Bugle 4002 – Where’s MY Knighthood?

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4002 of The Bugle.

This is the second installment of the uncomatized, rebirthed, re-upcyclicized podcast.

We are still here.

Season four has now lasted longer than season three.

I am Andy Zoltzmann and I'm now back on the correct side of the Atlantic, thanks to everyone who came to see Saturdays for High in the USA.

Totally sold out some of the seats at some of the gigs.

And I'm joined this week for his bugle debut by easily the most bearded participant in bugle history, Mr.

Nish Kumar.

Nish, welcome.

Welcome to the bugle.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Good.

I'm here with the beard.

You're learning well.

That's a good catchphrase.

Oh, yeah.

I've been following a lot, and I've got one thing to say.

F ⁇ you, Chris.

Yes, f you, Nish.

Old school bugle.

So,

Nish, I mean, it's part of bugle tradition to,

dating back to the early days, to discuss really awful gigs that

we've been together.

I think the first time we did stand-up together was at the Andover Lights.

Yeah, it was a gig that I was just reliving three days ago in conversation.

It was,

I mean, to say that the people of Andover did not go for what we were saying

is an understatement rivaling anything that's come out of this century.

It was a pretty tricky evening.

Yes.

There was...

There was a physical distance between us and the audience, who was spread out over this kind of great big entrance lobby and what seemed to be a sports centre of some sort.

Yeah, we were in the cafe.

That's right.

That was the theater.

But also that physical distance did also perfectly mirror the philosophical distance.

I think the philosophical distance was way greater.

Way, way greater.

Tough gig.

Yeah.

Tough gig.

So this is the Buke of the Week beginning Monday the 31st of October 2016, which means it is 499 years to the day since little Martin Luther popped up with 95 cheeky little theses which he later whacked on a door in Wittenberg kicking off a nice little reformation for everyone

and 90 years since Harry Houdini began his well toughest ever escape act one that remains as yet unsuccessful he died and is yet to escape from the claws of the reaper 75 years since Mount Rushmore was completed in 1941, currently being updated

so that the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt are all mouthing the first F of the words, for f sake, America.

What the f has happened?

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

This week, 31st of October, Halloween, obviously one of the greats religious celebrations in the world as the world celebrates this great festival, communing with the dark mysteries of the occult by dressing up like idiots idiots and getting hammered.

Or by introducing children to the concept of extortion, which is a valuable life lesson.

Or even by slaying a pumpkin and publicly displaying its eviscerated corpse pour encourage les ultra.

Have you got any Halloween plans, Nish?

I've got my Andy Saltzman costume primed and ready.

It's the same plan I have every year, Saltz.

Get the Saltzman costume out and get the chocolate in.

So, well, I mean, from a career point of view, that might not go very well.

America spends $10 billion a year on Halloween, which is more than the current presidential election campaign, which people complain costs too much at $7 billion.

$10 billion on Halloween.

Largely, they're quite similar in many ways, presidential election campaign and Halloween, largely based on outdated and disproved myths and primarily aimed at scaring the shit out of people.

And in our Halloween section, straight in the bin, we investigate whether the rising popularity of trick or treating trickled up into the world of top-level corporate tax avoidance.

We investigate ructions in the witch community over whether the commercial focus on Halloween has damaged year-round witchcraft.

You tried getting a decent quality batch of frogs in October, it's a fucking nightmare.

Your accent work has always been your most undervalued quality, Andy.

Thank you, Nish.

You suggest that was not a real witch.

And also, we interview a pumpkin.

I never wanted to scare anyone.

Why do people hate the pumpkin so much?

I'm a nice guy, nice conversion.

Don't judge me on my notes.

Also in the bin, in a week in which for the first time an entire copy of a major newspaper was nothing but Japanese number puzzles, that was last Tuesday's edition of the Philadelphia Gadzook.

Here are some of the new puzzles.

taking the Japanese puzzle world by storm.

We have for you Origami Kuro.

Can you fill in the grids with numbers from 1 to 183 so that when you fold the paper along the right-hand edge of each box in ascending numerical order, you make an origami shape.

This week's shapes for the beginner level, a cube, for the intermediate level, the former Soviet space station, the Mir, and for the advanced level origami Kuro players amongst you, Donald Trump attempting to have sex with a Statue of Liberty.

Also the Kikatakoku, that's a gridless number puzzle in which you have to guess where the number should go.

I mean, it does look just like a blank piece of paper.

And also the Bonoku.

Now, this is a great one, the Bonoku.

This is using only one letter and one number.

Can you fill in a two-square grid that's two by one horizontal to match the way rock star Bono would probably

do it?

That's probably pretty easy.

Going in the bin.

I think it's safe to say that Donald Trump attempting to have sex with the Statue of Liberty is a perfect visual metaphor for the last year in American politics.

He can just grab her, Andy.

He's a celebrity.

Just get a crane.

Top story this week, and indeed this year on this side of the Atlantic,

Brexit.

For those of you who rely on this audio newspaper for all of your news.

And we know you're out there.

We do indeed.

You're out there.

And you're probably, as a result, much happier than the rest of the world

from our 18-month absence.

The big story in Britain this year is that the United Kingdom, which is an increasingly odd name for this country, has voted for Brexit.

We have voted to leave the European Union.

Well, we voted for Brexit.

And since then, since that day on the 23rd of June, we have been trying to find out exactly what Brexit is.

I mean, maybe it was worth having a bit of a natter about that first.

But, you know, we've dived in, two-footed, head-first, and I've got to work out what's going to happen.

I mean, Nish,

this has, you know, it's been obviously the defining political story of this year, probably this millennium so far.

It's definitely headline news.

It's, I mean, as I discussed on my little Bugle trailer, it was I have certain feelings about the result, which manifested themselves in a painful bout of diarrhea

immediately as soon as I found out about the EU referendum.

And yeah, talk has been of absolutely nothing else

since the 23rd of June, when I confidently predicted in a Nando's office at Euston station that there was, quote, absolutely no way we will be leaving the European Union to my friend Chris, who looked slightly confused at me.

And I was just following all the poll results, Andy.

But one thing we have learned from this year is that the British public does not like polls, and that is in a couple of different spellings of that word.

And also,

we will lie to opinion polls.

That's the last thing.

It's like a boxer's punch, isn't it?

It's the last thing that you lose as a nation.

We will, you know, whatever.

We don't really know who we are anymore in Britain, but we will bullshit opinion pollsters until our dying breath.

Yeah, that is what we've learned from the last two years.

I guess the five, there's the five great journalistic questions:

who, where, what, when, why.

I don't know if it's in that order or not.

You're a qualified journalist, aren't you, Nish?

Yeah, yeah, famously.

But I think, you know, for Brexit,

the five great questions are:

who the f, what the f, why the f,

when the f and where the f are we gonna wake up and also how the f did we get here

you bleeping all these out Chris yes right

I mean that's given away that you don't do it live

it's a very strenuous job live bleeping I mean you could just pretend you don't have your headphones on

according to our new f buddy contract

we are contractually obliged to be editing both our f ⁇ ks and our f ⁇ ⁇ ks.

Right.

What the f?

Come on!

I don't know who that is.

But we did that anyway before we had a contract, so it's not like the man is all of a sudden.

I don't know who these f are, but I don't think you want to be fing around with them.

I've lost count.

That's the problem.

You get a Kumar in.

You get a Croydon boy in.

Things that the air is going to turn blue.

That's right.

They don't call me Nish Blumar for nothing.

What it seemed to me happened with Brexit, Nish, is that

it was almost like a fast Twitch vote.

But just,

ah, shot it.

And basically, we were left, as a nation, we were left in an empty room.

There was nothing in that room apart from a single electrical socket.

And inevitably, at some point, we were going to put our penis in that socket.

That is what happened.

And now...

Now we have to deal with it.

Well, it's also, I think, who the f ⁇ is a really interesting question to ask about Brexit, because it's really thrust some of the previously fringe lunatic

political figures right square into the limelight.

You know, we're talking about someone like Liam Fox or Boris Johnson to an extent.

I mean, he was already pretty prominent, but this is really giving him some new credibility.

And the current minister for Brexit, the child of Unimaginative Naming Magazine's parents of the year, David Davis, who is absolutely front and center.

And it's amazing to think that just a year ago, these people were considered kind of dangerous fringe whack jobs,

including someone like Theresa May, who about 12 months ago on a

televisual, a satirical television show in Britain, I made some fairly uncharitable remarks about Theresa May that may well be about to come and bite me in the behind.

So what exactly, I mean, can you share this with us before you are

incarcerated for the next 30 years?

Well, I sort of made fun of Theresa May because about a year ago, Theresa May was the sort of fringe candidate for Conservative leadership.

It's almost hard to imagine what that period of time was like because it seemed like before the referendum that it was absolutely George Osborne's job to lose.

Maybe Boris Johnson might get in there.

And Theresa May was suggesting some pretty outlandish stuff, like, for example, deporting immigrants who earned less than £30,000 a year.

And I went on a television show and made some slightly derogatory remarks about that policy and then suggested I was in the process of stealing a white comedian's job by being there.

And 12 months on, those remarks do not look very sensible, Andy.

This could be my first and last bugle appearance.

Well, Boris Johnson was an interesting case because, I mean, there wasn't much in his past that suggested he was going to come out massively anti-the European Union.

Yeah, absolutely not.

And

I think the most

almost the most extraordinary thing of the whole campaign and aftermath was the look on his face after winning.

He's winning in inverted comments.

I don't know, it was a win-lose situation.

Because he had the face of someone who'd been all excited and having a lot of fun as if he was going to go out and see something really exciting like a public hanging.

And instead of a public hanging, he'd been forced to watch a snooker match.

Not just any snooker match, but a best of 35-frame.

grindingly tedious match between Peter Ebden and Alan McLanis.

Nothing but remorseless safety play.

And that look of kind of

almost devastation on his face.

If you're looking at the future thinking,

this is not what I wanted.

I wanted to lose by one vote and

be a great hero.

Yeah, it seemed like a tactical move at the time because Boris was popular with moderate Tories, but seemed to be slightly mistrusted by the right wing of the party.

And by coming out for Brexit, it seemed like it was an absolute win-win for him.

I mean, Boris supporting the Brexit is very much his springtime for Hitler.

Like, it was a deliberately designed, like, I didn't realize he was such a fan of Mel Brooks's films, but his whole political decision appears to be a sort of impromptu homage to the producers.

And more revelations keep on coming out.

And recently, there seems to have been confirmation that Boris Johnson did, in fact, write two separate articles, one in favor and one against Brexit before the referendum.

And I think it was the Telegraph ran his pro-Brexit piece, but he had apparently already prepared one completely contradicting what he said.

And that's, you know, that's not an unreasonable debating tactic to try and assess both sides by arguing.

But it does seem a bit weird that he wrote a full article.

I mean, I'm pretty sure Martin Luther King, when he was prepping the I Have a Dream speech, did not also prep a speech that started, I did not have a dream, I slept soundly, please leave.

I was a bit worried where he's going with that, Martin Luther King, because that could have ended in a very different way.

Brexit, Britain.

So now the debate is over exactly what type of brexit brexit is going to be whether it's going to be you know soft brexit medium brexit or hard brexit i mean the sliding scale of brexit hardness from gently flaccid to stonkingly raging erection from the kind of And it seems that a lot of government seems to be going for kind of the maximum hardness of Brexit bonerism, in which

they're sort of advocating a new British dawn of British Britishness involving a fully helicoptering granite phallus, unconcerned by what it knocks over in its path.

So

it does seem like it does seem somewhat ironic, given the hostility towards continental Europe, that Theresa May seems intent on serving Brexit like a rare French steak.

Like, it's just looking at it seems worrying, and it looks like it's going to be very, very bloody.

I'll chuck a few capers on it.

It'll be fine.

As long as the mustard is English.

So we're basically now thrashing out the details of one of the most complicated divorce settlements in history.

And it's not quite a divorce.

I mean, it's an unusual divorce in that 48% of the spouse who's filed for divorce really did not want to leave, whilst quite a bit of the remaining 52% of that spouse is not entirely sure anymore.

But we've made a phone call to a lawyer, so we have to go through with it now.

We cannot back out at this point.

It does.

There was some good news this week.

The British economy seems to have picked up over the summer and defied some of the slightly gloomier pre-Brexit predictions about what was going to happen.

There's apparently been 0.5% growth in the three months since the Brexit.

So I think we can all agree everything is absolutely fine.

This is one of the things that's annoyed me

throughout the aftermath of Brexit, from both sides, really.

Because if we want to know whether or not it's the right or wrong decision, economically, which is only one of the ways of judging it, and I'm not even sure it's a particularly important way of judging it, there's two ways to find out.

Well, it seems to be basically, either you can wait 50 to 100 years

to see what happens.

But we don't have the patience for that now.

So basically, it just comes down to people looking at the economic figures.

So we'll let someone know, well, we can experiment with this now.

I'll check the FTSE 100.

And, well, share prices have gone slightly up in the last minute.

So take that, Romania.

Well, they'd now just gone down a bit, which proves that Brexit was f ⁇ ing idiotic.

Did you see?

So they had an expert on the radio who was explaining why our economy has gone up 0.5%.

And one of the reasons they gave was the movie The BFG came out.

She said, there's been some big British movies, great for the coffers, including the BFG.

We are literally hanging on that.

Well,

that seems to be very much the angle.

Is it because agriculture, construction and manufacturing are contracting but the service industry which includes transport storage and communication is up and the ONS has suggested that creative industries are the main driver and my response to that is forget the BFG.

You're welcome Britain.

Who knew that me and Andy Saltzman were the only thing keeping this country's economy afloat.

You think it's the BFG, Chris?

Well, I think it was the gig I did at the Fruit Space to 43 people.

Venue capacity 350.

And that is the only thing that has prevented this country from total economic Armageddon.

And my question now is, hey, Queen, where's my fing knighthood?

Philip Green got one for dodging tax and driving British home stores into the ground.

I am part of the thin red line separating this country from Mad Max style economic and social breakdown.

I am the line between Britain and the Thunderdome.

Where is my Knighthood Queen?

I think I can see that becoming a regular feature on the Google.

Where's my f ⁇ ing knighthood queen?

Listen, I'm being respectful to old Lizzie.

I'm calling her by her full title, even though she currently has some of my ancestors' jewelry in her hat,

which remains the most baller move in history to have stolen the Covidor diamond and then lodged it in her crown.

It's a bit like I think it's not in her crown.

Is it?

I think and I can't remember if we talked about this on the bugle before.

I think it's in the queen mother's crown.

Is it the queen mother's crown?

And the queen mother has not been using her crown a great deal over the last 15 years or so.

Oh, since she's taking her own death.

Well that is a bugle exclusive.

Chris, you may have to get the bleep button out for more than just swearing on this podcast.

Well, I think two of us have just lost any chance we had of a knighthood in this episode.

These are curious times for our democracy, Nish,

which, of course, you and I both fought in several world wars for.

Famously.

Because we now have an unelected prime minister with an unelected cabinet putting through policies no one really had a chance to vote on.

And yet...

There seems to be absolutely no desire to have a general election.

It's almost as if the British public said, oh, come on, we've done a bit of democracy this year and a bit of democracy last year.

We cannot take three more fing weeks of campaigning.

And having been in America,

their political campaigns basically last, you know, three years, 51 weeks.

Tantric democracy.

But we cannot take it.

But

I think you're being uncharitable on the British public, Andy.

I think this is the British public realising that it can't be trusted with democracy at the moment.

It's like someone handing over their car keys because they know they've had a few too many drinks.

Just, you know what?

You drive the country for a while.

I just need to sleep this up.

Just a couple of black coffees and a nap and I'll be ready to steer this democracy bus all over again.

I think there were some very good arguments for leaving the European Union and some extremely bad arguments for leaving the European Union, as well probably on

the Romaine side as well.

But there's a complaint that people that we vote on an incomplete prospectus, that all the facts weren't there.

When you can't know all the facts, it's far too complicated.

And in some ways, it's better to know no facts than lots of facts, but not all the facts.

At the start, it just saves a lot of time.

But basically the situation was that the Brexit campaign, the likes of Gove, Farage, Johnson, they promised Britain a nice, plump prawn sandwich.

And Britain said, oh, that sounds nice.

We'll vote for that.

So we voted for the prawn sandwich and then what they presented us with was two sheets of polystyrene with a dead rat inside.

And then people complained, well, that's not what that's not what we said we were going to want to get they've said well it is technically a sandwich and the thing in the sandwich used to be alive so it's not actually that different from what what you're voting on and then people say well yeah but you put great you know posters of prawn sandwiches on the sides of buses

so what are you going to do about that and they've replied oh i'm sorry i've resigned

there's uh news just coming in this morning that actually uh resignation to david cameron uh has just signed a significant amount of money to publish his memoirs.

Really?

And I just can only imagine, given the way that whatever side you voted on, leave or remain, given the way that the campaign was executed, the tone of it, and the situation and the uncertainty that we currently find ourselves in, I'm assuming David Cameron is probably going to not focus on the referendum in his book.

And I would not be unduly surprised if it was just 700 pages of him going, remember when I fed that pig?

Remember that time?

I f ⁇ ed the pig?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There was a referendum, but

I put my dick in a pig.

Remember that time?

I was balls deep in swine?

Don't think about the referendum.

I f ⁇ ed a pig.

Of course, that was...

That was

never scientifically proven.

I think now Cameron is going to be claiming responsibility.

Yeah, it's one of those things, you know, no smoke without fire.

And there was some pretty porky-smelling smoke coming out of fire.

Just some news, just breaking facts about David Cameron.

He's resigned again,

third time this year.

He's already resigned as Prime Minister, then he resigned as a Member of Parliament, and he's just resigned as David Cameron, the character he's been playing increasingly unconvincingly over the last 20 years.

He's now a 32-year-old unemployed bricklayer from Stockton-on-Tees called Nigel Platter.

The other big news story this week, certainly on this side of the pond, has been the refugee crisis, the ongoing refugee crisis.

It's the worst news for refugees since Wyclef Jean's last solo album.

It is

an absolute, it's been a horrific week.

The Calais camp has been officially demolished uh leaving thousands of people uh homeless and yeah which is not i mean let's put this in context being homeless is not that much worse

than being in the calais camp it wasn't kind of five-star luxury altogether

well it was the the camp itself was nicknamed i understand by refugees as the jungle right but then the uh the western media were very keen to jump on that terminology and it's very hard to explain to someone why perhaps massive media organizations in the West describing that place as the jungle felt a tiny bit racist.

It is a bit like the fact that people who aren't black maybe shouldn't be singing along to rap songs and saying the full n-word.

Like that, it's fine for them to call it the jungle.

It's not okay for you to call it the jungle.

Like, oh, yes, that is a double standard, but that's just something you're going to have to live with.

And sections of the British press

have not.

I never like it when a sentence begins.

Sections of the British press.

But carry on.

I think we all know what sections I'm talking about here.

Have not exactly covered themselves in glory in their coverage of

the refugee crisis.

And there was a big sort of scandal over the last couple of weeks here where some refugees who have arrived in Britain, the number that Britain have taken, because Britain have claimed to be taking child refugees, have found themselves the subject of a sort of tabloid sting operation operation to determine how old they are.

And there have been

lots of pictures of people on the front pages of newspapers like the Mail, The Telegraph, and The Express and The Sun with headlines sort of a bit like,

are these people really supposed to be children?

And it turns out that the way that they were determining whether these people were children or not was using an age recognition app called howld.net, which was developed by Microsoft, who very quickly disassociated themselves from its use as a scientific tool by saying it was a fun app and not intended to be used as a definitive assessment of age.

Now, what we really have to hope is, I hope these people don't discover Snapchat filters anytime soon.

Because if they do, they're going to lose their minds.

There's going to be headlines like, some refugees have the ability to swap faces with each other, also to become dogs.

And several of them were seen vomiting permanent rainbows.

I had a look at this

webpage, and a couple of some interesting results have come out of it.

I don't know.

Have you run yourself through it, Nish?

I haven't run myself through it yet.

Well, I just have.

And you are 44 years old.

So how old are you in, you know, kind of, well, your official showbiz age?

I'm 31, although I have a playing age of up to 30.

Any casting directors out there?

I put myself through it

and

I came out on one photo as 64

which was disappointing.

I also put a photo of my son on his seventh birthday.

He came out as 10.

The queen however the famously non-agenarian queen are sprightly 76.

No way.

She is magic.

She is the only person I could find who came out younger than her real age.

Q-Tib's been keeping it tight, Zolts.

There's no other way to put it.

She is doing well.

Jesus Christ, famous crucifixion victim.

38.

Baby Jesus.

Yeah.

As painted by the celebrity painter Giotto in the year 1297.

I put the baby Jesus' face.

Age 26.

I mean, there are some truly extraordinary baby Jesus's in the art world.

Some with kind of full male pattern bald

and the face of a harrowed accountant.

26 years old, the baby Jesus by Giotto.

Well, David Davies, who is not the same man as David Davis, despite them sharing quite a few philosophical principles, is another MEP who has been very vocal in his criticism of our decision to admit some of these refugees on the basis that they might be older than they're saying.

Someone put his face into the face recognition software and it calculated his age at 58 when he is 46.

so i think what we're saying is uh either this uh whole thing is absolute nonsense or we should now be testing all mps ages by examining their dental records and speculating wildly about why they might have been lying and no doubt andy there will be some on the loony left who say that mps have had hard lives and we don't know what they've been going through honestly it is political correctness don market I guess I mean that is

a legitimate question about

the whole refugee crisis.

And that question is,

why do they all

come to Britain?

Why is no other country in the world or anywhere else taking any of these chances who are selfishly fleeing

is Mars going to pick up the slack with refugees?

This chance of selfishly fleeing persecution, starvation, oppression, and or death.

Why have we in Britain had to take all 10,000 of the estimated 6.3 million refugees from Syria?

Why us?

Why us with our estimated 600,000 unoccupied homes?

Why?

Why is it always us?

Other news.

And well, I landed at Heathrow Airport yesterday at the end of my

Columbus style journey of discovery across the Atlantic.

Hopefully you there was slightly less destruction on your way to America.

It was touch touch and go.

Which I believe is Donald Trump's main seduction tactic.

But

after much

deliberation and argument, the British government has decided that what Heathrow really needs is another runway because it's already,

I believe in aviation terms,

a fing massive airport.

And

it needs to be even bigger.

Because otherwise, what's the point?

I love your commitment to satire.

Right.

Is that you landed in a news story?

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

That is commitment to the news, to land in a news story.

It's just the way I roll, Mish.

You're going to have to get used to that on this show.

You were dressed entirely as Theresa May at the time.

Well, yeah, yep.

But, you know, anything to keep me comfortable to during a lot.

You know, why should I not wear a business skirt?

It's the 21st century.

You've got an eggs.

Testify.

Yeah, it's big news in the UK is that a massive airport might be getting slightly massiver.

And it's caused more problems within the Conservative Party because Zach Goldsmith, who is a local MP in Richmond, which is an area that's likely to be affected in terms of noise and air pollution by a proposed extra runway in Heathrow, has stood down as an MP in protest, discovering principles that he curiously mislaid earlier this year when he campaigned to become Mayor of London against Sadiq Khan and ran a campaign that could be charitably be described as racially not ideal.

It was not an ideal race-based vibe.

The Zach Goldsmith mayoral campaign.

He sort of inferred that Sadiq Khan was lax on terrorism and he published an opinion piece for the Daily Mail, which for the benefit of American listeners is a bit like Fox News's drunk great uncle.

And in that piece, it was a picture of one of the buses from the 7-7 terrorist attacks.

Generally, he did some pretty weird stuff, including sending targeted mail campaigns to Hindus living in London, inferring that Sadiq Khan's Muslim background was likely to make him want to steal steal Hindus gold.

I think sadly Zach Goldsmith had unfortunately confused Hindus with magpies.

And one

very easy mistake to make.

One of those Hindu people was my mother

who received a very serious letter from Zach Goldsmith saying that Siddiq Khan was coming after a jewelry.

And he then in his sort of continued quest to appeal to the Hindu vote

and the sort of Hindu Indian British vote.

He went to a sort of Bollywood event and gave an interview where he was talking about how much you love Bollywood.

And the journalist said, oh, what's your favourite Bollywood film?

And the panic in Zach Goldsmith's ice at that point was on a level with Boris Johnson finding out we'd left the EU.

Like, he's absolutely terrified.

There is a great clip of him on YouTube, absolutely panicking.

And he cannot even come up with one film's name or one accent.

By the end, the journalists are just like, just say

a Bollywood film.

It's a very strange tactic to,

it's playing off Hindus against Muslims as a way of sort of divide and conquer.

And it's like, I mean, it does seem like a lot of politicians are increasingly researching into the British Empire's back catalogue of divide and rule tactics.

Always works.

Why change a winning formula?

Give them cricket, tell them to hate each other.

Bosh.

Empire.

Hugo feature section now, and this week we have a Where Are They Now section, catching up with the stars of yesteryear to find out what they get up to these days.

Beginning with the stars of the hit TV show Friends.

And, well, I'm sure many of you are wondering what happened to the stars from Friends.

Well, we've done a bit of research, and Joey...

the former actor, hit the skids after the spin-off series Joey ended.

Appeared then in a borderline pornographic Bolivian art house film about a fictionalized meeting between the frustrated head of the landlocked Bolivian Navy and the sex-obsessed Russian Empress Catherine the Great, in which Joey played both lead roles.

Ended up, sadly, running guns across the Mexican border for a Swiss Army hedge fund.

Rachel gave up her career in the retail sector to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a professional snooker umpire.

She's rumored to have engineered the fallout between Michaela Tabb and the WPBSA in 2015 that resulted in Michaela Tabb no longer officiating WPBSA tournaments to concoct an opening for a new woman to officiate in top-level ranking tournaments.

But only then, Rachel, she sadly suffered a slip disc on the eve of that season's Malta Open whilst doing a Nadia Komenech impression in a local gymnastics karaoke bar.

Currently back in America teaching vegans to scream at hamburger vans.

Ross, meanwhile, disappeared without trace.

Ross disappeared without trace after breaking up with Rachel over his fullback Mitt Romney tattoo that he got during the build-up to the 2012 presidential election.

Finished a disappointing 35th in the 2010 World Gherkin Eating Championships and is now rumoured to be working as a freelance moose matador in Calgary, Canada.

Phoebe, the former masseuse

and semi-finalist in the 1993 US Open tennis.

Why did they never use that as a plot strand?

Semi-finalist in the 93 US Open.

It was a missed opportunity.

She unwittingly befriended a KGB agent at a book club meeting when that week's tome was Collective Farming for the Masses by Nancy Sinatra.

Missed that one, Senator McCarthy.

Phoebe just thus ended up as a professional freelance assassin, three-time hitwoman of the year in big hit magazine, responsible for 65 successful slayings in 16 different countries.

That was an 84% success rate.

Very high, a very high success rate in this day and age, ranging from gangland drug lords to cheating spouses to unlicensed Santa Claus impersonators.

Her signature kill technique used her former massaging skills involving rubbing a poisonous cream into the spine and then suffocating her victim with a towel.

Reportedly, she's in the market for one last job, just one last job, before retiring to farm bats after having a dream that bat milk would be the new soya milk.

Monica, she won $250 million on the US lottery, instantly quit her job and family to fulfill her lifelong dream of developing a time travelling machine.

Partially successful, she is currently on trial for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in 1693.

And Chandler,

he's now a burlesque act called Boogie Brender after a hospital mix-up ended with him becoming a woman and a rather cross man named Julia having a hair transplant.

And also in the Where Are They Now section, we catch up with, I don't know, are you a baseball fan at all, Nish?

No, I think it's

cricket for the uninitiated.

Right.

See, I mean,

obviously, I love cricket more than probably anyone on earth.

And I know you're a cricket fan.

A big cricket fan.

You can use cricket as a gateway into baseball.

A gateway sport.

And

I like baseball, isn't it?

The Chicago Cubs going for the World Series for the first time since 1908.

Right, okay.

Currently one-all, as we record, in the best of seven-game series.

And, well, in this, where are they now section?

We catch up with the stars of the last Cubs side to

win the World Series.

Well, the first baseman and team manager, Frank Chance,

he's dead now,

sadly.

Second baseman,

Johnny Evers.

He batted 300 for the 1908 season, of course.

Also dead.

Third baser, Harry Steinfeldt, passed on.

Shortstop, Joe Tinker, also no longer.

Outfielder, Jimmy Sheckard,

dead.

Fellow outfielder, Frank Wildfire Schulter.

He,

interestingly, he's dead.

And Jimmy Slagel, bad news on him, too.

Dead.

Catcher Johnny Kling, good name for a catcher.

But didn't help him to escape the sport ambivalent hook of the Reaper.

He is dead, whilst utility man Sully Hoffman.

Still going in 1955, last I read.

Let me check on the internet.

Dead.

Right, on to the pitching stuff now.

Please, please make it stop.

Addy, you backed up your bullshit.

Well, this is what happens when the bugle goes away.

I'm sure all Cubs fans are out there wondering what happened to star man, star pitcher Mordecai Three Finger Brown.

Can I have a guess of what happened to him?

Well, he went 29.9 on the 1908 season.

That's a great record for a picture.

Yeah.

Well, what do you think?

I'm going to hazard a guess that he is a dead man.

I thought you said you didn't follow baseball.

You've backed up with bullshit and now we're drowning in the flood.

As a long-time listener to this podcast,

it is a powerful stench to be actually in the presence of.

This is the raw answer.

Somehow, listeners, you can't really imagine the extent to which just not being in the room with it acts as a kind of filtration.

It is a potent brew to be in the room of the bullshit

to be looking it in the eye.

Uh, next week, we'll find out what happened to the guys from the 1920 Cleveland Indians.

Well, that brings us to the end of

this week's Bugle.

Nish, thank you very much for joining us.

It has been an absolute honour and a pleasure.

We'll be back hopefully in a few weeks' time.

Yeah.

Dates to be confirmed.

Next week, we have Wyatt Senak

reporting on the final twitchings of the American election campaign

before polling day

on the 8th.

Thanks very much for listening, Bugles.

Nish, anything you want to plug?

Oh, yeah, I'm on tour.

Yeah.

Oh, shit.

I forgot about that.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what the Bugle has always been about, ruthless self-promotion.

So

jump on that, band.

I am on a UK tour, which is on

hiatus, midpoint hiatus.

I hope it does not last as long as certain hiatuses.

Certain hiati.

It resumes on November the 11th.

in Birmingham and goes up to December the 12th.

Some tickets still available

in a few places.

And in Swansea,

tickets sarcastically available.

Nichekumar.co.uk for all details.

The Bugle is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, made possible with great support from our founding sponsors, the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos and teamwork.

In this podcast, mostly the middle of those three.

So we'll be back next week.

when we will be discussing, amongst other things, not only the American election, but also, does the discovery of a fossilized fish in the shape of a cross suggest that God tried out a Messiah before life had even evolved out of the sea, but shelved it when the gospels got wet?

We'll be taking a closer look at the crucifix next week.

Until then, Douglas,

goodbye.

Goodbye.

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.