Bugle 289 – Turbo Russia

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Hello buglers and welcome to issue 289 of The Bugle with me Andy's Altzman in London during what has turned into a strangely brief jaunt back to the northern hemisphere.

But still, what a hemisphere.

I cannot get enough of this half of the world.

I'm back south on Monday like a confused swallow with an excess of migration.

And resolutely in the western hemisphere, it's the Christopher Columbus of comedy taking his European ways to the Americas and indirectly wiping out the locals.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Andy, on Saturday, I participated in what is a spectacular annual charity event here called Night of Too Many Many Stars.

It's basically a bunch of comedians performing either comedy or ludicrous acts for an autism charity.

Various things or experiences are auctioned off over the night and it's going to be shown on Comedy Central this Sunday and it's actually worth watching not only because it's a great cause but also because I'm not sure you'll ever see that much money raised in a stupider way.

Paul Rudd for instance auctioned off showing his penis to someone and also let someone chew up a piece of chicken and feed it to him like a baby bird.

And my auction was that the winning bidder could go immediately outside the theatre with me and commit a crime, an actual crime.

And from that point, the bidding went bananas.

The winner paid $28,000 to be filmed leaving the theatre with me and go rob a wine store.

We basically gave them a big coat with steeler pockets inside.

I took them to a nearby wine shop which had agreed that the charity could send cameras in there and that was all they knew.

I pushed the person in, told them to fill the pockets with bottles of wine and sneak out.

And I will say that the winning bidder did it with a brazenness and confidence that made me think this was not the first wine store she'd robbed, just the first time she'd done it for charity.

Dosh is looking at what, a 15 to 20 stretch for that?

I think so.

She definitely sold quite a lot of wine.

I don't think it was $28,000 worth of wine, so I think she was still down on the deal.

I also had a bit of a charity incident last last Friday we had the fundraising gig for

Michelle Da Costa who've so many of you have given money for her treatment in America and we did a gig at the Battery Arts Center and I ended up the show on stage dressed as a giant penis and testicles

is there context for that or was it well there is a context so Russell Howard was the he was closing it and he he had been doing a tour show with this giant penis and testicles and decided to auction it off at the end to try and raise some extra money.

Anyway, I then put it on to demonstrate it to the crowd and found myself acting the parts of the giant cock.

And I was born to do it, John, born to do it.

And it also ended up with Russell Howard buying the giant penis back off himself for £408.

So all in all, yeah, I mean,

I was not expecting to end that gig dressed as an enormous six and a half foot-high penis.

But, you know, life throws us many curveballs, John.

It's how every gig ends as a stand-up in terms of how you feel inside, just not how you appear outside.

Yes, I mean, that's certainly true.

It's merely a question of the flaccidity or otherwise of the cock, I suppose.

So, thanks to all buglers who came along and,

yeah, we raised, I I don't think, about £7,000.

So not as many as you raised for committing a felony, John.

But I fully expect you to

be sent home in disgrace.

This is Bugle 289.

Coincidentally, the combined age of the original members of the pop trio Banana Rama at some unspecified moment in the future.

But this is the week ending Friday the 6th of March.

On this day, John, in 1899, the pharmaceutical giant Bayer registered aspirin as a trademark.

Initially, aspirin, of course, was developed as a drug to counteract numbness of the posterior due to the hard wooden chairs prevalent in the 19th century.

Aspirin, or buttperin, as it was sold

in America, had almost bankrupted Bayer when the cushion was legalised 10 minutes after the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, who'd, of course, banned cushions throughout the British Empire and the rest of the world because she, A, thought they led to bad posture, B still missed Albert, and C had gigantic royal mega glutes that rather rendered the soft furnishing accessory redundant.

Bayer marketed, remarketed aspirin as a cure for sentimentality.

Arguably, it sold a little bit too well in Germany, but then found success due to its side effect of curing hangovers, denting global sales of bacon and eggs, and becoming the first ever kosher hangover cure.

That was on this day in 1899.

And 1876, the 7th of March, John, was the day that Alexander Graham Bell Bell was granted a patent for an invention he called the telephone.

The original Al E.

G.

big man in bugle history, of course.

Without Bell, John, this show would basically just be you and me sending handwritten messages to each other across the Atlantic by boat.

I'm not saying it wouldn't still be a reasonable show, but it probably wouldn't have got to the stage of needing to make a Christmas jumper to satisfy the global demand.

And 30 years also since We Are the World was launched, the charity single in 1985, highlighting the plight of Africa and the need for the world to look after each other.

It reached number one in almost every single country in the pop and rock world, regardless of language, politics, religion, or anything, apart from Austria and Germany.

I'm sure there's nothing in that.

I'm sure there's absolutely nothing in it, but that it is a fact.

And on this very day in 1955, the American TV channel MDMA broadcast the first and to date only episode of the controversial children's program, You Pointless Little Bastards, hosted by the notoriously aggressive Uncle Percy Slamhammer.

The programme, which featured Uncle P and his sidekicks, Christy the Critical Crow, Old Nana Negative, and rubbishing Brian the Realist Robot, consisted of 28 minutes of the team browbeating its target four to seven year old demographic for having their life paths mostly already mapped out by social background and heading towards nothingness, for being statistically unlikely to contribute much to society and for blocking their parents' path to happiness, very much a show of its time.

Concluded with the song, You're a Sweet Little Worthless Pile of Shit, in which the special studio guest Perry Como melodiously predicted lives of low achievement and unhappiness for the show's now thoroughly chastened viewers.

Como loved the song which reached number three on the Billboard charts, although it's now better known for its B-side, You'll Never Amount to Anything, which of course was based on a 19th-century parenting lullaby.

Those are all facts.

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

This week, the latest Bugle Part Work series, Construct Your Own Own Audio Garden.

Do you not have a garden?

Don't worry, Buglers, it doesn't mean you're unusual.

In fact, not having a garden has become increasingly normal since the Industrial Revolution.

But everyone likes to have a garden, so we at the Bugle are enabling you to construct your own sonic backyard, a sound garden, if you will, week by week with different sound effects to build up your dream garden.

So you can enjoy the sounds and sounds of a real garden whilst lying on your kitchen floor, pretending you're having a snooze on the concrete patio and just soaking it all in.

And as it's week one, special double issue with a free free third extra sound effect to get your collection started.

Sound effect one:

one of your next door neighbours mows the lawn.

Special double issue sound effect two:

two foxes finging and finging like they hate each other.

And your bonus third sound effect, your other next-door neighbor holds a rave.

There you go.

Enjoy a relaxing afternoon courtesy of the bugle.

Next week, weird Brian from over the back of the fence conducts a pagan ritual at 3am.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week, Russia goes old school.

And tragically, Andy, last Friday, Russian opposition leader and formerly Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemstov was shot in the street in Moscow while walking home with his girlfriend across a bridge within sight of the Kremlin.

It was an act which shocked the world.

But should it have Andy?

Because clearly it's horrible.

That is obvious.

But is it really shocking?

Or is it just an act that you could at best describe as turbo-Russian?

Because while there is no doubt that those men who killed Nemstov are guilty of murder, they're also pretty much guilty of plagiarism.

They really should be paying royalties to countless Russian assassins from both real life and from the great pages of Russian literature right now.

In fact, this was an act that was so unusual that Newsweek actually ran an article this week under the headline, Boris Nemstov's murder is a killing Stalin would appreciate.

Look, that is both in extremely bad taste and extremely true.

Because as we both know, Andy, Stalin was no stranger to dealing with his political opponents with both a sharp tongue and an even sharper ice pick.

There's been some debate over whether Putin

was in any way involved in this.

I mean, it's hard to tell, John, but the fact is his face does give off pretty much 24-7, 365, an unmistakable kill my opponents vibe that some other might have picked up on.

But then you have to ask, why would Putin,

a world leader, even be rumoured to want Nemsov dead?

I mean, we compare it with our leaders, John.

I mean, here in Britain, we have David Cameron.

And I'm pretty sure that for all his many faults, he's not directly bumped off

any opposition leaders.

I mean, you might not like him, but morally I think he's pretty stoutly against targeted killings.

And practically, he needs those opposition leaders in place come the election on May the 7th.

He's not an idiot.

So I'm 97% certain Cameron would never explicitly order a political slaying.

Barack Obama similarly, well, he knows what happens to Nixon, John, with Watergate, and that didn't involve killing opponents.

So Obama knows that his post-presidency career could take a real hit if he starts

having his opponents gunned down in public in the middle of major cities.

That's something America has managed eventually to wean itself off.

Putin, of course, though, a

different thing entirely.

Don't judge a book by its cover, but do judge a book by its contents.

I reckon his fingerprints are all over it, John.

All over it.

No one could justifiably be 100% surprised by this, because even Nemstov himself gave an interview just on February, as recently as February the 10th, in which he said, I'm afraid Putin will kill me.

I believe he was the one who unleashed the war in Ukraine.

The only way that could be more ominous Andy is if he'd ended that sentence with oh sorry spoiler alert everyone spoiler alert and even you saw this one coming Andy you predicted this yourself

yes yes slightly spookily when we were doing an episode on the Winter Olympics early last year

we we had this bit in it.

There was an there's an eighteen mile stretch of road between Sochi and the mountain sports base at Kraznaya Polyana.

Apparently this has cost not not two, not five, not ten, not twenty, but $8.6 billion.

That is over half the cost of the entire London Olympics just for a stretch of road.

I mean apparently it's got a lovely service station with at least two of those automatic coffee machines.

But you have to ask, is that value for money?

There's an opposition leader called Boris Nemtsov, who, if he'd been around 65 years ago, would not have been around anymore 65 years ago.

And he claimed that you could have paved the road with gold or caviar and it would have cost the same.

Now, it being Russia, it's hard to tell if this is a criticism or a complaint of a missed opportunity.

You're like a murderous Nostradama, son.

I had that as a review once.

More than once.

Putin said

that Russia should be spared the kind of shame and tragedy we have recently endured and seen.

And to that end, he has pledged that he will not have Nemtsov murdered ever again, no matter what.

He's a man of his word, John.

Like you say, he called it a shameful tragedy.

Something I'm guessing he was able to do with a straight face by thinking of something that he thought was an actual shameful tragedy as he was saying it.

Otherwise, it's basically impossible.

There is no evidence of Putin's involvement yet, other than his obvious capability and obvious motive.

Otherwise, that is the only evidence there is.

And in fact, the head of Russia's FSB security service was asked on Wednesday whether there were currently any suspects in the case, and he said, there always are.

And that is the kind of displaced passive aggression in the wake of a murder, which is normally followed by a chilling chuckle of some kind.

One thing is for sure, it is going to be very hard to ever find out who is responsible for this.

Partly because Putin himself has announced that he will be personally overseeing the investigation, and partly because the evidence is suspiciously slight.

Nemstov was killed in an area with constant surveillance, and yet, apparently, all the CCTV cameras surrounding the crime scene were said to have been under repair at the time of the murder.

That is, at best, convenient, Andy.

And when journalists started kicking up a bit of a fuss about that claim and pointing out that there were many photos online of cameras all over the walls of the Kremlin that day, the government then pointed out the cameras were all pointing in the wrong direction at the time.

And it gets one degree worse, because there's actually one grainy camera that was working and does have footage available online.

But and this is true, at the precise moment that Nemstov was shot, a gigantic snowplow drives up and blocks the camera's view.

You should know there was no snow on the streets of Moscow that night, and not because that was a particularly amazing snowplow.

Well, I mean, come on, John.

We've all seen snow plows unexpectedly pull up at the side of the road

just for, you know, maybe the driver needed a cup of tea take a phone call he was probably just being safety conscious John he knows that he can't talk on his phone whilst plowing non-existent snow within meters of Red Square and the Kremlin we all know that you don't get you don't get to be the best snow plower in Moscow without pulling over to the side of the road when you want a snack or text

so I guess the question is why would theoretically Vladimir Putin want Nemsov not to be entirely 100% alive anymore theoretically of course.

Well, a bit of background on Nemsov.

He had a successful political career in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin and has been an outspoken critic of Putin for the last 15 years.

His conflicts, as we touched on last year, centred over massive embezzlement and profiteering ahead of the Social Olympics.

He's also clashed with Putin over Russia's conduct in the Ukraine.

And at the time of his assassination, he was in Moscow helping organise a rally against Russian involvement in the war in Ukraine and the current financial crisis the country is undergoing.

This is not looking too good, John.

Also, he was working on a report demonstrating involvement of Russian military with the rebels in the eastern Ukraine.

Now, I'm not saying that Putin definitely had Nempsov assassinated, but I am saying if you were a contestant on the popular TV game show Family Fortunes, or Family Feud, as I believe it's known on your side of the Atlantic, which you have to guess the most popular answers to survey questions, and your question was, we asked a hundred Vladimir Putins to name someone they would not mind being assassinated.

Well, Nemsov is going to be one of your very first answers, John.

One of your very first.

That's depending on when the Putins answered the questions and whether the list had been updated to discount people who might have once been on the list but have now been already assassinated.

To add further suspicion, police seized Nemsov's hard drives after he was killed.

Now, I mean, that does look, again, slightly suspicious, although apparently he was absolutely awesome at Minecraft and they wanted to get their hands on his profile

and also probably to check whether or not he was watching sport via illegal streaming sites.

It simply has to be stopped.

The other possibilities, as you said, the Federal Security Service Chief

Bortnikov said there are always suspects according to Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Investigative Committee.

And I, for one, John, do not feel comfortable hearing the words investigative committee in such close proximity to a name as Russian as Vladimir Markin.

The murder could have been a deliberate provocation to destabilize the political situation in Russia.

There have been other suggestions he could have been killed by his political allies to create a martyr which seems frankly insane.

It could be Islamic extremism, neo-Nazi radicals, Western spy agencies.

No prize for guessing who has suggested that might be a possibility.

A business dispute, a love life, Lee Harvey Oswald, someone suggested he was possibly responsible.

An argument about an offside in a football match.

And mistaken identity in which someone thought he was Osama bin Laden.

Another possibility, John.

Here's some descriptions of Nempsov.

Tall, handsome, witty, and irreverent, deeply intelligent and kind.

He also had a spicy private life involving a string of glamorous women.

And he was a high-ranking physicist who'd produced more than 60 academic publications on quantum physics, thermodynamics, and acoustics.

So this man is an impressive being, John.

It could just be basic jealousy.

It could be Putin thinking, well, yes, I've ridden a horse without my top on, but I've not published 60 academic publications on quantum physics, and nor am I regarded as tall, handsome, witty, and irreverent.

In fact, I'm 0 for 4 on those.

So who knows, John?

It could just be basic green-eyed jealousy.

The whole situation is related to what is happening in Ukraine.

Alexander Versbau, NATO's Deputy Secretary General, said there was mounting evidence that the Russian incursion into Ukraine is becoming much less popular amongst the Russian public.

But of course, Putin and the Russian government deny that they have been officially involved in this.

So it's a very interesting, fascinating philosophical question, John.

Can something become more unpopular despite the fact that it officially isn't actually happening?

I mean, I guess people are very much opposed.

More and more so, in fact, similarly here, to the sale of unlicensed Ewok meat.

And there are also demonstrations in London today against the banning of competitive sonnet screaming.

So who knows?

And the US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Newland,

said that,

told a Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee that Russia had deployed, quote, thousands and thousands of troops without giving a precise number.

And I guess it's always reassuring when senior US government officials are strangely vague about military matters.

History shows to be that to be a sound push-off in an enjoyable bobsled run to happiness.

And the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich, responded by rejecting these figures, saying they were plucked out of the air.

Well, I'm a cricket fan, John.

If you pluck something out of the air, you've done something right.

You've done something exactly bang on the banana.

Lukashevich also pointed to other reports suggesting there were 12,000 Russian servicemen allegedly in Ukraine, and he responded, but why 12,000?

Why are they thinking small?

Why didn't they say 20,000?

Why didn't they say 25,000?

Reading between the lines, what he obviously means is, we have recently increased our troop commitment in Ukraine from 20 to 25,000.

And of course, with any conflict like this, you get a propaganda war, and there's been some truly extraordinary action in this this week, John.

The state-run TV channel Rossier1 stated that a sample of new Ukrainian banknotes had been produced, and it showed this alleged sample.

And on it was the image of none other than Adolf Hitler.

According to the channel, the Ukrainian party Svoboda has developed a layout of the 1,000 khrivnir banknote.

That quote reflects the new Ukrainian elite's values.

And I mean, it's clearly absolute nonsense, John.

I'm all in favour of bullshit, but that is some seriously low-grade bullshit, because bullshit, to work, has to have a shred of believability in amongst the bullshit.

Even if you are a committed neo-Nazi.

Slapping Hitler on your banknotes is really taking a very big public relations risk.

His brand is tainted, very, very tainted.

And at the other end of the bullshit seesaw,

the entourage actress Sasha Gray has denied reports that she A has been murdered, B has been murdered by Ukrainian soldiers, and C was murdered by Ukrainian soldiers whilst working as a nurse for the Russian army.

Yep, apparently so.

Gray, whose impressively diverse portfolio of screen appearances ranges from Entourage and Stephen Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, two fk slaves and anal cavity search six, is 0 for 3 on being murdered, being murdered in the Ukraine conflict and working for the Russian military as a nurse, preferring to concentrate on her burgeoning acting career and writing erotic novels.

Few people who have taken a similar career path have moved from pornography to serious acting and book deals and then chosen to volunteer to work as a nurse for Putin's Russia in a massively destabilizing regional conflict.

It just doesn't seem to be what people like Sasha Gray choose to do for whatever reason, whether that be a lack of medical qualifications, a desire to remain neutral in wars between former components of the USSR, or an incorrigible love of the show with limelight.

But it's great to see propaganda alive, well, and f ⁇ ing insane.

Your emails now.

We have an email here from Caroline who says, dear and Chris, Andy and John, I'm a Canadian, though I'm from away, which means not from Newfoundland.

So I think I'm allowed to send you more hilarious hilarious Newfoundland and Labrador place names without incurring the wrath of the Newfoundland separatists.

For some reason only the most whimsical emigrants from Britain and Ireland settled in Newfoundland because how else do you explain why such a sparsely populated province has so many ridiculous names?

Apparently Captain James Cook and his cartography assistant Michael Lane are somewhat to blame as years in the Navy hadn't suppressed their childish delight in coming up with stupid names for their discoveries.

I don't care what you always call this village, Cook might have said to the Aboriginals.

It's now called Blow Me Down because I want to have a giggle every time other people have to say it.

This was a very difficult list to keep short, so I stuck to only the filthiest and stupidest, and all of them are current names in Newfoundland.

Okay, so here we go:

Ass Rock and Ass Hill,

Bear Knead,

Billy Butt's Pond, I think these are Conception Bay,

Come by Chance,

Cox's Cove,

Goobies, that is objectively ridiculous.

But that was your nickname at school, wasn't it?

Nippers Harbour,

Old Man's Head, Pothead, Seldom Little Seldom,

Spreadeagle Bay, the famous Tickle Cove, Whitless Bay, and the funniest town in Canada, Dildo, Newfoundland.

Apparently they've tried to change that one for years, but the publicity is too good to pass up.

May they never come to their senses.

Stay weird, Newfoundland.

Caroline from Ottawa.

I mean,

that is some very impressive, weird name game they've got going on.

I mean, I guess when you're a nation like Canada, then you must take these thrills where you can.

And

we had, I think, something similar many, many bugles ago with Australia,

which had a...

I think, I mean, if you went head to head, Canada versus Australia, for A, stupidest place names and B most uninhabitable land,

you've basically got the same country, just one hot and one cold.

This email came in from Peter in Iowa.

Dear chaps, I seem to find myself with a bit of a problem.

Having discovered last week the blissful comedic high that is the bugle, and in a completely innocent attempt to catch up on its back issues in their

entirety, after only 34 episodes, I fear I have become addicted.

Recognizing that I still have well over 200 hits left in the archive before I'd be forcibly dried out by your trickle of weekly satire.

That should be our tagline, shouldn't it?

The bugle.

Trickling of weekly satire since 2007.

I was hoping to get in front of the problem, says Peter.

Is there a methadone equivalent for the bugle withdrawal?

Well, it's not...

It's not a methadone equivalent, it's just methadone.

It's still methadone.

It really works for everything.

Or you could try weaning yourself onto real news.

I guess that's...

I mean,

that comes with terrible side effects.

Yeah, I think you're safer with methadone.

What a world we live in.

Methadone is safer than reality.

Well, it's hard to know what we can do with a show after that, John.

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

Don't forget to check out our

SoundCloud soundcloud page soundcloud.com slash the hyphen bugle you can still donate to our appeal at gofundme.com slash this hyphen is hyphen michelle and i hope to have an update on what's happening uh with that uh in the next uh week or two um and also i've got some extra gigs to plug uh i'm really not used to this uh having putting on extra gigs

on the most diametrically opposite points of the globe it is basically possible to do comedy on from where i live uh but i now have uh shows in Wellington on Saturday.

There's a 6pm and an 8pm show.

And there's an extra show in Sydney on the 25th.

And there's Melbourne on the 27th as well.

So do come along to all of those.

The details I will tweet out and then they should be on the satiristforhire.com website.

No further questions.

So that is it for this week's Bugle.

Thanks very much for listening and we will be back in the not too distant future with Bugle 290.

Until then, goodbye.

Bye!

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.