Bugle 4020 – Gender War

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4020 of The Bugle.

Yes, that is right, 4,020 episodes of raw, pure, unadulterated truth-telling in this weekly show in just nine years and five months.

More than one a day, if you include all the episodes between 293 and 4001 that we did not record.

And this is for the week beginning Monday the 13th of March 2017 and joining me live in London here in the shed of destiny.

All the way from A upstairs in my house and B from the same womb I used to live in back in the day, though we weren't there at the same time.

It's the woman who puts the sister into syntax etymologist and grabber the scribbling sibling herself, Helen Zoltzmann.

Hello, Andy.

Hello.

Hi.

Did they decorate our womb much like your attic is decorated?

There are a lot of maps stuck to the walls to cover patches of damp.

Didn't cover patches of damp.

It's to educate.

We put them up there to educate you and Martin.

Well, I appreciate it.

I feel a lot more knowledgeable about the layout of the Arctic.

Good.

Although that is rapidly changing, so we're going to have to update the ceiling.

Quite out of date.

Yeah, just imagine a giant teardrop from the children of the future.

Or the present.

Don't get your children to cry on it.

Well that's quite easy.

All you need to do is to beat them

at some kind of game or sport.

That seems to work.

That is why sport is bad.

That brings out the worst in people.

Why sport is good.

Worst in people.

Trains you up to deal with the inevitable disappointment and failures of life.

Well evidently it hasn't.

Given how much sport they've absorbed since birth and they're still absolute dicks when someone else works in off me.

Sport has failed to speak.

that's because they have a bad aunt

this is not the kind of conversation we should be recording and broadcasting not as bad as our aunt

this is bugle 4020 the 20th episode back meaning it is episode 313 in total 313 helen is the number plate uh on Donald Duck's car.

That's number 313.

Also, frame 313 of the Zapruder film shows the moment of impact for the bullet that killed JFK.

Join the dots, people!

Join those dots!

Jet fuel doesn't melt steel beans!

It's staring you in the face!

Wake up, sheeple!

At the risk of causing a rewrite for the first part of today's show,

you said we only did 293 bugles when we started.

Alright, we did 294.

Yeah, five.

Was it?

Ah.

So,

what you could do now is just disown those last two bugles to make the joke stand.

Well, yeah, I mean, maybe some of them weren't absolutely fully up to muster.

They were non-canonical.

Yes, looking back.

Thank you.

Yeah, good word, Helen.

Yeah.

So we are recording on Friday, the 10th of March.

On this day in the year, 2000, the Nasdaq Composite Stock Market Index peaked at Helen.

How can you not know that?

Six out of ten.

Five thousand

and thirty two point five two, signaling the beginning of the end of the dot-com boom.

And on this anniversary, we ask, whatever happened to the internet?

It used to be all the rage.

Will it ever make a comeback?

What happened to Google?

And why 30-volume encyclopedias will never go out of fashion?

And we look back at some of the most overvalued text docs at the time at the peak of the dot-com boom, including did youstealmypencil.com?

enabling people to find the pencils they lost at school.

Pair socks for spare socks.

People could upload pictures of odd socks that they had, and if someone else had a similar odd sock, they could argue over who got to have both of them.

And passengers reunited, putting people back in touch with strangers they sat next to on trains in previous years.

And on the 11th of March in the year 2002, there's quite a lot of anniversaries this week.

The 11th of March 222, the Emperor Elagobalus was assassinated

along with his mother,

basically in toilet.

Then their mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets of Rome and thrown in the river.

Can you believe, Helen, that is 1805 years years ago?

Barely Fields.

Still so fresh.

He was assassinated at the age of 18, Elagobalus, having already been Emperor of Rome for four years, married five women and two men, prompted rebellions in the Roman army, devalued the currency, become a high priest of a new religion, worked as a transvestite prostitute, drowned his dinner guest on a special water wheel, and

been slain with his mother and lobbed into the river Tiber.

He packed more into his short lives than many of us will ever achieve.

Does make me think in a who had the more exciting teenage years, it is Elagobalus I and his Oltsman nil.

There were just fewer opportunities in Tunbridge Wells to devalue a currency and marry somebody else.

I read more cricket books than him as a teenager.

That is true.

So maybe one all.

Also on the 11th of March in 1702, England's first national daily newspaper was published for the first time, the Daily Courant.

I don't know if I've pronounced that right, but...

Helen?

Well, who's going to know?

C-O-U-R-A-N-T, you are the absolute wizard of words.

You tell me.

I thought you did quite a good job.

Thank you.

I have a copy of it here, in fact.

Some interesting stories.

Queen Anne, the first three days, exclusive supplement on the new monarch.

How to look like Queen Anne in five easy steps.

And Queen Anne Looks at a Thing, exclusive pictures, pages 3 to 17.

So, British tabloids haven't really moved on very much.

Did Queen Anne get her post-baby body back

after 17 pregnancies?

That's the question.

Yes, that's a pretty dark historical hole to go down.

As always, a section of this august audio newspaper is going straight in the bin.

This week, on the 141st anniversary of the first successful test of a telephone made by Alexander Graham Bell with his first ever call, he put in an order for a 15-inch meat feast with extra pineapple and some spicy chicken wings.

He invented it, of course, after his mother, Mrs.

Bell,

complained, Alexander Graham, you never call.

Why did you never call?

Alexander Graham thought, How am I supposed to call you?

I don't have a phone.

She says, Well, you sort that out.

Anyway, to commemorate this historic techno breakthrough,

just 141 years ago, we are giving away absolutely free half of a telephone conversation with the host of the bugle, Andy Zaltzmann.

You just have to fill in the gaps marked with this noise

with whatever chit chat, conflab, or nitanata you see fit.

Here you go.

Hello, Zoltzatiricorp International Andy Speaking.

Sorry, I didn't catch that.

Yep, I'm listening.

No,

not really my thing.

Look, exactly, what is this about?

I find that kind of talk offensive.

How did you get this number?

No, I'm married.

Who?

Oh, I'm afraid he doesn't do the show anymore.

New York last I heard doing telly or something.

Yes, it is an unexpectedly massive tattoo, but he loved being involved in those two films, and blue really suits him.

Bye, then.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, Melbourne from the 30th of March to the 23rd of April.

Sydney from the 24th to the 27th.

Then Auckland from the 29th, on the 28th and 29th, and Wellington on the 1st of May.

Yeah, all the details are on my website, andysolsman.co.uk.

What you mean you can't make any of them?

What do you mean you don't live in that hemisphere?

Fing time waster.

Top story today, International Women's Day.

IMDB has added an F rating so that you can see whether a film has any of the following: female director, female writer, or featuring significant women on screen in their own rights.

So if those are the films you want to see, you can check on IMDb by that tag.

There are over 22,000 films already tagged with it.

Out of how many films?

Fing loads.

Probably that is about 2% of films.

And then when you search for that tag, it comes up with films that have been tagged for female frontal nudity, lesbian kiss, suicide, blood, crying, and adultery.

So I guess

it is backfired a bit as a good way of finding films in which women are having a shit time.

Also, bare-chested male comes up so okay um

what other do they have other letters do they have like a j for a p for patriarchy j for for

heavily jewish influenced film and that's all films obviously because we run showbiz helen we run showbiz thank you moses for getting god to tag that onto the promised land contract with the we run showbiz that is why there are no gentiles on this week's bugle moses would have a reality show if he was around now he'd probably have a wildlife show wouldn't he because he he uh he uh had a little incident on the river, didn't he?

Did he get eaten by a crocodile as a baby?

I can't remember.

Is this going to affect the way that people watch films, do you think?

The new F rating?

Well maybe men will be like I'm not watching that it's got women in it.

They might be empowered.

What then?

Right.

I personally don't watch any film that does not include an exactly equal number of everyone.

on the basis of gender, race, religion, sexuality, football team, height, degree of veganism and political orientation.

Not as a point of principle, just because I have children, therefore I no longer go to the cinema at all, or indeed anywhere else.

You only watch cricket, so I suppose there's an equal number in that there are 11 people per team.

Yes, and it's very strongly

equilibrial.

Yeah,

in that only.

Yes.

Now,

you highlighted to me this week a very exciting

gender flip film remake.

Yes, people were excited about Splash getting a gender flip remake.

People were furious about Ghostbusters getting one.

That's the world we live in.

And now, Andy.

Saving Private Ryan.

The Passion of the Christ.

That is just every day for us in your society.

No, the 1987 classic Overboard.

So now

Goldie Horn will be played by a man

and Anna Farris will play the Kurt Russell part.

I don't know if you remember Overboard, Andy.

I remember it was one of the first films I ever saw on a plane when we were going to visit our relatives in South Africa.

And so it's pretty much the best film ever made.

However, it does involve Goldie Horne being a rich, horrible woman who falls off her yacht, gets amnesia.

Her husband doesn't love her, so he doesn't claim her from the hospital.

Kurt Russell is a carpenter who is angry because she hasn't paid him for building her a wardrobe.

So he pretends she's his wife, takes her to his squalid home, and makes her look after his children.

And that is a romantic comedy in the 80s.

So if you gender flip it, you basically get the film misery.

Are you sure you're remembering the film, not our childhood?

Well, our parents didn't find love by building a miniature golf course together.

More's the pity.

Imagine what they could have done with our garden if they'd put more windmills in it.

God, if I had a pound for every time I've heard someone say that.

Taving off to build a miniature golf course.

Now, every International Women's Day is marked by

a heroic quantity of men saying,

what about International Men's Day?

When will men get their time to shine?

And also people saying, come on, it's worse in Saudi Arabia, therefore you should take your pay disparity and be happy with it.

That seems to be another thing that comes up quite a lot on Women's Day.

Yeah, we're supposed to shut up because other people have it worse, but men, no thanks.

Well,

we suffer on a daily basis with

the burden of responsibility for all the millennia of unfairness we've inflicted on the world.

It's very difficult.

Yeah, luckily though, there is an International Men's Day.

You get your day two Oh.

Rather than 364 of them.

And it's 19th of November.

Our brother Richard's birthday.

Yes.

An international man himself.

Well, that's why he was born male, I think, wasn't it?

Almost certainly.

Has a woman ever been born on the 19th of November?

Never.

Not allowed.

Just have to stay up there.

I was born on Earth Day, which is why I come out covered in turf

rather than a call.

God, I don't remember you coming out covered.

I didn't see you probably for...

About five years.

A day or two.

I think you've been moaned by then.

So I think, Helen,

there's been far too much conflict between the genders

over the millennia,

over the six or so millennia since

God nicked that rib off Adam.

So I think we need to have, like, we need to prove one way or the other which gender is better and or worse by doing

working out based on the historical events of Men's Day and Women's Day

which of those two days has done more damage to the planet.

All right, I'm ready.

Okay, because, well, for a start, I mean, let's look at the great things that have happened on Men's Day, 19th of November.

The Gettysburg Address.

Oh, that's a bad thing, though, because it's just a poignant reminder of a more optimistic time.

Well, I mean, you say that, but, you know, it's a terrific address.

I mean, in terms of keeping it brief.

Got four stars on Tortal?

Yeah, because the guy before him had done two hours, I think.

Someone was standing at the back saying, for f' s sake, get off.

We've got Lincoln booked as the headliner.

So we had to cram it all down into about 400 words.

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Yeah, men though.

Right.

So are the other ones.

So, well, what have you got for Women's Day?

On Women's Day, 1952, Ronald and Nancy Reagan got married.

Right.

Bet they had a good time.

Right.

Men's Day coincides with World Toilet Day.

Yeah.

Do you see?

So, I mean,

I don't know if there's any link.

I can't be bothered to make a joke about leaving the seat up.

That's just falling back on old stereotypes that I don't care for.

See, that's what World Toilet Day gave us.

Boring jokes about toilet seats.

1916,

Samuel and Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn established Goldwyn Pictures, later part of Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

Yeah, the MGM.

And look at all the awesome films they produced.

Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters.

Basic Instinct 2.

Van Wilder.

Cutthroat Island, one of the biggest flops in all time, and overboard.

Van Wilder, The Rise of Taj.

Showgirls.

Solar babies.

Solar babies.

Uninvolving and derivative dud, which coincidentally I had on my online dating profile.

National Lampoons movie Madness.

One review said, Leave this one as history as intended, unknown, forgotten, and detested by the unfortunate few who've actually seen it.

Awesome.

But think of all the happiness those films have given to people, Helen.

Because of Men's Day.

Yeah, but on Men's Day, 2004, the worst brawl in NBA history, Madison Palace.

86 games were suspended for the rest of the season.

Right.

And

in 1984 was the San Juanico disaster, an industrial disaster caused by a massive series of explosions at a liquid petroleum gas tank farm in Mexico.

And it blew up one-third of Mexico City's entire liquid petroleum gas supply and killed up to 600 people and burnt nearly 7,000.

And you're blaming that on men?

Yep.

Well, on Women's Day,

without men, I don't think we'd be so gas hungry.

On Women's Day in 1868,

there was the Sakai incident in which Japanese samurai killed 11 French sailors in the port of Sakai.

So, on your woman's head, be that.

On Women's Day, Queen Anne got in as Queen, and she negotiated the union between England and Scotland.

Right, and look how well that's going at the moment.

300 okay years.

Also on Women's Day, 1495 was the birth date of the Portuguese saint John of God, the patron saint of booksellers, the dying, mental health, hospitals, and nurses.

All good causes.

He also died on Women's Day.

No, that's because they thought saints were born and died on the same day.

Oh, he didn't actually do it.

It's a fake, was it?

It was a tax thing.

TBC.

Right.

And 1931, the birth of the South African cricketer Neil Adcock.

Well, a terrific fast bowler, one of the most underrated fast bowlers in the...

Women's Day.

Women's Day.

His mother was a woman, to be fair.

But he was a terrific fast bowler.

Shared a birthday with Gary Newman and Gaz Coombs of Supergrass.

Also, on Women's Day, the Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Darto Iradia Iradia was assassinated in 1921.

Thank you, sisters.

And in 1949, Mildred Gillars, also known as Axis Sally, was

condemned to prison for treason.

She was an American broadcaster employed by the Third Reich, Helen, in Nazi Germany to proliferate propaganda during World War II.

Oh, if you're talking about Nazi Germany, Andy, on Mednesday in 1943, the Nazis liquidated Janowska concentration camp, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.

Well, thanks for raising the tone of this show.

Women's Day, 1963, the Ba'ath Party comes to power in Syria in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian army officers, if I may quote the internet.

I mean, that's going well, isn't it?

But because of Women's Day, that happened.

Everything that's happening in Syria now is because of that in 1963 on Women's Day.

But 1658 on Women's Day, the peace of Ross Skilde was declared between Sweden and Denmark.

And look how those pals are still getting on.

Oh, you have got a point on that one.

But on Men's Day, perhaps probably the greatest, one of the high points of human culture and civilization, Pele, the Brazilian football genius, scored his 1,000th goal.

That's, he did not, notice that he did not wait until the 8th of March to do that.

He did it on the 19th of November because he's a man.

But also on Men's Day in 1824, a storm caused the St.

Petersburg flood, which killed 10,000 10,000 people because of men.

Because of men.

Well you say that but then in 1985 on Men's Day Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time heralding a process that brought an end to the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation

which women were doing absolutely nothing about.

You can't do it if you're already trapped in a bunker.

of society by men.

I mean, don't see any women in those pictures, do you?

Bloody sausage party.

But also, on Men's Day in 1994,

in Britain, the first national lottery draw was held, spawning millions of really boring gambling habits.

In 1618 on Women's Day, Johannes Kepler discovered the third law of planetary motion, which is the best one because of rule of three.

As a comedian, you'll be familiar with that.

Third time's the charm.

What is that law?

The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

Right.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

I discovered that on Women's Day.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, why do you think he chose that?

Was he.

He was so inspired by women.

By women.

He thought, I can squeeze out another law of planetary motion.

If they can do it, if they can.

On the flip side of that, on Women's Day in 1723,

Christopher Wren died.

You know.

The man who famously made a cathedral with a tit on top.

On Men's Day,

the Slovenian philosopher Clement Jugg was born and

he made everyone else's name seem boring.

We're all suffering because of Clement Jugg.

Well Chris,

I think you can adjudicate.

You want me to adjudicate.

Yeah which you know which day has done more damage.

Women's Day 1979 the CD was demonstrated publicly for the first time.

Given that I was also six months old I probably also shat myself

with excitement about the CDs and also gender equality.

I'm going to say that the winner is sort of early August.

You're a natural-born compromise.

Yep, I'm not getting involved.

That's what the world needs.

You're right.

I think we probably need to bring this

historical section.

Greek oil tanker Prestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia,

releasing over 20 million gallons of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history because of men.

Right.

Men.

Right.

Don't get as many nuptial disasters on Women's Day, do you?

Evidently not.

Man-made disasters, as they're usually called.

Coincidence?

I think you might have won, Helen.

Eventually, I'll win.

Maybe not in my lifetime.

There was a delightful exchange between

two two women MPs in this week of Women's Day.

Marie Black.

Have I pronounced that right?

Mary Black.

The young SNP Member of Parliament who got into

at the age of 21, I think wasn't she.

She's only 22 now.

She's been in at least a couple of years.

And doesn't seem to have been totally destroyed by that horrific job.

Good for her.

She was in an exchange with the Conservative Minister, Caroline Noakes,

and was seemed to mouth the words, you talk shite hen,

which is not

traditional parliamentary language, but it does raise an interesting question:

should a Hansard record things people mouth?

Or do they spend a lot of time doing wanker gestures in parliament?

I bet they do.

Well, I don't know, now it's filmed, they probably can't get away with it as much, but I imagine that was all the rage in the 1940s and 50s, wasn't it?

Jeremy Corbyn, during the budget this week, if there was a facial expression Hansard, particularly when Philip Hammond made that joke about him being so far in a black hole that Stephen Hawking had disowned him, it was a kind of political joke that caused uproar on the Conservative benches and made no logical sense.

But Corbyn's face during that joke, you know, if that was recorded in the facial expression Hansard, it would say, you utter s ⁇ t and you utter battalion of c.

Whereas George Osborne's face in the days when he used to sit on the front bench, God rest his soul,

his face

essentially just said, I am Osbor, the almighty one.

Fear my power, Percy Pleb, for I am the harbinger of your doom.

Whereas David Cameron's face basically all the time just said, This is fun, I love role play.

And Tony Blair, in his days at the dispatch box, basically his face just said this.

Do Do you see that

shot of Theresa May having a big laugh in Parliament this week?

Yes.

Terrifying.

I think that was really her open mouth was the tunnel to hell.

You talk shite hen is

quite an endearing insult, isn't it?

Yes.

Can't really argue with it.

She does talk shite.

It's an MP.

That's what they do.

That's their

role, a pointed role.

And then it's nice to have a slightly patronising endearment from someone who is only 22 and better at their job than you.

Hen.

Was Thatcher ever called hen by anyone, do you think, in Parliament?

I don't think that was the animal she was most commonly compared to.

What was she?

She was quite beaky, though.

She had quite avian eyes.

So hen.

Right.

Hen is apt.

Are you saying that the world is run by birds rather than lizards, after all?

Just saying don't trust birds.

They're cruel.

Donald Trump of course

could not let Women's Day pass without paying tribute to one of his favourite genders

he tweeted I have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy well I certainly feel very respected by him moving words moving words and I mean some people did criticize him saying well that is a little bit hypocritical given, you know,

everything.

But I think, well, what kind of world do we live in where a man cannot simply obliterate decades of overt sexism with a single tweet?

Well I think we need to be open-minded about this.

Do we do we want to live in that world where um he would be responsible for any of his actions?

Cut him some slack, particularly in a week where Chinese authorities have granted approval for dozens of Trump-branded businesses in China, expanding his commercial empire,

including um

escort escort services and massage parlours.

Oh, what happened to the trade war in China?

We reached a reproachment very quickly.

He's been in office less than two months, and look how well international relations are going.

That's right.

Well, it just shows how sexual exploitation can bring America and China closer together at a high political level.

What the world needs now is hand jobs, cheap hand jobs.

Also, this week,

he released his ideas for the replacement of Bomacare with a very grandstanding name.

The Republican healthcare replacement bill is called the world's greatest healthcare plan of 2017.

Which leaves us nowhere to go.

Right.

You can't.

Well, not for the rest of this year anyway.

I mean, how do you make a joke out of that, Andy?

Right.

Unless they're being sarcastic with it.

Is that possible?

Is this the world's first sarcastic bill title?

Well, it's interesting that he's only gone for the best one of 2017.

Well, he's expecting that in 2019 he is going to

the greatest intergalactic healthcare bill.

Right.

And so he's just, he's just, this is just a step on the path to even greater greatness.

He's making greatness great again, Andy.

Also, he seems to have been slightly moonlighting as a press officer for ExxonMobil.

He's so busy.

So busy.

The White House basically just lifted an entire paragraph direct from Exxon's own press release.

And Trump has

paid

verbose tribute to Exxon

for all the jobs it's creating because of his presidency that they announced in 2013.

And

I guess, but when are you going to drain the swamp, Helen?

You need oil companies to get

the swamp.

You have to drain the swamps that were swamps 100 million years ago first, surely.

Yeah.

Before you get to the modern contemporary swamps.

Drain the swamp, then drill the swamp.

And Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency,

who famously was part of a coalition of state attorney generals suing the Environmental Protection Agency in a previous life over its clean power plan,

he has

expressed considerable doubts about climate change.

Yeah, well, can you prove it?

They've had a very cold winter in some places.

The science is pretty incontrovertible.

But he's going against his own agency as well as NASA and basically all science.

What do they know?

Well, the way I see it, Helen, is, you know,

it's legitimate not to dive into potentially costly measures to save the entire planet when there is still

a 0.01%

level of doubt.

I say it's like when you're having a heart attack.

You do not want to call for an ambulance until you are 110% sure that you are definitely dead.

Don't jump the gun.

Trump is 70.

A lot of his cabinet is pretty old.

If the world melts in 20 years, why would they give a fk?

Also, they're patriots.

We know this.

We know how much they love America and how they want to make America great again.

America is currently the world's top nation economically.

But China is catching up quite quickly.

So there is a vested interest for America to bring Armageddon about as quickly as possible so that when the world ends, they've won.

And they've had practice because they've made all those films about it in which Only America survives.

So they've got plans.

There we go.

I mean, who cares if they lose Florida because of sea level rises?

They've got 49 other states to play with.

Rabbit hole archaeology news now.

And

hugely exciting story, Helen, here in England.

Someone looked down a rabbit hole and found

mystery caves

which were probably used 700 years ago by the Knights Templar

or may only be 300 years old

or even 200.

In fact, they're just basically used for modern black magic.

It's basically this story has gone from a major historic discovery to a hole in a wood instruction to a logistical issue in a local satanic sex cult, essentially.

Yeah, so these caves,

everyone's very excited that it might be a 700-year-old temple, because the Knights Templar, they were shut down around 1300.

Allegedly.

Thank you, Brussels.

Maybe they were under the ground in Shropshire all this time.

Dressed as rabbits.

But the caves were not that much of a mystery because they were first listed in 1984, but then they were sealed up in 2012 to keep away vandals and practitioners of black magic.

Right.

So people knew about them because they were doing black magic in them.

So this is something that was dug up after for four years.

Yeah.

Yeah, four years.

Right.

It's like if you mowed the lawn extra aggressively and dug up a time capsule that you put in last summer.

Right.

That was supposed to be there for 50 years.

But also the Knights Templar,

they had at some point the hole of Cyprus.

Why would they need to build a little hole in Shropshire in which to practice when they could have more sunshine and be just

so much more fun to be above ground?

Right, yeah.

See, it was quite an exciting story, this.

And now it's

because someone found something that's four years old.

Have you not contemplated building something below your garden lawn to dupe people in about 10 years' time?

By now, it's sexdungeons.com.

That's where he keeps his wisdoms.

The Nice Templar kind of invented banking, so maybe this was just like a bank branch.

Right.

And they kept it underground so no one could pull the cash machines out the wall.

Makes you think, though,

what are the rabbits doing with it?

What are the rabbits twitchy-nosed, unlicensed archaeologists burrowing around looking for stuff?

Everyone thinks that rabbits' holes are kind of architecturally unambitious, but this shows otherwise.

Yes.

Look what they'll do if you give them the opportunity.

I reckon they nick the roof off Stonehenge well.

Bad news for the concept of eternity this week as the eternal flame burning at the War Memorial in Omsk went out.

Oh no.

Oh no indeed.

It's only been burning since the memorial was inaugurated on the 8th of May 2015.

So less than two years.

It's a bit of a blow for eternity

because

the local government decided it cost too much money to keep it burning.

And they said, we'll just burn it on 17 holiday days a year to one of the military.

And so eternity actually means

for however many days we can be asked to pay for it, which is 17 a year.

It's a good lesson for everyone.

Although, I think maybe the Omsk local government

know that if fireworks went off 24-7, you wouldn't even bother going to the window to look at them.

They're just making this into more of an occasion.

So you appreciate the eternal flame

through its lack of eternity.

Omsk, incidentally,

it's in southwestern Siberia in Russia.

And it's, do you know where it gets his name from?

No.

Well, it dates back to

Peter the Great crashed a horse into a concrete pillar.

And it was the noise he made

where he was eating a sandwich at the time.

And hence, he said, right, I'm going to build a city there.

And it was named after that.

Sure.

Yep.

Here, we had the budget this week, the spring budget.

Phil Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, hammering the self-employed

slightly.

Why does he hate us?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But you know, I don't mind this.

Anything that keeps those multinational companies happy, there aren't that many of them.

There's four and a half million unemployed, unemployed, self-employed.

And

it's sometimes very hard to tell which you are.

But there are are far fewer

multi-billionaire global corporations, so they're the endangered ones.

We need to look after them.

When will they catch a break?

But taxes are going to become an increasingly difficult issue.

And recently there have been various suggestions that robots could be taxed, including by Bell Gates,

the

reigning world geek of the millennium.

And he's looking pretty good to retain his title.

I know it's early days in the third millennium, but no one has ever won that title twice.

That would be an amazing achievement.

He said warning about the impending robot job acalpse, that you know, if a robot does take the job of a human, it should have to pay the same tax.

Well, Bill, little Mickey Microsoft, you should have thought of that before you started putting all the professional calligraphers out of business with your fancy fonts.

And it does raise the question exactly how many robots can you fit in Monaco and the Caywood Islands?

But surely the point of replacing a human with a robot in a job is that you don't have to pay them.

So what are are they going to pay their taxes with?

That's a difficult question.

Robots mostly do work for cash anyway, so it's very hard to track

them to track it down.

I think one of the reasons why the Terminators were replaced quite frequently was because they were wanted for tax evasion.

Yeah.

But it was disastrous for the Treasury.

But it makes sense trying to make money out of robots before they, you know, the clanky metal bastards turn into grey goo and kill us all.

I've got to stop wearing my room.

All right, Prince Charles.

I've got to stop wearing my what would Prince Charles think wristband.

You know, my husband's PhD was in nanotechnology, so his lab was occasionally picketed by grey goo protesters.

Was it?

Yeah.

I thought nanotechnology was like developing stairlifts and stuff.

Kaboom.

Is this off?

I'm here all.

I'm literally here all week because I live here.

You get pretty good audiences in your house compared to outside

four people.

Also,

it turns out the tampon tax is still in place.

And the government announced what what the

they say they can't remove it until we're out of the EU for some reason.

They did announce they were going to end it last year.

It was one of those bizarre

bizarre terms on on this on you know International Women's Day week.

Can we extend it to a week?

Yeah, well, yeah, I it's an odd thing that the reason why we have a tampon tax is just fundamentally we are squeamish as a nation with any form of uh bodily function, particularly female bodily functions.

And this is proved by the initial House of Commons debate, which instituted the Tampon Tax way back in 1933.

And we have a recording of it here from deep in the House of Commons archives.

The then Secretary of State for the Genders, Sir Helmsley Grofton Plank.

This is him speaking, and Hansar does note that Grofton Plank was blushing a rather quote crimson shade of beetroot whilst he spoke.

Mr.

Speaker, it has recently been brought to the Government's attention that a woman, or, if you will, a female man, may, on a recurrence of a cyclical lunarity, experience some form of

ex sanguiniatio biologicalis from her

Virginia Bell

that requires to be

horatioed

with some some form of

tamponica carter

oh f it let's tax it never speak of it again well if women will insist upon menstruating then they should pay you're not allowed to use that kind of language on this this is a man's podcast you know um

uh same-sex civil partnerships um can't end on grounds of adultery um

because in parliament they didn't want to have to have the conversation about what sex between people of the the same gender constituted and therefore what adultery was.

Right.

Because adultery is defined as sex between a man and a woman.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Oh, that's interesting.

They're very coy, our parliament.

It's such a shame because the idea of Ian Duncan Smith talking about

could have been

family show, Chris.

Family show.

Is it though?

Your emails.

Here's one from Sam who says, Dear Andy, Chris, and whomever else has chosen to present this week.

Thank you, Sam.

This week, Andy, your former colleague and traitor, John Oliver, met the Dalai Lama to discuss his succession.

When will Andy be meeting the Dalai Lama?

Don't need to.

I have no succession to

worry about.

You're not trying to succeed the Dalai Lama like John is.

No.

That's what all this HBO stuff is about.

I don't like smocks.

They don't suit me.

Yeah, and I think, well, that's clearly what...

I mean, John's always wanted to be some form of Llama, and a Dalai one would be

a real bonus.

Yeah, terrific one.

I don't know if he's got enough of a beatific smile, because the Dalai Lama always has to wear one of those.

Yes.

I mean, it would definitely be a change of tone for

the Llama hood.

Is that the

Lama key?

I don't know.

But he lives up near Dharam Sala, isn't he in northern India,

where now

India play occasional international cricket matches.

Could John relocate to there during the week and then get back to New York to do his show on Sundays?

Well, I don't know.

I doubt it.

But if Dalai Lama lives near a cricket-producing region, then it's quite likely you would meet him at some point.

Might bump into him.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Maybe he has pads on underneath his...

special cloak.

Well, he's always ready to go.

Always ready to go.

He's got to be ready to go.

That's what we learned from sport.

He's always just creeping around the boundary,

hoping and praying that someone will lob the ball to him and it'll be his time to shine.

Got some good technical lingo you throw in there: boundary and ball.

We're up with you.

Well done.

We'll convert you, Helen.

That was one of the more disparaging noises you've ever made at me.

And there have been a few.

Chris, you set up a little Facebook competition.

Yeah.

In which you asked for people to

suggest what species a bugle pet would be, were we to have a pet.

Yeah.

You want a pet for the show, yeah?

Yeah.

It's Chris gone rogue doing things without your permission.

Richard Smith suggested a Yeti that makes angry promises,

then you'd have a cryptics crossword.

Does that work?

Kind of?

No.

I like Edward Howarth's suggestion of a scarab beetle because it collects bullshit and rolls it up into a ball.

Kate Swift, on a similar line, says, I feel a dung beetle would be the best choice, but she also thinks an Argonaut octopus with its detachable penis would be good, reminiscent of the Congressman's wandering wang from back in the day.

Well, Jessica Kazuka has also found a wangish pet.

She suggested a gooey duck.

It looks like a penis, the name sounds made up, and it's edible, so when it eventually dies from having been forgotten in the soundproof safe, Andy can make a nice bungalow.

Jeff Spikowski says, gotta go with a silver burlesque pony.

It's good there.

Sorry,

Ben Fitzpatrick says, an osprey soars to majestic heights when it's around, but then it will fk off for a few months.

Still hasn't forgiven you.

At least I came back.

Alexei devilishly suggests an echidna whose four penises represent four seasons of the bugle.

And they have large brains, wicked tongues and no teeth.

Just like you with your wooden teeth.

Simon Whitsom suggested a cockchafer.

Oh yeah, well we talked about the cockchafer in an early episode.

I don't know if that was before

you were on

the bugle.

Let me find out when the cockchafer was.

I'm just going to type cockchafer into my computer.

A cockchafer invaded my room on my wedding night.

I'm not talking about my husband.

I'm talking about an insect that was too large to be caught in a cup and put out the window.

Right.

My husband screamed, leaving me to deal with it.

Start as you mean to go on.

That's like an episode of Jerry Springer, that wasn't it.

Richard Sales suggests a pantomime horse.

The front end must always be Andy Zaltzmann, whereas the arse can be filled by any of the rotating cars with no discernible dip in the overall performance.

Oh, zing.

So we need to choose a winner, do you say?

Helen?

Well, it's your house.

You've got to choose the player.

Well,

I'm going to go with Edward Howarth's scarab beetle because it collects bullshit and rolls it up into a ball.

I'm surprised you were willing to take that level of competition.

Compliment.

I think it was a deep, a deep, deep compliment to this show and the service it has provided to the world over nearly a decade.

So, I think we'll probably start another Facebook competition at some point.

That's, yeah.

What is Facebook?

Right, Granddad.

You remember my space?

No.

Oh, excuse me, I was about to set mine up.

I had to explain to our mum what Facebook was some time ago.

I can't go through that again with you.

Right.

Oh, right.

Is it like when your face is your face down in a book?

It's like all those people that you don't keep in touch with from school because they were boring then and they're even more boring now.

So I don't think you'd like it.

That is all for this week's Bugle.

Helen, thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Andy.

Joining us.

Well, yeah.

Well, Chris is a good idea.

I want to say thanks for joining us.

I'm really backdating that to April 1980 when you were in here.

You're welcome.

You'll be back, I don't know when, actually.

Sometime.

Sure.

Submit your written application and all the processes.

You edging me out

of the family business.

One day, all this will be yours, kid.

We'll be back next week with Hari Kondabolu and some stuff about the world.

I did promise him we wouldn't do Trump next week, so let's hope Trump has a week off.

Anything you want to plug?

You can listen to The Illusionist if you want and answer me this, the other podcast that I make.

Until next time.

Don't forget to put your tickets for my Southern Hemisphere tour.

Until next time.

I'm doing a live show in Los Angeles on the 14th of April at the Zipper.

You can come and see that.

It's a joint production with 99% Invisible.

Should be fun.

Is that the Radiotopia tour?

No, it's not, but there is also the Radiotopia tour in May in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Get your tickets at radiotopia.fm slash live.

Boom, there you go.

Goodbye, Buglers.

Bye.

The Bugle loves being a part of Radiotopia.

They and therefore we are better thanks to support from the Knight Foundation and MailChimp.

High fives, all round.

Give one to yourself as well.

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.