Bugle 4011 – George W Bush Nostalgia

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to the first Bugle of 2017, a year that could easily be destined to go down.

It was the greatest year since 2015.

Who knows?

A bit early to say.

This is Bugle issue 4011.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann and as one of the very few stars of international showbiz to have survived the killing fields of 2016.

I'm delighted to wish you all a happy new year.

I'm in London, and by the most fortunate of coincidences, so is my guest co-bugle host this week, all the way from also in London, Nish Kumar.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

I'm back.

Yes, welcome, welcome back.

We made it through 2016.

Yes.

Do you not think at 11.59 p.m.

on the 31st 31st of December, somewhere in the world, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were sitting in a room high-fiving the shit out of each other saying, I cannot believe we've made it.

Why us?

I imagine they fixed themselves up a lovely couple of heroin sandwiches and toasted midnight.

How was your end to 2016?

Well, Andy, I was in Kenya.

On my continuing quest to travel around the world and not learn anything as I go.

I was in Kenya living with the Maasai for a travel programme that I think I mentioned last year as the reason I was in Mongolia.

And we were living with the Maasai.

I was there with my friend Joel Dummet.

And you know, in England, Andy, Joel is sort of the athletic one in our friendship, and I'm really more his fat, sassy sidekick.

And I think I was hoping that traveling to Africa would somehow invert that dynamic.

The Maasai came up with some nicknames for us very quickly.

They nicknamed Joel the European and Simba, and they nicknamed me Pumba and the one one who falls over.

So it's all good stuff.

Well, well, welcome.

Where's your next exciting trip to?

I'm off to Brazil.

Wow.

Next week.

Well, is that all you're going to learn the overhead kick?

Yeah, we're going to learn beach football.

We're going to learn beach football and the art of the carnival.

Bring back those costumes, Niff.

Can't wait to see them.

So this is Bugle 4011 for the week beginning 9th of January.

9th of January, interestingly, revealed by scientists to be the day in the year on which people are most likely to start an affair.

And when I say scientists, I mean some kind of dodgy dating website that is

profiting from the lucrative home wrecking industry.

But apparently 9th of January is when most people are likely to sign up to

IwannaHaveanaffair.com or whatever it's called.

Why, you may ask?

Possibly because

it is a couple of historic anniversaries.

It's the anniversary of the state funeral of Admiral Nelson, who was known to swing it about a bit.

It is also the anniversary of the first incarnation of modern income tax in 1799,

which presumably has got people pretty hot under the collar.

As always, some sections of this newscast are going straight in the bin, as all good audio newspapers do.

This week's section in the bin is Trendy 17.

What trends will 2017 be trended with?

And we focus particularly on the follow-up to the smash hit 2016 Danish trend of Huger.

Chris, is that how it's pronounced?

Yes.

Yes.

You are an expert on all languages.

Pronunciations of Scandic words.

Scandy correspondent for the Bugro.

Huger, which of course took Britain by Storm.

Huger, for those who don't know it, Nish, you didn't seem very familiar with it.

No, I've got no idea what he's talking about.

It basically involves putting woolly socks on and making yourself feel all snug and nice by, for example, having a nice hot cup of cocoa and not thinking about all the atrocities performed by humanity on itself over the course of history and not worrying about the inevitability of loss and death and above all not reading below-the-line comments on the internet.

But what will be the Huguer of 2017?

We look at the international candidates.

Well, some people are tipping Congolese mbantantu, which means jungle heat.

People could be living in oppressively unrelenting heat and humidity in specially constructed

airtight living rooms with a huge likelihood of contracting a tropical illness.

Rather a bit more edgy than Huger.

The German stroppel.

Stroppel is a very angry way of living, a stropper-based

way of living, which involves every morning you spend one hour shouting at inanimate objects in your house.

Get it all out of your system and it helps the rest of your life.

Your commutes, your work, your family seem relatively low stress.

So I think that's going to be taken the world by storm.

But I've been living like that for 31 years, I think.

And

Danish, another Danish one, which is the follow-up to Hugo, which is Tudum,

which is what Danish people do when they realise that just sitting at home being warm is a bit dull.

And it mostly involves jumping into other people's bathrooms naked.

So we'll see what

comes up.

This is the weekly Monday, the 9th of January, 2017.

As we record,

Friday the 6th would have been the 33rd birthday of...

Sorry, I'm tearing up a bit here.

My former dog, Tash.

Still can't believe she's gone.

2016's last victim.

Yeah, I mean, it was 1997, but I mean...

Still 2016, you bastard.

And a thousand years, exactly to the day, Nish, since King Canute became King of England.

Is it really?

Yep, little Willy Wettoes himself.

What a career.

Yeah, the Danish King of England, also doubled up with a cheeky bit of monarchy here and there in Norway and Denmark.

Coronated 1,000 years ago on this very spot, London Town.

A different place back then, a millennium ago.

You could get a seat on a train in those days.

So, yeah, happy millennium anniversary, King Canute.

It's so hard to tell

in this post-truth society

which bits of your bullshit I should believe.

Right.

I'm still trying to figure out whether

it really is the anniversary of Canada.

Oh, no, that is.

That is that's genuine history.

I think this is going to be your year, Andy.

In the year of post-truth, I think you are about to be you are the comedian for the trumpet.

Or as I was described in the Times in a review for my Soho show, Left Behind Sidekick.

That was fortunately not in the print edition that my parents saw.

That was the sub head on the webpage.

thanks to all all of uh all buglers who have come to see the uh who came to see the um 2016 the certifiable history um because without uh buglers i would have been performing that in a phone box so

thanks once again for your continued support

top story this week crappy new year

Andy, it's 2017.

And for some reason, a lot of people assume that the end of 2016, with all of the problems it's brought us, would somehow undo all of that damage.

Like the end of a fairy tale where when you kill the witch, all of the stuff that the witch has done gets magically undone.

I think a lot of people assume that on the 1st of January 2017, all of the problems set up by the previous year would just magically vanish.

And to all of those people, let me just say this.

I have some magic beans.

I think it would be very interesting.

2017 is going to be the year that all of the reasons we hated 2016 actually come into force.

So let's start by looking at a couple of the elements of the upcoming shit show that we've got to look at.

Let's start with Brexit.

Can't wait.

Can't wait.

Article 50 coming up in March.

Yeah.

The Brexit trapdoor is going to be sprung open.

I mean, got to be the biggest article of 2019.

It's a huge article.

It's an absolutely huge article.

The trapdoor to our national freedom will be yanked open.

Brex skeptics suggesting that we're really just haggling over whether it's the trapdoor leading to a long drop or short drop hanging.

There'll be a lot of foot twitching either way.

Brexthusiasts saying it's a trapdoor that will deposit us into a getaway speedboat to surf the oceans as Britannia intended, as free as a whale.

And a white whale at that.

Yeah, who knows?

It's not going well at the minute.

There's some slight Brexit-based arguments developing.

Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK's top diplomat to the EU, has quit his job and he is not quit quietly, Andy.

He's not resigned gracefully, tipped his hat and walked out.

He's very much exited, flipping the bird in all directions with a tattoo on his head that says, go f ⁇ yourselves.

Now, it's interesting with Ivan Rogers.

He was a man about whom, until a few days ago, no one had strong opinions unless they were Ivan Rogers,

Mrs.

Rogers, if there is a Mrs.

Rogers, in the higher echelons of the diplomatic service, or obsessed with people called Ivan.

But now he's quit early as Britain's ambassador to the EU.

Everybody has an opinion.

Very strong opinions.

I never knew how much I cared about Ivan Rogers until about three days ago.

Yeah, and that opinion seems to be either he was just a civil servant trying to do his job to the best of his ability, or he was a traitorous borderline German trying to destroy the entire country and nothing in between.

Yeah, there is no room for nuance when it comes to Ivan Rogers.

In quitting he sent an email to his staff where he criticised the muddled thinking that seems to be going on behind the scenes and encouraged them to speak truth to power.

He also castigated the government for ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking, which is also an extract from a review of my 2013

boom.

Bang.

2017, I'm back.

Muddled thinking is what we voted for in this country.

I've said this before, and I will say it again.

There is no plan because we voted for a no-planned Brexit.

But the option of a planned Brexit was not on that ballot paper.

It was an absolute WAS in the dark.

One man only too happy to dip his...

Waz in the dark is actually the name of that Edinburgh show.

Well, one man only too happy to dip his unnecessary wang into the pot to stir this moulding Bolognazo story was former Conservative leader Ian Duncan Smith, also former work and pension secretary and renowned saviour stroke scourge of the poor and the disabled to delete according to whether or not you are Ian Duncan Smith.

He said that Rogers had been kept out of the loop

on Brexit because he's not trusted by politicians.

Ouch.

It's not a loop, I don't think.

It's more a loop for loop on Brexit.

A kind of wide-knuckle fairground ride where

the basic thrust is scream if you want to go faster and/or harder.

Or at least just scream anyway, and then complain if you're not going fast enough.

And who cares if the ride is going to career off the rails and land in a hedge, as long as it's going fing fast and fing hard.

John Redward, who's another long-time Eurosceptic, said Sir Ivan's heart was not in the negotiations.

And then he went on to say, the talks do not need to be that complicated.

If you leave, you leave.

But that doesn't make any sense.

That doesn't.

The talks are incredibly complicated.

It isn't just a question of Britain just upping sticks and fing off.

Is it not?

I mean, maybe we should just do that.

Maybe we should just up sticks and f off

to Canada.

There's loads of space in Canada.

Take some thermals.

That'll teach them.

Does this mean that we're now a sort of free agent?

Now that we've left the EU and we could be signed up by any other continent that's maybe for looking to add some experience and old school racism to its ranks.

Yeah, well,

I can see us joining South America.

Yeah?

Yeah.

We don't quite have the flair in our football.

Well never they need a bit of you know good old-fashioned British insularity.

I can see the press conference already with us sitting awkwardly answering tedious questions from journalists saying I've always wanted to be part of South America.

I just want to get out there and do what I do best.

The concern does seem to be that anyone who opposes Brexit is sort of seen as a kind of traitor and someone who needs to be expelled.

Nigel Farage, who is a total

has waded in again,

saying that he hopes Sir Ivan is the first of many to go.

And the spirit of Brexit seems very much to be, we have got our freedom back.

And if you don't agree, go f yourself.

That is the spirit of Brexit.

Farage

complained about who Sir Ivan Rogers was replaced with.

He was replaced with Sir Tim Barrow.

And Farage put up a tweet saying, Good to see that the government have replaced a knighted career diplomat with, dot, dot, dot, a knighted career diplomat.

Well, fair point, Nigel, because of course the last thing you want in top-level diplomacy is a diplomat.

This is not a career diplomat with years and years of relevant experience.

Because they're just going to come in, Nish, with their hackneyed old ways of doing diplomatic stuff, negotiating stuff by the book.

And And what we need in this country, we don't need that.

We need an absolute novice who comes in unencumbered by the dead weights of experience and expertise, unconstrained by the constricting shackles of having even a vague fing clue what might be going on.

What we need is a randomly chosen Brexit voter as our official Brexit Britannia representative to sit in a paddling pool.

Sit in a paddling pool in the middle of the negotiating room wearing a knotted handkerchief on the head saying, do what I say or I'll splash you.

What we need, Nish,

as only Mr.

Farage has had the courage to point out, is someone who believes in Brexit.

Someone who will sit in the negotiations with their eyes squeezed tight shut and their fingers and their ears, believing as hard as they possibly can.

What we need is someone dressed as a bulldog to run around barking at the Germans and shitting on the carpet.

That's what we need.

We don't need a career diplomat.

God save the Queen, Andrew.

God save the Queen.

I'm tearing up over here.

Some of the criticism is

put in terms that I simply don't understand.

So Tom Fletcher, who's a former ambassador to Lebanon, was frustrated by criticism of the Brexit plans.

And he said this.

He said, I think people are getting a bit fed up of why aren't we being more open with the plans?

Muhammad Ali didn't brief everyone in advance on the Rumble in the Jungle.

Now that didn't he?

He did.

Muhammad Ali, of all of the boxes he could have chosen, that was possibly the worst.

Muhammad Ali briefed absolutely everyone on everything he was going to do at any one time.

That is probably the worst example he could have chosen.

But also, crucially, even if he hadn't done that, when Muhammad Ali fought in the Rumble in the Jungle, he didn't have to explain to all of us what he was going to do because there was no danger of anyone else getting punched in the face.

He then went on to say, again,

I don't know how these people have spent so much time watching Spore.

He's written, most of all, I think people are sick of the constant criticism.

West Ham players perform much better when they're not being booed by their own side the whole time.

We need to let our people get on with it now.

Now first of all for anyone who's watched West Ham this season knows that they do not play well regardless of what the crowd is doing.

But also that is again an imperfect analogy.

No one is booing anyone.

People are just trying to figure out what's going on, what the terms of Brexit are and how this is going to affect all of us going forward.

There's a difference between booing someone and just asking for some basic information.

This is not like they're played badly.

It's like they've sat on the ball and are refusing to tell us what's going to happen with the ball.

But we need to trust that they know what they're doing with the ball.

Some breaking news here actually just coming in on the wires.

Well more details on why Ivan Rogers was forced to buy his career sinite capsule.

This has just been revealed exclusively to the Bugle.

It turns out that the reason that Downing Street forced him to quit was that he failed to see in the new year prancing around on top of Nelson's column, wearing nothing but Union Jack underpants, singing Rule Britannia through a megaphone and shouting strap-in dickheads, we're going to rule the f ⁇ ing world again.

As a result, Downing Street decided he was insufficiently committed to Brexit.

Let's move on now, for the first time in 2017, to...

The Trumpet.

Yes, welcome to the trumpet section in which the Bugle faithfully records the history of the Donald Trump years of humanity.

It is only two weeks now, Nish, as we record, almost to the minute, in fact, until we enter a new era of humanity, an era when, for the very first time

in the history of the planet Earth, this planet will no longer have zero Donald Trumps working as president in major nations.

I mean, that is a big step.

One small step for man, one giant finging tumble into a slurry pit for mankind.

And that step is into a huge pile of dog shit.

Trump, very much the prime spludgestain on the trouser cross of capitalism, will soon be

soon be

leader of the free world.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, there, Andy.

You've moved very quickly off that.

Leader of the free world.

Now the year ends in seven.

We can't keep pretending it's not going to happen.

No, that's right.

I remember this sense of foreboding from when George W.

Bush was going to be elected in January 2001.

I remember the same sense of foreboding.

And at the time, you know, I spent most of my late teenage years being programmed to despise George W.

Bush.

But now, with Trump, I feel like I'm thinking back on George.

I think if I saw George W.

Bush now, I would immediately salute and be moved to tears and refer to him as Mr.

President.

This is, in many ways, the most extraordinary achievement of Donald Trump.

Yeah.

not to get elected into the White House, not to have

basically used about five tweets to thrust the world significantly closer to nuclear Armageddon, but to have made people nostalgic for George W.

Bush.

In terms of political gymnastics, that is a high tariff maneuver.

That is absolutely incredible.

He's making people nostalgic for Nixon.

He's making people nostalgic for Calvin Coolidge was sort of dismissively referred to as Coolidge the inert after he left office.

Now people are begging for inerts.

Yeah, if you're given a choice of the real Trump or Coolidge via Ouija board,

I think

Calvin, you're up.

Most of humanity.

He's saying there's nothing coming through.

Oh no, that is him.

That is him.

It could be worse, I guess.

I mean, he could have lost.

and then spent the next four years basically screaming, burn the witch, burn the president witch, 24, 7, 3, 6, 5.

But anyway, so there it is.

I mean, most of humanity had seemed happy with a total of naught Donald Trump's in high public office.

But in a fortnight, he will be settling in to the Oval Office, playing keepy-uppy with the nuclear football, installing a Twitter-enabled tablet in the presidential Kazi so he can communicate with the world even when going about his daily business, and finalizing his own personal league of his top 10 most f ⁇ kable former first ladies from history, while spinning the White House globe with his his eyes shut before stopping it with one finger and saying, whoever you are, you're getting it, especially if you end in Stern.

There's no way that he doesn't exclusively tweet whilst passing solids.

There's absolutely no way.

All of his tweets have the sense of a man struggling to curl one out.

That's half where the frustration comes from, I feel like.

I just feel like, just get some prune juice,

some high-fiber cereal.

Packet of dried apricots.

Get yourself moving, man.

Relax, Donald.

I've got to say that I, um,

when I was in Kennedy at this time, I experienced sunburn for the first time.

I've never been sunburned before in my entire life.

It's an awful experience.

And it did make me think, I do understand now why white people are so angry.

It does feel like I understand now why white people

make America great again.

I feel it.

I felt it.

As soon as I got sunburned, I was like, send them home.

Brexit means Brexit.

Slap on some Factor 50 and calm down, Donald.

I've got sunburned watching Snooker.

She keeps the glare off the paper.

Not everyone's reacted well to Trump's recent tweets.

The Chinese state news agency, Xinhua,

said

Twitter should not become an instrument of foreign policy.

Which really are words that ideally no one should ever have had to say.

But is it possible to get Trump to stop using Twitter?

It's like trying to get your dog to stop rolling in fox shit.

It's its nature.

And it's particularly difficult when the dog's just been giving supreme executive power.

So

it's going to be hard.

Joe Biden told Trump to grow up.

He said, time to grow up, Donald, time to be an adult.

But I think an adult version of Trump might be even worse.

I think at least the kids, I mean, children are quite easily manipulatable.

And he does seem to act with the mind of a child.

He just needs to be bribed with sweets and things to calm down.

I do feel like that Donald Trump read that and immediately reacted by saying, You grow up, Joe.

My dad could beat up your dad.

As an experienced parent, now, Nish, of almost 10 years of parenting experience,

Donald Trump clearly responds to screen time.

Use that as a bargaining chip.

If you behave, Donald,

you can have half an hour before dinner.

When what he does in that half an hour might still be a problem, but just keep him off it for the rest of the day.

Have they ever considered just sort of, I don't know, painting a bar of soap and telling him that's a phone?

Like, isn't there any way?

It does feel like there should be some way around this.

I mean, what we're definitely learning is if we had hoped that being in power or, you know, the influence of congressional Republicans would calm Trump down, we are sadly mistaken.

And the philosopher Edmund Burke said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

But I also believe it was the stand-up comedian Nish Kumar who said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for cs like Paul Ryan to go around being for their own self-interests.

Both good phrases.

So there we go.

Two weeks until we have an internet troll sitting in Abraham Lincoln's chair.

Absolutely incredible.

I imagine Lincoln would be turning in his grave if Donald Trump hadn't almost certainly pissed on that grave.

Chicken news now, and it's.

Who says we don't tackle the big issues, Andy?

2017, Nish, the Chinese year of the rooster.

And

you don't need to tell me that.

This has been marked.

Sorry, I forgot you're from Asia.

Of course you know you're kidding.

I just felt it in my blood.

2017, chicken.

Rooster.

The year of the rooster.

And of course, the king chicken coming home to shit all over the world's rooster is incoming President Trump.

Sorry, I mispronounced incoming.

It should have been...

Incoming!

Fire of the hole!

Mayday!

Mayday!

The Chinese city of Taiyuan has marked this historic year by installing a giant statue of a chicken with Donald Trump's hair, Donald Trump's eyebrows, Donald Trump's hand gestures, and Donald Trump's angry, angry face.

And this to me is the logical end point of all human civilization.

Our work is done as a species.

I cannot see where else we can go from here.

A giant chicken trump in a Chinese city, that is everything.

That is art, that is globalization, that is the skewed byproducts of democracy.

Where else can we go, Nish?

What's interesting about this is that Trump actually hasn't responded to this, which is quite strange, given he's sort of well established as having quite a thin skin and any sort of criticism, he's normally quite sort of hostile to us.

Now, this means one of two things.

Either his aides have finally got some control over him and decided it might not be a great idea for him to continue to antagonize China or Trump has seen this and is happy with it.

In which case I would invite all buglers to start mocking up pictures of Donald Trump as a chicken

and sending them to him on Twitter.

Another possible alternative is that he's just keeping his powder dry.

He's got his inauguration coming up in two weeks.

Yeah.

And there have apparently been certain difficulties in getting anyone to perform as it's right here being tarred with the structure of BRC.

Surely you and I, the call is imminent for us.

We'll do a few country songs.

And

I think maybe

he is going to respond to the Trump chicken at his inauguration by having a musical set performed by a giant 100-metre-high animatronic cockroach with the face of Chinese President Xi Jinping

as a revenge attack.

It's going to march down the Washington Mall like Mr.

Stay Puffed and Ghostbusters.

Oh, God, it's just occurred to me that he's going to have to give a speech.

Yeah.

He might just tweet it.

He might just tweet it.

It might be a series of tweets.

I mean, what are the bettings that that speech isn't going to open with him just pointing straight at his groin and saying, this is the president now?

Well, I mean, it's going to be very, very hard for someone to stop him doing that.

That is hella.

I mean, it is going to be very hard.

No doubt about that.

Trump is definitely going to have a semi whilst delivering that inauguration.

He's going to be the first president since Clinton to have a public boner.

Well, of course, William Henry Harrison in 1841, he got his junk out at his inauguration and caught a chill died a month later.

Well, the second half of that is true.

Assassinated by the communist elements.

In other chicken news, scientists

have discovered that chickens are capable of greater logical reasoning than children.

Big f ⁇ ing whoop chickens.

Aim higher than that.

That is like having greater hand-eye coordination than a bench.

Maybe it's just that chickens don't believe in Father Christmas.

even if they do vote for him, but that's more of an anti-turkey thing rather than a pro-Christmas thing.

Classic ballot box interests.

Maybe they do have human traits after all.

But to be honest, I don't see why a chicken would want to have logical reasoning.

I mean, I guess if an egg flies out of your ass every day, you're probably going to start thinking that's weird.

There must be some reason for it, but it's still weird.

Well, there certainly should be a reason why eggs are flying out of my ass whilst I'm packed next to my friend, out of whose ass eggs are also flying.

The scientists also discovered that chickens have distinct personalities.

I'm skeptical about this.

I don't know if you've ever looked at a chicken dating site, Nish.

The research I do for this show, you wouldn't believe what I've seen.

You'll know that that is not true.

Basically, all chickens on chicken dating sites likes pecking its seed, dislikes foxes.

That's about it.

But they do have, apparently they have distinct personalities or chickenalities.

That's not science.

Maybe they've just been reading the label on those organic, free-range, hope-infused, cuddle, euthanized, ethical-natured chicken breasts from health food shops.

Those little backstories you get on your food.

Percy was farmed in 200,000 acres of pristine Arcadian woodland, stroked and sung to by angels every morning to make him happy.

He liked playing board games, clucking, chicken golf, spending time with friends and being in the great outdoors.

Do enjoy your meal.

I'm a little bit concerned that it seems like a lot of scientists are getting their information from the film Chicken Run.

But it does really feel like that.

chicken.

It does feel slightly like a scientist forgot about a deadline, panicked at the last minute, saw a DVD of their child's copy of Chicken Run on the sofa as they were heading out and just thought, well, I'll just sort of riff some.

Well, yeah, they've all got a lot of distinct personalities, chickens, and some of them are voiced by Mel Gibson.

Chickens,

according to this report, continued, have been shown to possess self-control when it comes to holding out for better food reward.

So aren't they?

They've worked out how to get treats.

Jesus, that means chickens have more self-control than me.

When I am drunk, I have less self-control than a chicken, it turns out.

I'm always walking home thinking, well, I could just get home.

I've got some food in the fridge.

No, fried chicken it is, ironically.

That's apart from the Ukrainian chickens, which just stuff themselves with garlic and butter all the time.

I'm concerned if chickens have this sort of Machiavellian tendency that they are going to rise up and strike back in a planet of the chicken style scenario.

And I am worried that I'm going to be the first port of call because the amount of Nandos I've consumed over the last couple of years I imagine makes me public enemy number one in the poultry community.

Interestingly

science has revealed chickens seem capable of self-assessing their position in the pecking order.

And I do hope that is the internal chicken pecking order rather than the overall global pecking order.

Because that is not going well for chickens.

They are not doing so well on the global food chain.

And if they do understand their position in the global pecking order, maybe that's why they always look and sound so indignant.

Another study showed that chickens can anticipate future events.

Right little Nate Silvers, aren't they?

No, they can't.

Well, you say that, but it can't be that difficult anticipating a future event as a chicken.

Oh, surprise moment.

Am I going to spend a day in a cage with loads of other chickens being told to lay a fat one?

Well, it must be a day ending in why.

Well, we need to start investigating their predictions because if they called Brexit and Trump, then that puts them ahead of all major political polling organizations.

Well, you may well say that, and luckily, we can in fact find out because I have

in the studio with me today a chicken.

Chris, please release the chicken.

Hello, Colonel Klarkovich, sit down, please.

That is disgusting.

Colonel, welcome to the bugle.

Thanks for having me on the show, Andy.

So, what is it a rap chicken?

So, Colonel, we hear that you chickens can tell the future.

Is that so?

Yes, we sure can.

Here's my tradition.

We're all going to die.

Sorry, that's just a bit of classic chicken fatalism.

When you've seen as many friends disappear as I have, you learn to laugh about it.

Okay, but on a global scale, Colonel,

what do you think is going to happen this year, 2017?

Right.

Well, looking into my crystal ball,

people are going to get stroppy about Brexit.

Trump is going to split opinion.

Islamic states are still going to be a bunch of dicks.

The economy is going to go up and or down.

The internet is going to be big.

Right,

is that it?

I mean, that you're confident.

I mean, that's that's pretty unimpressive predictions.

That's pretty much stating the obvious.

Well, you know us chickens, Andy.

We are all like Nostraklakin Damos.

Science never lies.

Well, Colonel Kluxer, thank you very much for talking to us.

My pleasure, Andy.

Big fan of the show.

Very excited to be on it.

Do not start that.

It's too early in the year.

Just a little yoke.

Oh, God.

I shall be quiet now.

I won't take it any further.

Oh, God.

I'm glad of that.

Yes, I'll stop now.

Sorry, it's just a real coupe for the.

Oh, come on!

Be on the bugle.

I didn't want to foul it up.

Oh,

shut up now, chicken.

Shut up now.

Yeah, what will happen if I don't?

Oh, you...

You don't want to know.

Lighten up, Andy.

Come on.

I remember the days when this rooster be a funny show.

Shut up.

I don't want to get in any trouble.

So let's bury the hatch it.

Seriously, f you, chicken.

F you.

Now, now, Andy, don't be rude.

Oh, there's more.

Who was your favorite 1980s Hampshire and England batsman, Andy?

I'll tell you mine.

It was Paul Terry.

Did you smoke a

pun on the twice-capped England batsman Paul Terry, who broke his arm against the West Indies in 1984?

I did, Andy.

Good luck for the rest of the year.

Right, that's it.

Sorry about that for any of our

vegan and vegetarian listeners.

Unless

you're a meat-eater, aren't you?

Yep.

Here you go.

It's your plucky day.

Let's move on.

Oliver never had to be in the same room as them.

Well, that's the first time I've suffered it from someone else.

We are two weeks away from Trump's inauguration.

Brexit is happening this year.

There's so much going on.

How have we spent this amount of time on chickens?

Well,

how have we spent this much time on chicken puns without Addie saying he's had enough of this?

Oh my gosh.

Oh!

Brexit, can't use French words anymore.

Brexit.

We've spent 15 minutes on chickens.

15 minutes?

This show is over 50 minutes long, already, largely because of chickens.

Google feature section now and technology.

We're going to have a a quick look at the

CES 2017 the consumer electronic show the annual the big one festival of the

well both useful and absolutely promising technology that is going to gonna feature in the worlds this year

it's 10 years since the iPhone was launched is it really yeah that's amazing I mean you look back at the old iPhones they look I mean they had to be tethered to a wall the earpiece was linked to the base station with a curly wire it's amazing how quickly it's moved on

Any highlights for you, Nish, from the consumer electronics show?

I know you like to keep your finger very much on the pulse of

Andy.

I'm a borderline part robot.

My particular highlight is the smart hairbrush,

which is a hairbrush that as you brush your hair, it sends information about the quality of your hair to an app.

Right.

For reasons that I am still not clear on.

And the global vice president of L'Oreal's research and innovation department said to BBC, you'd be surprised by how many women around the world are concerned about hair breakage.

And they are right.

I would be surprised if that number was above zero.

I would be absolutely surprised beyond belief if there were more than zero people who were brushing their hair and thought, if only my hairbrush could take a reading of the quality of my hair and feed it back to an app, that would be absolutely ideal.

Right.

So it can basically coach you into how to brush your hair essentially yeah well you see i mean i don't know about you nish

but the last time i used a hairbrush the internet didn't even exist yeah i mean looking at the two of us andy this is not this is not really our this is not this is not our wheelhouse

what i would say though is for f' s sake technology focus focus

just because you can do something doesn't mean that you couldn't do something more f ⁇ ing worthwhile instead what the world needs is a hairbrush that doesn't tell people when they're brushing their hair on it.

It needs a hairbrush that is going to calm lunatics down.

If you could have a hairbrush that just doubled as a scalp massage and played soothing music for Trump and Basher Alessatu and whatever,

maybe that'll be technology worth having.

If you look at some of the products that are lined up here, you would assume that everything in the world was absolutely fine.

and that we had managed to solve all outstanding problems.

Because like the smart hairbrush, that is no one's number one priority.

No.

but amongst the things that are is a new piece of tech,

this device that lets children create their own bedtime story and then hear it read aloud back to them by this little machine.

Right.

And this is a very exciting development in parenting because, I mean, it's come a bit too late for me

because

our kids are now nine and seven.

Nine and eight?

Nearly ten and eight.

My wife and I have had to do do quite a lot of parenting ourselves,

regrettably, with 50% disappointing results.

It's fine.

I married well.

Chris, you're...

Two and a half.

Two and a half.

So, I mean, this could be quite useful for you, Nish.

I mean, if you...

I sit around children.

I don't know if you're ever intending to bring little nishes and nishettes into the world, but you will be able to outsource everything to technology.

Ideal.

Everything.

I mean, this is very exciting developments.

You can have a bedtime story.

We're We're nearly at the point where you can give birth to your baby and just say, Right, I'll hook it up to the Wi-Fi, see you in 18 years.

Basically,

technology is replacing the Victorian boarding school.

We will have more from the CES 2017

next week, including a look at some of the other new technology, including the smart sock,

the driverless and passengerless car,

and the smart bladder.

That all to come in the bugle next week.

Your emails now, and this comes from an anonymous correspondent

who says, Dear Andy, Hari, and

bit racist, isn't it?

A bit racist.

Good lord.

And

the metaphysical remains of that British guy whose name I can't remember.

2016 sucked.

I think we could all say that.

We had Brexit, we had Trump, and I'd sit nine GCSEs without the aid of fresh bugles.

I can make think of only one way to make damn sure 2017 isn't as terrible.

The one highlight of 2016 was the return of the bugle.

And the only means I can see to bring some joy into what will be a bleak, dark, empty morass of a year is to bring back the only comeback that would bring light into the gloom, and that is hotties from history.

So he proposed that the world needs a new 2017 Hotties from History's Hotties from History calendar

to bring light into the darkness just as Nightingale's lamp did in the Chromium.

Oh yeah.

From a tissue.

Oh, it's got all over the chicken court.

He suggests his first nomination, Julie Daubigny.

She travelled around France, writes Art Anonymous, as a cross-dressing bisexual demonstration swordswoman for several years before joining the Paris Opera.

In Poitiers, a drunk Heckler yelled that she had to be a man because a woman could not be so skilled with a blade.

So she tore open her blouse and asked the audience to judge for themselves.

She took holy orders to elope with a nun, and the King of France had to pardon her twice.

That sounds hot.

Oh my god.

I'm burning up in here, Andy.

That is a scorcher from history.

That is an absolute blazer of a hottie.

I mean, she was, what, late 17th, early 18th century.

I mean,

that was a great era for hottest time.

Sexy time.

Sexy time.

Truly a sexy, sexy time.

I mean, Nish, since you're new on this show, you've not shared with us your long-held historical crushes.

I mean, are there any...

Well, who floats your boat from the past?

One word, Andy.

Cleopatra.

God, yeah.

No doubt.

Cleopatra.

I know it's a sort of obvious choice.

It's a bit like picking Sergeant Peppers as your favourite Beatles album, but what could you do?

Cleopatra is one of the notoriously the hottest women of all time.

Yeah.

She was so hot, especially when she was married to Richard Burton.

I may be getting Cleopatra confused with Elizabeth Taylor, but it's hard to say.

Just don't buy her a snake bra for Valentine's Day.

Too many memories.

That really sounded like a cryptic crossword, Claude.

Don't get sad on that as well.

We had a very nice email as well, which we'll get to because we've overrun this week

from Brian.

uh, is there any truth to rumor that Bugles 295 to 4000 have been recorded but cannot be released because they refer exclusively to future events?

Um, we will, you may have stumbled upon something here, and we will be uh releasing exclusive excerpts from those missing bugles revealing the future in weeks to come.

Uh, do keep your emails coming in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

Uh, do keep your emails coming in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

Well, that's about it for this week.

Just time to plug the initial stages of my forthcoming Plan Z UK tour.

Bristol at the Hen and Chicken on the 2nd of February.

The Oxford Glee on the 3.

I thought that shut down.

Yeah, I think

I think that may no longer be happening.

Well,

if it isn't happening, it's a problem for both of us because I'm there on the 2nd of February.

All right.

Well, I'll let you know.

Well, it may or may not be happening.

Somewhere in Oxford.

What are we doing?

I think it might have reopened.

Right.

It'll either be of the glee, or I assume, given your sort of standing in that city, the Bodleian Library.

Well, you say that, but when I was a student in Oxford, the Bodleian Library was to me not so much a library as a dormitory.

They didn't call it big party for no reason, Zolts.

I've just checked my own website.

Oxford on the 3rd is not happening.

Leeds on the 4th, well, unless my website is wrong.

Leeds on the 4th is happening.

The city varieties, Leicester at the cookie on the 9th, Richmond in Yorkshire at the Georgian on the 10th, Peterborough at the Quay on the 11th, and the other dates, all at andysoltsman.co.uk.

Right.

Anything to plug, Nish, other than the gig that may or may not be happening?

I may or may not be at Oxford on the 2nd of February.

On the 30th I'm in Glasgow, 31st Edinburgh and 1st in Aberdeen.

So I'm off to Scotland for a couple of days.

The details are at nichekumar.co.uk either forward slash or backslash gigs.

Just google nish kumar.

Yeah.

I mean I think

at the end of this little section of the show most people have decided not to come anyway.

Anyway, pupilers, it's great to be back in this glorious new dawn of a year.

We will be back.

New Year's, same shit.

We'll be back next week with Hari Kondabolu.

Until then, goodbye.

Goodbye.

Thank you for listening to The Bugle.

We are proud to be part of the Radiotopia stable of the world's finest podcastery.

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.