Bugle 4019 – Donkey

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4019 of The Bugle, the world exclusive podcast available exclusively in the world with me, Andy Zoltzman, here in London, the capital of Brex-Britannia, a city, where getting on the property ladder is now so expensive that this week, an actual ladder left leaning against a wall in Kensington by a window cleaner, sold for £1.2 million and now has six young media professionals living on it.

They get three rungs each, I think.

And joining me from New York City, from Manhattan Island, surely the island that looks most like a leg of Serrano ham from space, it is the one and only Wyatt Sanak.

Thanks for having me back on the buggle.

It's great to have you.

How have you been?

How's America?

you know we're maintaining it seems as though we have now

i'm gonna say accepted the trump presidency right people have now turned so far

their vitriol has just turned into something where now it's just turned into acceptance right trump addressed congress he didn't scream at anybody or fart on camera and people just took it as oh look at that he's become presidential

well i thought thought it was, and we'll touch more on this later in the show, but people did say it was Trump's most presidential speech, which is not the most hotly contested title.

I mean, that's roughly akin to being the politest belch at a funeral.

or the most dignified cavity search or the sexiest roadkill badger corpse.

Or the closest to a real word a baby said.

Like, oh yeah, no, that sounds, it sounds like they said donkey.

Look, just say it again.

Say bangeng.

Look, it sounds like donkey.

Well, look, it's the baby's almost saying two-syllable words.

Can't do anything else, but bangeng.

Well, you should be, you know, properly house-trained within a couple of years.

Be all right.

In 18 years, Donald Trump will finally be the man America needs.

This is Bugle 4019 for the week beginning Monday the 6th of March 2017.

148 years since Russian science star Dmitry Mendeleev presented the first version of his periodic table of the elements.

Bloody scientists, complicated things everyone, before that.

It used to be earth, air, fire, water, other stuff, vegetables, and dogs.

And also, happy birthday to Michelangelo.

542 years old today

on Monday.

And to celebrate, at the end of this week's episode, we will delve into the Bugle archives way back to Bugle 34 when we commemorated the 500th anniversary of Mikey landing the Sistine Chapel ceiling gig.

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

This week, Lent.

It's Lent now, the Christian festival of giving stuff up.

We look at the origin of Lent, of course, when Jesus gave up doing magic loop-the-loops on his donkey after the animal named Trixie Bell vomited on an ill child while 15 foot off the ground and upside down.

Jesus did one of his cheeky little abra cadabras on the Donkey Chunder to miracle the kid back to health, but the puke-splattered boy's parents did suggest that the storytelling stand-up and former carpenter could have saved everyone a lot of trauma just by doing a standard laying on of hands type miracle on their ill lad.

Jesus apologised and laid off the donkey tricks until Easter.

Easter, of course, very different festival in those days, mostly commemorating when the prophet Bernard returned from Mount Sinai with a chocolate egg and demanded two days off work.

And we look at what the celebs are giving up for Lent.

This year, George Clooney is giving up cauliflower.

Susan Sarandon is giving up swearing when losing at darts.

The Canadian rock sensation Carly Ray Jepson, she's giving up short-selling vulnerable currencies on the international money markets.

Whilst star quarterback Tom Brady, he's giving up projecting a Batman-style image of himself doing a loser sign on his head over the skies of Atlanta for the next month.

And David Cameron, former Prime Minister, he's giving up, or at least trying to give up, but waking up in tears screaming, what have I done?

Whilst Her Majesty the Queen is giving up tattoos for Lentz.

I mean, she's pretty much, she's pretty much covered up everything below the neckline now.

And Steve Bannon,

your equivalent of our Queen Wyatt, Steve Bannon is giving up communing with Satan on an hourly basis.

He is going to cut down to a single longer morning session plus an afternoon top-up.

And maybe a Snapchat.

Can you Snapchat the devil?

What is this world coming to?

Yeah.

Also, in the bin, to commemorate the first ever gay Disney character coming soon in Beauty and the Beast, we speak exclusively to the editor of Christian Looney, incorporating today's homophobe weekly magazine.

Can't believe those two titles had to merge.

You'd still think there's a market for both, and I guess the readership does cross over.

And we ask, does this mean it's okay for Tom and Jerry to have sex?

That section also in the bin.

Andy, the top story.

This week, as with every week, until we all die or he kills us, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, depending on who you ask, gave the State of the Union or just an address to Congress this week where he took a tone that people seem to suggest was

normal

for a human.

Abnormal for him.

Right.

He addressed Congress.

He didn't yell at anybody.

He didn't spit too much.

Right.

Huge deal in this country.

Huge deal that our president seemed more like a president and less like a dictator.

A baby step towards civilization?

I mean, he still did, he still did make weird gestures at people.

If you just listen to him,

It sounds kind of rational and reasonable, but if you watch him, he still does

make weird gestures at people.

And

I don't know.

I don't feel like we're any closer to A,

finding a way to not have to apologize to every country when we call them.

I feel like so much of the Donald Trump presidency now is he says something and then we as a society have to pick which American is going to call that country and say, hey, we're sorry.

Have you had a go yet?

Have you been the American picked for any apology calls?

Yeah, I had to call Koala Lumpur.

It was just,

they're really mad.

He hasn't even said anything that inflammatory towards them, and that's part of the problem.

They're kind of like, hey, we matter.

And

it's like, yeah, but we're from a country where all countries matter.

So, you know, sorry, Koala Lumpur.

The one interesting thing, though, about

Trump being seen as a reasonable president now is that it's opened the door for other people to think they could be president, specifically billionaires.

There are a lot of billionaires now who are considering running for president.

Most recently, Disney CEO Bob Iger has said that he would be interested in running for president and has said that people around him, and I quote, a lot of people, a lot, have urged me to seek political office, which, yeah, if you're a billionaire, people will tell you anything as long as you maybe give them money.

Like, oh yeah, no, that's a great toupee.

Yeah, that's totally a great toupee.

Seriously, don't cut me off.

Bob Iger, Oprah Winfrey, and Mark Cuban, all billionaires, all apparently flirting with the idea of running for president.

Well, I mean, I've looked into this.

I mean, Oprah Winfrey, there's rumors that she could be running on a kind of dream team with Montel Williams as Secretary of State and Ricky Lake as Defense Secretary in a talk show host-dominated cabinet.

When you think about it, politics is all about communication, White.

And are you telling me that Oprah as president could not get Vladimir Putin to break down in tears on the Oval Office sofa while talking about his daddy didn't really love him?

I mean, this, surely this has to work for America.

No, that's an Oprah presidency.

It could be an interesting presidency.

I feel like a Bob Iger presidency, what he does have to offer is he owns Mickey Mouse and the Avengers.

So it feels like, obviously, Mickey Mouse, Secretary of State, will just replace the whole Secretary of Defense with the cast of the Avengers, which

I don't know.

I don't know about you, but that's a confirmation hearing I think I'd love to see.

Chris Hemsworth in his weird Thor costume.

And we realize that Mjolner doesn't look the same in a congressional hearing as it does in the movies.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

See the scales falling from America's eyes when that happens.

I mean, I can see a Mickey Mouse Mini Mouse dream ticket again.

I mean, there's nothing in the Constitution explicitly excluding fictitious cartoon mice from holding high office.

I mean, people say, well, fictitious cartoon mice did not exist when they were hammering the constitution together in the late 18th century, to which I guess the response would be, neither did semi-automatic weapons.

And as the old saying goes, what's good for the Second Amendment goose is good for the cartoon mouse presidency bid gander.

So I'd like to say a Mickey Mouse, globally recognized brand, property around the globe.

does not speak in complicated grown-up sentences.

It would basically be a seamless transition from Trump to Mickey Mouse.

I mean, and can you tell me that a literal Mickey Mouse presidency would be more divisive than what we have now?

Surely

this must be a step forward.

I think it's a step forward.

It's also a step forward for Mickey Mouse to get to reclaim what a Mickey Mouse presidency is all about.

I think

good for him if he gets that opportunity.

I think it really does also open the question of

if billionaires and millionaires can start running for office and it's a viable path, there's so many more rich people who I feel like would be interesting people to run for office.

I think, you know, you've got Mark Cuban has considered it, which I feel like part of his platform could be as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

If he's elected, he might choose one citizen a month to join the starting lineup of the Dallas Mavericks.

A vote for Mark Cuban means you get to start at center for the Mavericks for one game.

It doesn't matter if you're not seven feet tall.

He'll just throw you in.

He's president.

It's an executive order.

I think LeBron James, there's a dream ticket of LeBron James and just the mascot of the Cleveland Cavaliers, which I'm not sure what exactly the mascot is.

Their logo is a sword, but I've never seen a dancing sword on the sideline.

Right.

I think that's what the ISIS football team has.

It's a dancing sword.

It's tough.

You don't want courtside seats for those games because that sword will cut you.

Having some other options.

I mean, you mentioned

Mark Zuckerberg, the grand high nerd of computer lands, Caesar of...

Oh, sure, Mark Zuckerberg, yeah.

I mean, he could fulfill the prophecy of America's top-ranked Messiah Jesus Christ that the Dweebs shall inherit the earth.

You've got Pete James Debney, the chief executive of gun manufacturer Smith Wesson.

Surely this will be popular with the, you know, the gun lobby.

Very influential in American politics.

Just have the boss of Smith and Wesson as you're laying the Second Amendment cards fully on the table.

Snapchat's Ivan Spiegel in the news this week managed to make billions out of disappearing photos of people's sandwiches.

The guy is clearly a f ⁇ ing genius, Wyatt.

You need to get that.

If you could make billions out of disappearing photos, you could make America the greatest country in the history of America.

He could make all Americans billionaires with his rumored new venture, Air Vair, where people just point at the air they're about to breathe.

Launched 45 seconds ago, this business, already worth $21.7 billion on Nasdaq.

Uber boss Travis Kalanik, he's got to be a candidate, also known in France as Jola, Definitely Not a Taxi.

That's a little reference to

a song from my childhood.

Do you remember that song, Chris?

Yeah, it was by Vanessa Paradise.

Are you aware of this song, Wyatt?

Jola Taxi?

No.

Right.

But I'm aware of Vanessa Paradise.

Yeah, she was Mrs.

Johnny Depp.

Yeah, she sang a song called Jola Taxi in what must have been late 80s, early 90s.

One of the great, great musical tracks.

Anyway, I believe that's it.

Yeah, that track's first ever reference on the bugle.

Historic.

But Kalanick seems to be positioning himself for a presidential bid after being caught on film behaving like a dick and presiding over a culture of endemic sexual harassment.

I mean, this is a canny politics riding on the Trump coattails.

Yeah, that sets him right up.

He could uber his way right to the White House.

Uber take over Air Force One.

I mean that's

that is exciting for everyone, isn't it?

Instead of Air Force One, you just,

okay,

I need to get to London.

We're just going to take this Delta flight, kick everybody off of it, and it's Air Force One today.

But it also doesn't mean that you could just be trying to get a taxi home and Air Force One happens to be in the area and you end up ubering it.

Oh, that's an even...

If you uber pool, you could uber pool your way into an Air Force One flight.

I like that.

Elon Musk,

sadly ineligible due to being not born in the USA under the Springsteen Amendment of the US Constitution, and also clearly being even more fictitious than Mickey Mouse.

But his big rival, P.

Lau Snork, who as we reported on the bugle last week, was about to launch the riderless motorbike.

He could be in the running.

The riderless motorbike already superseded in his plans by his new drone chef operation.

Those Those are flying micro kitchens that prepare you a hot three-course meal whilst flying to your place of work, then hover outside your office window and fire it course by course directly into your open mouth from a military caliber gun, enabling you to enjoy a Michelin quality slap-up lunch whilst never leaving your desk.

Snork is the CEO of a number of high-high tech tech companies, including Frankensteinies.

Now Frankensteinies is a company that's aiming to make terrifying monster children in their laboratory for today's hyper-competitive parents.

Fluxedo,

they make hyper-Astro Tech, Infinite G-enabled, functionalistically mutatable formal dinner jackets, Fluxido.

They can transform to any color you want depending on your move and conversational topic, as well as playing videos on the chest pocket and have all your social media feeds down either arm to help you charm your dinner companions.

Also has the capacity to hack into the person sitting next to you's social media so you can be fed real-time info on their hobbies, interests, and romantic status to help you pull off the perfect black tie seduction.

Fluxidos are available actually to Bugle listeners at a special reduced rate of just $3.49 million.

Just input the code BugleSnork on the Fluxido website for your 900% discount.

And also, he's just launched Invincibles, the new high-tech testicles that enable men to never lose at sport.

So, he's got to be in the running, despite being clearly made up.

It's been a long week, Wyatt.

I believed he was real.

Well, you just don't know these.

Maybe he is.

Maybe.

You just can't tell anymore.

You just cannot tell.

There are a couple of other things from Trump's non-state of the nation speech.

He said the time for trivial fights is over.

Which is interesting coming from the man who basically declared trivial war on the world and has been the principal aggressor in a conflict with no winners.

And he's calling for a bullshit armistice.

This is a bit of a surprise.

I mean, it does remain to be seen whether this was a

genuine turning point in the Trumpian presidency,

just managing to speak in a non-soul-chilling way.

I mean, the problem is, Trump is not so much the boy who cried wolf as the boy who did a wolf-shaped shit on America's dinner plate and then blamed a journalist for not writing about his Micheland stod cooking.

Also, this is another interesting development.

At midnight on the 24th of February, Wyatt,

followers of witchcraft across America apparently performed a mass spell designed to remove Donald Trump from office.

It appears, and we are, as we record, what, a week or so on from that, it appears not to have worked.

I don't know if they put a within eight years clause into their spell,

but

I do worry too.

I'm no Trump fan.

I've laid my Trump cards on the table over the last few months.

But I do worry, what if this works?

I mean, is this going to become the future of politics, witchcraft and spells?

I mean, I think that's what you open yourself up for.

You decide what kind of country do we want to be.

Do we want to be a country that is seen as isolationist?

Or do we want to be a country that is ruled by witches, warlocks, and dragons?

It's hard to tell the difference sometimes, isn't it?

It's a little bit, yeah.

No, it's definitely, I mean, if you look at if you look at Trump's cabinet, they do seem a lot, they seem kind of warlocky.

And

if Trump himself were to like grow 20 feet tall and his skin were to peel away, I'd imagine there's a dragon underneath there.

So, yeah, it is a little, it's a touch and go thing.

I mean, I think the other part of this is...

If witches start casting spells, A, what took them so long?

Why just do it now?

Why did you wait this long?

Why not do this earlier?

I feel like, again, in the idea of Donald Trump trying to make America great, maybe this is what finally put the fire under those witches' asses.

And by the fire, and I realize that's maybe an offensive term for witches, just given how many were burned at the stake.

So maybe not the best term to use.

I apologize to any witches who were offended.

But it just feels like, you know, maybe it was time for them to start holding up their end of the bargain a long time ago.

They've been around since Salem, and now they want to start working.

This is the problem in this country, lazy witches.

The other big Trump story this week is around Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who I object to just from a name point of view.

That is not a serious enough name to be Attorney General.

It sounds sounds like a set of bootleg jazz recordings by Miles Davis, where he tootled along in the background while his mate Jeff sat in a van with the window down explaining how to plumb in a new toilet.

The Jeff Sessions.

Oh, sure.

I love the Jeff Sessions.

Great album.

It's one of Blue Notes' more

underrated albums.

Yeah, Jeff's just in the background having a horrible heroin trip.

I've not entirely followed

the Sessions Russia conversation story.

It does appear that he did speak twice with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, but is now claiming on the first occasion they spoke only about their favourite character in Power Rangers, and on the second just exchanged recipes for Victoria's sponge cake.

Sessions told a congressional inquiry, We're both avid fans of the great British Bake Off, and sharing cake recipes has helped Sergei and I overcome deep psychological cake traumas.

Sergey, of course, grew up in Soviet Russia, where his uncle, Yevgenyegev, was one of 12 Soviet cake monauts killed when a special birthday space rocket made of cake disintegrated shortly after launch on Mikita Khrushchev's birthday in 1964.

Whilst I personally have been afraid of cakes ever since I had a dream about being sworn at by a life-sized date and walnut cake during a Senate meeting.

So Sessions said that other than that, they didn't talk about politics, just mostly girls, beer, and baseball.

So it's probably fine.

Totally fine.

Not

weird at all.

It's really who

in Trump's world has not talked to Russians.

Andy, you're a man who likes to fly, yes?

Hell yeah.

I live to fly.

And I assume your favorite thing when you fly is drinking.

Absolutely.

You know, if I come off a flight, however long or short, not too drunk to remember where I've flown from, then I have not really flown.

Well, one of the biggest problems with drinking when you're flying is that beer doesn't taste as good when you're 30,000 feet up in the air.

And thankfully, there are people working to solve that problem to make sure that you get drunk the best possible way.

There is an airline carrier in Hong Kong that has spent countless time and money.

making a beer that tastes good when you're 30,000 feet in the air.

Because if there's one thing

that you want to happen when you become an obnoxious asshole on a seven-hour flight across country, it's you want to do it, but you still want to do it where you've enjoyed what you've had to drink.

You don't just want to become an asshole with a tart beer.

You want a tasty one as you start trying to play grab ass with a flight attendant and start screaming at the person next to you for their political beliefs.

It's not, I mean, it's interesting this idea that, you know, different alcohols taste different at 30,000 feet.

It's not something I'd...

And food as well.

Apparently, airlines already addressed this.

I mean, because they've evidently decided that what you need at 30,000 feet is a meal artistically designed to express the absolute essence of mild disappointment,

which at 30,000 feet apparently is as tasty and tempting as a ground-level, perfectly grilled 12-ounce T-bone, or for our vegetablarian listeners, a 12-ounce aubergine.

I mean, this is a critical piece of science, White.

I mean, we rely on science for human advancement, and to have developed a beer that tastes better at 30,000 feet just shows, I'd say this is up there with the moon landings in showing what potential we have as a species.

They did not develop this beer because it was easy, they developed this beer because they want people to get pissed on their aeroplanes.

Also, Bloody Marys apparently taste better, they taste better naturally at high altitude,

according to

a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, who presumably is quite a smart guy.

I mean, this is an absolutely critical piece of science.

The reason for this is the background noise on planes, apparently.

And this professor has come up with this theory that background noise on an aeroplane raises an ancestral fear of being chased by a predator.

And that

prompts dollops of saliva to develop in your mouth, meaning that these kind of these sharp umamu flavours are even tastier.

And the background noise of

an aeroplane basically makes you want to hanker after Japanese food.

I mean I imagine there were hundreds of thousands of cavemen saying to each other, look out, hug.

There's a flock of T-Rexes right over there heading our way.

Good spot, Urgh.

I'll call in a takeaway from Chio Nafuji.

Looks like the lizards are peckish.

I'll make it a big one.

How long do you think it'll take them to deliver?

I don't know, about 50,000 years.

Oh, shouldn't those dinosaurs have died out by now?

Yeah, that's why they look so cross.

Okay, I'll order some extra teriyaki.

So, I mean...

Also, another thing, how tastes change at high altitude, White House Down is a 156% better film when watched on an aeroplane with nothing else to do.

Whereas when watched terrestrially, it can provoke intense feelings of the pointlessness of life.

It definitely sets us up for a future where we can just move people into hot air balloon houses like an up

and just create more real estate for ourselves.

And those people who want to live up there, yeah, they're people who they like White House Down, they they like weird beer

and

that's

that's that's the new world that will exist.

If Trump and everything that's going on in the world is too much for some people, they can just get themselves a hot air balloon house and live 30,000 feet above everything.

Watching Channing Tatum in a t-shirt and

eating spicy Japanese food.

We could build a new utopia, Wyatt.

However dark things seem now, there is always hope around the corner.

Also on the beer in flights story, the new hipster air airline, the long-haul specialist, has just opened up.

They're flying 16 times a day between Shoreditch in London and Portland, Oregon.

And they are the first airline to have an in-cabin micro-brewery brewing fair trade Ethi beer that for each pint drunk saves an endangered breed of pigeon in the Amazon rainforest.

So it's all happening in that sector of the world.

No pilot because they actually had to turn the cockpit into the micro brewery.

The plane flies on potential.

That's very much how the American economy is flying at the moment, isn't it?

Pretty much, yeah.

Yeah.

Potential and a real lot of just scared teeth chattering, which that noise, with that noise in the background, that changes the way that beer tastes as well.

Bugle feature section now and sleep.

We've all done it.

Let's admit it.

We've all done it.

It's nothing to be ashamed of in this day and age.

And I'm, you know, even I'm talking to you, New York.

the city that never sleeps and is therefore permanently cranky, completely dependent on coffee and almost totally divorced from reality.

We're so tired.

It is National Bed Month here in Britain, Wyatt.

I mean, that basically means we have to spend the entire month of March in bed.

It's coming at a good time

when

at least 48% of the population are feeling like hibernating for the foreseeable future.

And there's World Sleep Day due up on the 17th of March.

Put yourself in for a 24-hour power nap a week next Friday.

Now,

wait, that's the day after St.

Patrick's Day.

That's a good spot.

So I was

world sleep it off day then.

Yeah,

I think

that's some really good scheduling right there.

It's becoming an increasingly prominent medical concern, sleep.

And I speak as someone with a, frankly, borderline, slow-acting suicide of a sleeping pattern.

But I mean, the health implications of bad sleeping are something I try to avoid thinking about on an almost daily basis, basis, usually at around 3.30am when I'm looking up cricket statistics or working out how I can make the words golden retriever into a pun.

But here's a list of things that can go wrong apparently if you do not sleep enough.

Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, strokes, you have problems with your muscle and tissue health, mental problems, your immune system can go haywire.

And you can have problems with

your junkle splats, which could turn your libido into

a libby don't.

And basically, pretty much your entire body can stop functioning properly if you don't get enough sleep.

Now, are you a sleep fan?

Do you tend to get your regular eight hours a day?

Well, that's two different questions.

Am I a sleep fan?

Yes.

I like to go and look in people's windows and cheer them on as they sleep.

I'm a big sleep fan.

I'll go to hotels and pretend that I'm staying in room 721 so I can get a key card.

I'll go into room 721.

I'll sit in the closet and I'll wait for you to go to sleep.

And

I'll just root by.

I got pom-poms and I'm like, go, go, go, sleep, sleep, sleep.

You're doing it.

You're doing it.

Yay.

And then I hope to leave before you wake up.

That's quite a tough thing.

So big sleep fan.

Quite a tough thing to cheerlead, isn't it?

Sleep.

Because you want to be enthusiastic, but there's something you don't want to wake people up.

But I recognize just how important it is for people to have a good night's sleep.

And so I don't get a full eight hours in part because I'm cheering other people on.

There are a number of things you can apparently do to improve your sleep.

I was reading a list of advice.

Switch off your phones, tablets and screens

and

take them, in fact, take them completely out of your bedroom.

I mean,

this is, I mean, this is the kind of stuff you expect your mother to tell you, not sleep scientists.

A warm bath or shower can help you relax.

I mean, relaxing, that's pretty 20th century.

We don't have time to relax these days.

We're too busy.

You've got to make sure your room is tidy.

Mum, come on.

And breathing exercises, light yoga stretches or meditation can help.

Yeah, I will just pop my yoga instructor and a maharishi on the end of my bed.

I'm sure the wife will be absolutely delighted.

And also suggest if your mind is racing.

to keep you awake, you can make to-do lists to clear it.

But that's a problem if the first thing on your to-do list is get more sleep.

That is really just going to emphasize the fact that you're failing with your to-do list and your actual sleep.

Also, noise and light can wake you up.

Noise and light, coincidentally, the nicknames I have for my children.

And they certainly can wake you up.

Oh,

that's sweet.

Which one's noise and which one's light?

I cannot possibly divulge in case at some point in their future lives they listen to this.

They're not going to listen.

They'll be watching John Oliver's videos on YouTube.

Apparently, an extra hour average sleeper night in the long run correlates to a 16% increase in wages,

which means that the average chief executive of a London hedge fund sleeps for, I'll just do the maths,

7,650 hours a day.

Well, that is all we have time for on this week's bugle.

We are once again about to be turfed out of a studio.

So, your emails will wait again.

Anyway, we'll keep them coming in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

Maybe we can get the next podcast to answer the emails.

Just leave them for the next podcast.

Right, okay, we'll do that.

I don't know what is coming in here.

Maybe it's local traffic news, but they could deal with it.

Sunday Night Music Club.

Sunday Night Music Club.

I'm sure they'd love to hear it.

Absolute radio.

They can deal with people complaining about the inaccuracy in my cryptic crossword clue a few weeks ago

anyway thank you very much for listening uh listening buglers uh don't forget uh my uk tour show in nottingham has been rearranged for thursday the 9th my melbourne festival show starts uh at the end of march i'm also doing uh some dates in sydney uh towards the end of april and auckland and wellington uh end of april beginning of may all details on the internet uh Wyatt and Ak, thanks once again for joining us on the Bugle.

We'll be back next week when it will be Helen Zaltzmann in the bugle chair once again.

Until then, Buglers, goodbye.

Goodbye.

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.

500 years ago, this year, Michelangelo, or as he was known by his friends, Mickey Paintbrush, was commissioned to do a little bit of decorating for the Pope.

He got his nickname, of course, not because of his artistic skills, but because he had tough, bristly, straight hair, which, when he was drunk, he would dip in a vat of paint and head-butt cartooned testicles into the sides of churches.

Anyway, the story goes.

That Julius II asked Mickey Paintbrush, Can you whack a lick of paint on the ceiling in my chapel?

It could do with a bit of sprucing up.

Sure, Papa Jay, replied Michelangelo.

What do you want?

How about a bit of a fresco?

Uh, sure, why not?

replied the pontiff.

Great, yipped the young artist.

I was thinking of doing something with some dogs playing snooker.

Uh right, Mickey Pea, said the Pope awkwardly.

It's just uh I was just kind of hoping for something a little bit more kind of neutral.

Maybe just, you know, just a plain off-white magnolia colour.

You know, Mickey, something that isn't going to go out of date.

Right, oh, Skipper, replied Michelangelo, a little downcast.

Hey, do you mind if I do a couple of little bits from the Bible in the corner?

No, all right, conceded the Pope, but just nothing too flash, little Mickey.

Yay!

Yelped the 33-year-old five-time winner of the Golden Chisel Award for terrific sculpture.

I'll go and get my special scaffold.

Four years later, an angry Pope banged on the door of the Sistine Chapel with his big staff.

Have you finished yet, paint brush?

he shouted.

Yep, all done, big man.

The pontiff stormed in, hat akimbo.

What the f have you done to my ceiling, you flash?

Sorry, Pop, said the artist.

I've just got a bit carried away.

Oh, balls, winced the Vatican vicar.

Bloody El Mickey, what is your obsession with naked cocks?

Shit, I've got a christening to do in 20 minutes.

This is going to have to do.

Okay, boss.

Sorry, boss, mumbled the four-in-one painter, sculptor, architect, and chicken impersonator.

You haven't heard the last of this, Buonarotti, blasted the Catholic Kahuna.

Give me that paintbrush.

That's confiscated.

Pope Julius turned to go to his dressing room.

Just then, something on the ceiling caught his eye.

Hang on, that looks like...

No, it can't be.

Is that my Wang?

Mickey Paintbrush, have you painted my papal prong on that nudie man?

Come here.

Come here, you little.

Oh, no, he's gone away.

I knew I should have got Da Vinci to do this.

Knew it.

So to commemorate half a millennium since this historic moment in the history of history, we present to you the Bugle Italian section.

Andy, that has to become a regular feature.

Historical story time.

Misinform your children with Andy's ultra.

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.