped tiger,

or a scarecrow muddy waters.

And also in the bin, an exclusive interview with Andy Zaltzman, the British comedian and heartthrob, about his forthcoming jaunt to the southern hemisphere, where he will, of course, be performing at the Melbourne Comedy Festival from the 30th of March to the 23rd of of April except Mondays, plus those two Bugle live shows on the 16th and 23rd, then to the Sydney Comedy Festival from the 24th to the 27th, and the New Zealand Comedy Festival in Auckland on the 28th and 29th, and Wellington on the 30th now, that's a new date, and the 1st of May before returning north to resume his UK

tour with gigs in Crawley, Warwick, Exeter, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Chorley, Cambridge, Oxford and Reading.

all of which of course prefigure a two-week reboot of Satris for Hire at the Edinburgh Festival in August.

And I must say it's a truly

interview.

I asked Saltzman on whose website andy's oldsman.co.uk you can find details of the aforementioned show how am I doing with crowbarring and these plugs?

I hadn't noticed.

Right, okay.

I asked him exactly, and we'll have a few little snippets before we chuck this in the bin, exactly why he's still doing stand-up.

Why am I still doing stand-up?

Good question, Andy.

Well, really, it's the only life I know.

I couldn't hack it as a wrestler, and they won't let me be a surgeon without qualifying.

And the tin mines are all shut down, so I just don't have any choice.

I asked Andy whether it's time he settled down and got a proper job.

I'm only 42.

Let me work out what I want to do with my life.

When he thinks he might be ready to appear on a topical TV panel show.

Oh, to be honest, I'm nowhere near that level yet, Andy.

I need another 10 to 15 years.

You have to be a comedic Michelangelo and a Harvard-level polymath to even have a chance.

And the frustrations are being judged on his clothes, looks, and body, rather than his art.

Oh, look, there's nothing I can do about that, Andy.

You can't fight human biology.

Plus, finally, I ask him about the lifestyle of an acquired taste comedian who's never really come close to cracking the big time.

I love my shed.

God, I love my shed.

Unfortunately, that interview has gone in the bin.

Shame was a very good interview.

Awkward guy to talk to, I found.

And wears very strange clothes.

Top story this week: Dutch right wing loses election.

Stroop waffle prices are not impacted.

So the big story out of the Netherlands, other than the Stroopwaffel deal, is that

the far-right wing did not win the majority in the elections.

This is the party of Mr.

Wilders, their

party for freedom party, which is

ironically titled.

However, the Conservatives still won, which I find fascinating because it's not like it was like

like a liberal takeover.

It was just the not-as-bad party won, which I suppose if you get your leg amputated or fear amputation, gangrene sounds pretty good.

So the gangrene party won.

Yeah, I mean, this Francois Hollande, the French president, said it was a clear victory against extremism.

But as you say, the Conservatives won.

And Vilda still came second, I think, 19 seats

and on a continent such as Europe, Hari.

And

we've had a few brushes with extremism that have not always turned out 100% happily, it's fair to say.

For me, that victory was not quite clear enough for comfort.

Angela Merkel hailed a good day for democracy.

And that just shows how out of form democracy has been, that Wilders coming second and the Labour Party disintegrating like a poorly made Pavlova lobbed out the window of a space shuttle as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere is

seen as a good day.

I mean, relatively, there have been some worse days, but I'm finding it hard to get, but there's a sense of relief, but also a sense of foreboding.

I'm not sure this is, I mean, is this a turning point or

a dead cat bounce?

for,

I guess, the forces of conducting politics like you're not a massive k.

Hate is really

easy.

It's a fun emotion.

It allows for yelling and an adrenaline rush.

That's hard to beat.

It's hard to beat hate as somebody who

has dabbled in it in my younger years.

Can you not use those same shouting to express love as well?

I mean, it's not a classic seduction technique.

I love you.

My heart is empty without you.

Why won't you fing understand that?

There have been a lot of concerns about the Netherlands politically, really, Hari, ever since their horrific display of intolerance towards Spanish footballers in the 2010 Football World Cup final, in which they treated the opposing Spain 11 as if they themselves, the Dutch squad, were

a team of xenophobic kickboxers told to patrol their borders at any cost.

Any country that could produce the football of Mark Van Bommel,

the world was trembling to itself that day, could probably go in hard and go in rogue at a general election.

And

we're people genuinely terrified that Wilders could

become king of Holland,

essentially.

A bit more detail on him.

As you say, his party is called

in

the Dutch is called Partei vo de Vreiheit, which translates, you got it wrong, actually, it actually translates as party for the fk head.

Oh,

formerly, formerly known as the CCCC, the cavalcade of card carrying.

They finished with 19 seats.

For the sake of democratic balance, we should mention some of the other parties on the left side of the orange.

The Grun Links or Green Left, they won 14 MPs out of 150.

Their leader, Jesse Claver, has an interesting background.

He's only existed for a few months.

He emerged from nowhere after someone got drunk at an office party whilst reading about Canadian politics and accidentally sent Justin Trudeau's Wikipedia page to a 3D printer.

And also we had the Party voder Dieren.

That's the party for the animals.

They picked up five seats.

That's a huge result.

Harry.

Five seats, 3.1% of the votes for the party for the animals.

I wouldn't have thought Dutch voters were such massive fans of the 1960s Newcastle blues rockers, the animals.

And who can blame them?

Lead singer Eric Burden could of course blues the lava back into a volcano.

Didn't all go well for the 60s music-based parties though.

Partey vo de Hermitten von Hermann, no seats at all.

Also the Staatkundig Geraformia der Partei.

I'm not sure of the translation.

I think it's the Staat Kunding, the Geraformier der Party.

The Jongblerd,

they're the Dutch youth party.

The SHKR, the Serbia Hans Kroll Reisbergen, which is the Can't We Just Be Nice to Each Other party.

The NJVH,

Nieskens Janssen

Van Hannigam, Small Windmills Police Party, and of course the RCR, Rensenbrink, Cruyf Rep, the Reformed Union for Civil Representation.

Andy, aren't those the names of the players from the 1974 Dutch team that lost to Germany?

I was hoping you wouldn't notice that one.

Anyway, keep stumbling.

There are so many parties in Dutch politics with their proportional representations.

There's a reasonable chance that just by getting the name out there, they might win a seat at the next election.

Watch this space.

You know, it's strange.

I know very little about football, but the one thing I do know is the roster roster of the 1974 Dutch football team.

Strange.

Yeah, well, I still can't believe they lost.

Got overconfident.

This guy, Wilders, is it Wilders or Wilders or?

Filders?

Filders.

Wilders.

All you really need to know about him, Buglers, is that...

This gives some context, Hari.

He lives in the Netherlands.

Now, the Netherlands is famously...

One of the most relaxed, chilled-out, and laid-back nations in the world.

Few people are rated happier and more contented than the Dutch.

And Ger Wilders has needed an armed bodyguard 258366 for the last 13 years.

That is how much of a disputatious divisive shitbag he is.

His self-appointed role is to launch the non-existent boilers of society with his rusty javelin of xenophobia and then to salve the resulting wounds with the chili-infused vinegar of intolerant opportunism.

He is in short what European politics needs right now in the same way that Captain Scott in the latter stages of his fateful, fatal South Pole expedition needed a bikini.

Also, Andy, do you know what I discovered from reading this story?

What's that?

Belgium and the Netherlands, two different places.

Can you believe that?

I was worried, man, because I liked Belgium.

I thought maybe that was just in the Netherlands.

And apparently, if there is an immigration ban issue like Wilders wants, if they gain power in the Netherlands I could still go to Belgium and they still have soup waffles so a win-win well that's every every cloud I mean it's it just goes to show you know the democracy just it educates people about all the Europe drifting to the right has made the rest of the world take an interest in our continent I mean if it was about time we had our say in the world if we had bombed the the area we might be familiar with it for some period of time yep yeah well there's that I mean that is becoming increasingly likely by the day.

I mean it is quite hard at the moment to keep up with all the global elections we need to be worrying about, as well as watching the quantity of sport needed to remain to maintain some semblance of mental equilibrium in these times of global upheaval.

But the French election is imminent and Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, she is current odds with the bookmakers 11 to 4.

So she's very, very unlikely to win.

But hang on, those are significantly shorter odds than either Brexit or Trump.

Oh, dear world, it's not over yet.

The favourite is the centre-left candidate Emmanuel Macron.

He's 15 to 8 on, favourite.

Please, Monsieur Macron, do not fk it up.

Or, as the French would say, nulla up fest pas civu play.

He's very French, Macron, to the extent where his wife used to be his school teacher.

Only France could do that.

Only France.

And he's been criticized for having no policies.

And what I would say, Hari, is, oh, thank God for that.

If only all politicians had no policies.

If Donald Trump just stood there growling, I could take that.

I wouldn't like it.

but I could take it.

It's the words and ideas that I have problems with.

I think this should be the blueprint for all politicians.

Let me just add that Europeans do not have a monopoly on

crazy politicians.

You might be familiar with, you know what I'm talking about, the Iowa Congressman Steve King.

Well, you say I might be familiar with him.

I wasn't familiar with him until you suggested we cover this story.

And my life was significantly dipped in the 24 hours since I started reading about Steve King.

Well, I mean, he is very much influenced by Wilders, which is very upsetting.

And he tweeted something out that Wilders had said.

And on top of that, he wrote, we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies.

So he's talking about, you know, immigration, anti-immigration.

We can't have brown babies because America, of course, has no history of black and brown babies since the beginning, obviously.

And so, you know, this created

a bit of a firestorm.

I mean, it's strange, because if he was talking about aliens, like we can't be having alien babies, I'd probably be with them initially

until I fell in love with probably an alien and then I'd reconsider and I'd probably question

what I was,

who I had become, you know, and it would be a film.

and uh good film good film also based on what he said regarding uh we can't have someone else's babies i'm assuming that means if you have a white american baby either the government or steve king owes you back child support

rod does it not slightly suggest that if you have a white american baby that steve king believes the government should co-opt that baby to build american civilization from birth i mean there's a number of things wrong with this this I mean he said like I said let's repeat these words.

We cannot restore our civilization with someone else's babies.

Now in some ways he's both right and wrong.

He's right because you cannot basically use babies to rebuild a full-blown civilization.

Babies can barely build a Lego house.

Do not rely on babies for civilization.

They are physically inept and emotionally fragile.

Neither of which is a quality you want if you're trying to restore a supposedly broken civilization.

And we've had monarchs in this country who were babies we had like

was it henry ii was like nine months old or something when he became king and that that didn't go completely swimmingly obviously he's also wrong because when you look at the history of civilization on both sides of the atlantic as you've suggested we needed someone else's babies to build our civilizations in the first place in fact i mean as well as someone else's natural resources someone else's food someone else's lack of immunity to smallpox and those people understandably eventually got a little bit stroppy about the way we were doing things.

So basically, we're just not great at building civilizations without the key input of other people's babies that we've stolen.

Also, some of the most fundamental American things have been influenced,

you know, by diversity.

You know, like jazz is an American invention that obviously, you know, comes from black culture, you know.

Baseball,

you know, it comes from

the UK and then turns into something else and is now huge in Latin America.

Me, the comedy of Hurricane Nabolu, certainly has been influenced by all sorts of things, not just American,

you know, comedy history.

So some of the most influential and important things

that America has contributed due to diversity.

And you yourself were, at one point,

someone else's baby, weren't you?

I mean, that's...

Who spread that rumor?

how

you spread a ring began isn't it

I'm I'm I'm spreading a rumor that's what this show's all about

King met Wilders

last last year and tweeted a photo with the caption cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end

which is I mean a

soul-chillingly worrying and B what do you think well cultural suicide by demographic isolation will probably guarantee you a much quicker kill.

So, I mean,

old man, he's also, I mean, he is essentially living proof that democracy doesn't work.

And he spoke out against the protests of the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, that we I think we talked about on an issue you were on before.

And he described them as activism that's sympathetic to ISIS.

So refusing to sing the national anthem at an an American football game

in an effort to highlight the social injustices of

American life.

I mean, is that high on the ISIS list?

You know, and then

they're going through their weekly agenda.

Number one, death to the infidel.

Number two, archaeology is for dweebs.

Number three, we really, really hate women.

Number four, I really want to emphasise how much we hate women.

And number five, I really think we need to use American football as a vehicle for protesting against racial inequality in the USA.

I'm not sure that is how ISIS works, Mr.

King.

I will say that if it is true, way to go, American football, for increasing their global reach.

Yeah.

That's a new demographic.

Shows the power of sport.

Another big disappointment this week for me was that MSNBC, the American cable news network,

claimed that Rachel Maddow, incredible reporter, who has an incredible show,

had Donald Trump's tax returns.

So, of course, we all tuned in, like, well, Rachel Maddow's not going to let us down.

This is finally the time.

We were told an hour before the show, people tuning in.

Apparently, more people tuned into that than, like,

you know, the previous MSNBC program.

That's that's something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we find out that Rachel Maddow only had the first two pages of his 2005 tax return, which doesn't list what he spent his money on or what the expenses are.

It just says how much he made and how much he paid, which the White House also said before it came out.

So it wasn't really news at that point.

And

also, they admitted that Trump could have planted it.

So they're basically saying that this may be a trap.

What you are watching right now might be the media being fooled.

And

that went for about an hour.

I kept waiting for Rick Astley to pop up on screen.

I'm never going to give you up you being the tax returns.

I was wondering if perhaps the tax returns were in Al Capone's vault.

That's a reference to

in the 1980s, the reporter Geraldo claimed that he was going to open Al Capone's vault where there might be many riches and it was just, I believe, a old bottle of gin gin or something like that.

That is a niche reference.

I admire that.

That is a road we've never gone down before on the Bugle Alcapan vault.

The whole thing was very disappointing.

Essentially, it was Beyoncé only releasing 10 seconds of lemonade, which, you know, was, which was heartbroken.

It was heartbreaking for me because this was going to be the most exciting tax revelation since

this was going to be the most exciting tax revelation

and in terms of great scoops of journalistic history this is i mean it's it'll it's not great it's not watergate is it you know publishing something that was already public domain and isn't particularly interesting basically show that trump did pay some tax a long time ago um i mean there's other you know we've got similar scoops here uh just breaking now the news that's um

uh well the huge story here this this could rock the royal family to its foundations allegations that the queen had sex with both the lord high admiral of the uk and the royal chief of the papu new guinean order of logahu and had at least one child by each of them where does this leave our monarchy what will prince philip or the duke of edinburgh her two current squeezes think well

They probably don't care because they are all one and those are just titles of the of the of the Duke Duke of Edinburgh.

The queen had children with her husband.

That is what that story has been.

I mean, that's, I think, on a level with the Rachel Maddow scoop.

Also, I probably think it's on the level of

breaking news, Netherlands and Belgium, two different countries.

Which was a big one for me.

Now, Hari, on your previous appearances on the Bugle,

you have been landed with some

pretty

undiluted Trump.

And I did promise,

I think the last two times you've been on that we would try to keep that to an absolute minimum.

Now clearly as always there are some pretty massive stories breaking from the world of Trump.

So to keep a lid on it we are going to have to we are keeping this week's trumpet section to an absolute maximum of three minutes.

The Trump is

go get it all off your chest.

Trump apparently took climate change off his agenda.

So I'm assuming Trump and other super wealthy people don't care about climate change on Earth because they plan to go to Mars.

I mean, I don't understand how Trump supporters are supporting a man who's going to take away their health care.

Trump supporters are the kids who do homework for rich and cool kids, hoping they'll be rich and cool by association.

And from personal experience, trust me, they will not.

Have you done a lot of research into that?

That was

method acting for most of my youth.

Also, foreign aid has been slashed, which is a slightly odd thing to do for a president who wants to stop people moving to America, to cut funding on one of the things that will help people stay where they are.

It's reminiscent of when my great aunt Petula May, worried about bees getting into her vintage Ferrari, defended her vintage Ferrari by guarding it with a giant slab of jam.

It makes that much sense.

I'm sick of the media constantly doing stories about Trump's tweets.

Like, Trump's tweets are basically his fiddle.

He's basically just being like, hey, Look over here and each time it is effective I mean one hour after Trump tweets that Obama wiretapped him an accusation of historic proportions He tweets that Arnold Schwarzenegger ruined the apprentice Same person

within an hour of each other had moved on to Arnold Schwarzenegger the Senate Intelligence Committee said there was no evidence that Trump Tower was ever under surveillance by the U.S.

government before the election to which I would respond A, of course not the mere suggestion is obviously the deluded ramblings of a medically certifiable

and B why the f ⁇ was it not under surveillance I mean I listened in with a yogurt pot and a piece of string when I was in New York last autumn and it was clear there was some seriously weird stuff going on inside that tower but really weird like trying to get a racist sexist tycoon elected as president you don't want to let that kind of stuff slip under the radar America tap tap also uh breaking news uh allegations out there were both wires and taps in both Trump Tower and the White House during the election campaign simultaneously.

You can draw your own conclusions from that.

During the joint session, Donald Trump said, it is reckless to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting cannot occur.

He is proof of this.

Keep him in his own tower.

He could be like the 21st century Rapunzel.

Trump has rebooted.

He's definitely not a Muslim ban on Muslims.

And he's insisted that he's not a ban on Muslims and the problem for Trump is that he did put on his own website a statement calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the US.

So the problem for Trump is he laid his cards on the table.

And then he took a screenshot of that table with the cards on it and put it on his website and then took a photo of himself rubbing the cards suggestively on his crotch and tweeted it with a hashtag saying, I'm a feminist.

Another reason why Donald Trump doesn't care about global warming is because, you know, he's the devil and it's hot in hell.

I remember thinking last year,

who are all these people who keep falling for the Nigerian Prince scam in 2016?

And then after Trump was elected, I had my answer.

Andy, I'm glad that we kept that segment as short as we did.

I know a lot of the Bugle listeners were very upset that we kept talking about Trump when I was on.

They were getting bored of it.

So

I think we should let them know if other catastrophic world events do occur, like an alien invasion or a meteor hitting the earth, we'll be sure to keep it short.

Sorry for boring you with our alien invasion and a meteor hitting the earth.

Your emails now, this came from Neil,

who writes, I've enjoyed the return to weekly bugles.

The only complaint I have about the new format is that there is far too much coverage of politics, as you recently just suggested, Hari, and not nearly enough stories about teenagers drawing cocks and balls on their parents' roof.

I mean, this goes right back to bugle number 69, wasn't it?

The cock on roof episode.

It was a huge story, Hari.

And basically, this kid drew, it was about 50 meters long, wasn't it?

But basically, imagine a helipad, but shaped like an enormous set of male glunches.

Neil continues, in a hope to rectify this, I enclose a link to a quite incredible headline: model who vowed to give 19,419,507 blowjobs to meet man with bionic penis, which sounds like the most awesome crossword clue ever written.

See, this

see, yeah, everyone who voted no in the recent Italian referendum, apparently.

That's going to be hard to...

I mean, logistically,

that is an issue.

It's like Batman versus Superman for the depraved.

More so.

I had that as an review of one of my Edinburgh shows once.

Well, we will keep looking up.

And maybe, Harry, next time you're on the show, you can bring a story about someone painting a penis on a roof.

I might paint that penis on a roof just to have the story.

You do that.

You do that.

Make your own story.

That's the way journalism works these days.

And we are, of course, a journalistic outlet.

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

Sport now and a huge week in horse racing here.

The horsies have been steeplechasing each other all over the place at Cheltenham, the Cheltenham Horsey Festival, very much the Cheltenham literary festival of the horse racing world.

And some wonderful races.

And we at the Bugle, we have exclusive commentary for non-gamblers on the big horse races from Cheltenham

including the Sir Postman Pat Memorial stakes which took place on Thursday.

Exclusive commentary for people who don't like gambling.

And here come a load of horses.

They're all running fast.

It's a terrific race this.

The late Sophat will be loving this.

Were he here today?

They're coming up to a fence, up and over the fence.

It's hard to tell what they're thinking.

The horses are not giving much away facially, but the little folk on top of them are getting quite worked up.

Some horses going faster than the other ones now, and now they're slowing down.

That seems to be the end of it.

There was one at the front, the brown one, then

a grey one and some more brown ones, all with four legs.

Great sport.

Well, the big sports story in America is that the March Madness has started.

That is the NCAA tournament, the college basketball tournament where colleges from all over the country compete, 64 to begin with in Division I, and they play for weeks at a time.

And it's very exciting.

None of the athletes get paid.

However, billions of dollars is made for television networks and their colleges, which is very American to

have unpaid labor to make others very rich.

I mean, honestly, that is the most American thing.

It's quite extraordinary, isn't it?

The obsession.

Because I was in America one March,

a few years ago, and I remember sitting, I saw Barack Obama, who was then president and took some time off from installing secret wires in other people's blocks of flats.

And he took half an hour on a TV show to do his bracket

for March Madness,

to

say who he thought was going to win right through to the final.

I thought, I mean, it's one thing taking the time to do that.

What concerned me a hell of a lot more, Hari, was how much he knew about it.

Did he not have more important stuff to do than think about unpaid student basketball?

I mean, he must have had an earpiece of some sort.

People must have been feeding him things, right?

I would hope so.

I would have hoped he'd have just broken down in tears and saying, oh, God, it's so nice not to have to talk about terrible, terrible things.

Who's your money on this year for the.

And why is it called March Madness?

I mean, what element of, I mean, how mad is it?

Well, there's a lot of last-second kind of buzzer beater type games, and often like teams rank like, you know, it's one through 16 for each piece of each division.

So all the, whenever like a lower seed beats a higher seed, it's a really big deal.

I don't really.

And I mean,

how is Harvard going to do this year?

I imagine they're absolutely sensational.

They made the Ivy League finals and then lost.

The Ivy League teams are always really funny to watch because they're really fundamentally sound.

It's a very boring type of basketball, is what I'm saying.

It is.

But it's fundamentally, it's as if they read the book like a manual.

They read the rule book like a manual and are playing by those rules that are very strict.

Right.

So they wander around with great big works of philosophy tucked under one arm.

Also,

we had the final of Crofts

last week, which is one.

You'll be delighted to know, Harry, by an American cocker spaniel.

I don't know if the dog itself is American, but the breed is called the American Cocker Spaniel.

The dog was called Afterglow Miami Inc.

But this did not go down well with dog fans.

They branded the winning dog a pompous, fancy thing.

And when I say they, I mean one person on Twitter.

Others called the winning dog a joke.

It was very

very groomed.

I mean this you know the American cocker spaniel is a is a gun dog essentially it's a it's a it's a hunting hunting accessory

well of God you'd expect that from an American cocker spaniel British cocker spaniels of course are prepared to let the police do their work

it's not gun dogs that kill pheasants remember it's people with gun dogs and guns and anyway

I don't know is there is there an American equivalent of crafts Ari where you know the great dogs of America get to strut their funky stuff?

Oh, yeah, there's the Westminster Dog Show.

I imagine it's basically like the Super Bowl, is it?

Oh, it's huge here.

Yeah.

I believe

a dog won last

dog show.

Thanks for that insight.

Other dogs had a

good Crofts as well as Afterglow Miami Inc.

Spritzel Plank Gravidlax, that's a Rusitanian Labradoxer, renowned for being able to bark the theme tune to the Dukes of Hazard.

He won in the coveted stupidest prance category.

The doggy free dance was won by a very sweet little crimple-head miniature Bavarian schnitzel hound called Virus Death Machine, barely the size of a family-sized spam fritter, but stole the heart of the crafty crowd with her winning dog interpretation of the death of Cleopatra.

And of course, the big star of day one of Crafts, champion herpes of Jiggledick, a long-snouted Ecuadorian Protriever.

That's the type of dog that fetches the stick before you've even thrown it at the Petriever.

And he made up for his disappointment in the North Korean National Dog Show when he was, of course, disqualified for humping a warhead.

And he's been on much better form since having his clonkles chopped off.

And he won the most other dogs' arses sniffed in a minute's competition, clocking up a personal best of 34 in the final.

And he got very excited when presented with his golden bone by Porthos, the former musket hound from the 1980s animated children series Dog Tanyon and the Three Muskerhounds.

So it was nice to meet you, celebrity hero.

In fact,

I went to the Postmax press conference and asked Afterglow Miami Inc.

how he was dealing with his newfound celebrity.

Afterglow Andy Zoltzmann, the bugle.

Congratulations

on your win.

How do you feel about being judged so much on

your physical appearance?

Do you feel undervalued and demeaned by that?

No, Andy.

I know I look great.

I'm happy with how I look.

And if other dogs want to look like me, well that's just good too.

Where is that dog from?

I told it's American.

Which era of America?

Well Alaska pre-1860.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

Don't forget, if you're in the southern hemisphere, to come to every single one of my shows aforementioned in the show, and isolsom.co.uk for details.

I will also

tweet them out.

Hari, have you got any shows you'd like to plug in?

Yes, I do.

Good.

In New York City, this Sunday, March 19th, I will be doing a show with my brother, the Untitled Kundubolo Brothers Project at Littlefield.

We would love for you to be there.

3.23, March 23rd through March 26th, Sacramento Punchline.

April 26th, The Cedar in Minneapolis, April 27th through the 29th, Comedy on State in Madison, Wisconsin.

And of course, on May 4th through May 7th, Caroline's on Broadway, New York City.

Also, politically reactive, the podcast I do with W.

Kamal Bell returns on March 29th.

And I have albums out and a surprise album dropping any day now.

Cool.

There you go, Buglers.

Buy all of those things and give them as

wedding presents.

Andy, how much do you like Radiotopia?

Oh, I love Radiotopia an indescribable amount, so I will not describe it.

How much, therefore, do you like the Knight Foundation?

Awesome, one of my favourite foundations.

And how much do you love Male Chimp?

Well, I love all genders of chimp, but Male Chimp in particular is very good at what it does.

Thanks very much for listening, Buglers.

We'll be back next week with Nish Kumar.

Now, the big story this week in Britain has obviously been the

Scottish referendum making a dramatic comeback.

And we will be discussing that and other things with Nish next week.

Until then, goodbye.

Goodbye, 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.