Bugle 285 – Where’s Bono?

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The Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 285 of the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me and his ultimate live in London in a new studio this week just around the corner from St.

Paul's Cathedral little Chrissy Wren's bulbous big top for big baby Jesus and in New York City USA it's the future head of FIFA himself the Brito-American ambassador to Australia it's John Oliver Hello Andy, hello buglers.

If I cannot run FIFA into the ground Andy, nobody can.

What I'm willing to offer is more incompetence than it has seen in the past.

That is my final and only offer.

That is an extraordinary claim to be able to do that, John.

I mean, you're a man of many abilities.

I don't make it lightly, Andy.

I don't, I'm not qualified to do that job.

I think I will harm the institution, but I know that's not enough, because Set Vlatter already can take me on that.

So

I know I need to get more incompetent, faster, and harder, but I'm saying I think I can do it.

Right.

I mean, I can't see how you will do that, other than filling the FIFA building with livestock and slaughtering them all with your bare hands.

Well, I'm not at liberty to say whether that is or isn't on my platform.

I will say that I have 300,000 pigs angry and ready to charge.

Tragic news is Saudi Arabia just came in yesterday, of course, Bugles, where Saudi King Abdullah passed away at 90 or 91 or 92 or 93.

No one's sure exactly when he was born or whether he was a spectacular hologram all these years.

But the new Saudi king is going to be, I believe, his half-brother, who is 79 years old.

So it's good to see they're getting some fresh blood in there, I think.

Well, it's just Mourinho's taken at the moment.

Otherwise, I think they'd have gone for him.

Or Seth Blatter,

if I push him out.

I don't think even the Saudis would lower their ethical bar to allow Blatter in.

So we are, as I said, recording just around the corner from St.

Paul's Cathedral and just across the road from St.

Bart's Hospital, or at least the old bit of it, where Chris the producer has just told us.

Go on the Barts!

He was born.

So when was that?

What, 35 years ago?

1979.

Yeah.

Good year.

Wow.

Terrific year.

Now, can you tell me, Chris?

Because I was born nowhere near the vicinity of a cathedral

in Hammersmith.

John, were you born anywhere near a major cathedral?

No, no, and I was born in Birmingham.

Very much so.

Which, as we know, would have no cathedrals in it because it's 100% Muslim.

It's just a lot of mosques.

The whole city is just

a living, breathing mosque now.

As it was then, and

always has been and always will be.

Chris, do you feel that you're more godly as a result of just being born near one of the Lord's properties?

Of course.

I feel blessed.

Do you think, I mean, does that manifest itself in your bizarre obsession with triathlons?

It does.

It's always been about the Holy Trinity.

Well, there you go.

What was the Holy Trinity, except for a really intense triathlon?

Who was which bit?

Jesus was on the bike for me.

Yes.

Hence the term Christ on a bike.

You know what?

I can't remember what the other two parts of the Holy Trinity are right now.

Oh, dear.

Amen.

Well, it's a team game, isn't it?

You don't see individuals.

Just working terrifically as a combination.

Barcelona's midfield.

From a few years ago.

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

This week, audio beauty tips.

Turn to minute 53 of this audio newspaper for advice on how to make yourself sound more beautiful, including reviews of all the latest audio beauty technology, including Perky Brass larynx cymbals, turn your coughs into dramatic clangs, Snurlitz leg organs, affix these high-quality organ pipes to your thighs and cars when you go jogging.

And as you run and the air flows through the pipes, enjoy soothing harmonies reminiscent of a very enjoyable church funeral.

And remember that the faster you run, the funkier the funeral.

Also the Sanooki harmonic cushion, modelled on the classic whoopee cushion but fitted with a small harmonica, so that when you sit down, your companions, rather than suffering the soul-sapping misery of fake flatulence, can enjoy a sweet little blast of the blues from the makers of the Hammond snoozer phone, which transaudiates your nighttime snoring into a loud brassy pop.

And sexificate that mundane voice of yours with the new noise-cancelling sex symbol personal mini-amp Mein Schneisel voice alterizer.

Simply affix the specially devised audio mask around the lower part of your face, and the voice alterizer will translate your humdrum tones or embarrassing regional twang into the voice of one of the sexiest sounding celebrities in history.

With a choice for women of Munro, Bardo, Emberg, Albright, Thatcher or Gargaw and for men Clooney, Nicholson, Benno or Zoltzmann.

Also we look at the latest blink and clink with all new eyelash bells.

Ladies be literally as bold as brass with a boob tuber with under choir.

And for those big nights outs, the puka lele.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week.

Give me a D, give me an A, give me a V, give me an O, give me an S.

What have you got?

A collection of billionaires and a Swiss f ⁇ ing ski resort for some reason.

Check your Rolex.

It's Davos time.

And the, it's January.

It's the start of the year.

There are gigantic economic problems in both the developed and the developing world.

Once again, it's time for the tiny Swiss town of Davos to step the f up and sort things the f ⁇ out.

Those yodeling, cheese-chomping, multilingual, fondu-stirring, nasty, sympathizing maniacs just cannot help Andy, but try to help the rest of us on a once-a-year convention staging basis.

Now, to be fair, the annual World Economic Forum in Davos can actually do a lot of good as long as that good is restricted to the January balance sheet of high-end hotels in the Davos area.

The summit has been running since 1971 when 400 business leaders were invited to Davos to discuss things and eat things and slide down things

with the things they were invited to slide down being mostly, but not entirely, mountains.

Not entirely.

The guest list for Davos is a who's who of people who, where you find yourself in a room with them, would make you think, oof, what the f am I doing in here?

Everyone, from the head of JP Morgan Chase to Jamie Diamond, to the Prime Minister of Greece, to gigantic hedge fund managers, to Tony Blair, to Bonno.

Because of course Bono was there, Andy.

Of course he was f ⁇ ing there.

He is at all of these things.

He's at every world's meeting for everything nowadays.

So much so, it's getting to a point where it's starting to seem weird when he is not somewhere.

When you look at a photo of the G20 world leader standing together at a summit, you can't help but find yourself thinking, hold on, where the fk is partner before

probably going, oh, no, don't worry, there he is, he's standing next to the Prime Minister of Italy wearing those stupid glasses again.

Because there was concern he had quite a serious accident recently, isn't there?

Was some concern that the Edge might have to go to Davos this year?

That's when you know the world is in real trouble.

But maybe again, maybe a breath of fresh air would help bring him to the Edge, or maybe Larry Mullen could just go in and throw a drumstick on the people.

Tony Blair was there.

He appeared on a panel entitled Religion: A Pretext for Conflict, question mark, which must have been,

which must have been a pretty fing short discussion.

Yes.

Next question, please.

People have been using religion as a pretext for doing some strikingly unreligious things since before the beginning of time, probably even since before the one true Lord invented the earth in 4004 BC.

And if you disagree with that timeline, I'll fing punch your lights out.

Wars have been fought over time for believing in the wrong gods, or more often, the wrong version of the right God.

That really seems to wind people up, or believing in no god, or too many gods, or believing in the right version of the right god, but not believing in him quite f ⁇ ing hard enough,

or her, or it, but usually probably him.

Audience member Henning Ziarok,

the president of the Culture of Peace Society, nice idea, bit of ground to make up,

told Blair, I think you have a great responsibility for the conflicts we have now.

To which Blair blushed demurely and said, Well, thank you very much.

It's lovely of you to say so.

But I really want to take all the credit.

A lot of people put in a lot of work to start and perpetuate this cycle of conflicts.

So, really, this compliment is not just for me, it's for everyone who works together for this as well.

I'd like to thank my family, my Labour Party, my parliament, myself, and of course, my friend, confidant, tennis buddy, and double act partner, God, without whose help none of this would have been possible.

The problem with Davos is not so much the content because there isn't really any.

It's a gigantic networking opportunity masquerading as a humanitarian summit.

The thing that sticks in your throat every year is the optics of this whole sheboggle because the whole of Davos has more than a whiff of bond villain lair about it.

And most of the photographs that come out of the many opulent parties that CEOs attend to hop not with politicians, princes and billionaires look so ridiculously overblown that you are half expecting Batman to burst through a glass ceiling and just start punching people in the face.

There's a lot of talk at Davos about how to alleviate poverty, but that is a little hard to swallow from those particular people at that particular place at that particular moment.

Because if they are the solution for poverty, they're at least partially the f ⁇ ing cause of it as well.

There are so many jarring juxtaposition positions there every year, and this year has been no different.

There are the depressingly futile cries for awareness, such as the 193 snowmen this year with national flags tied around their necks, attempting to highlight how important it is for the world's richest people to do more about poverty, growing inequality and climate change.

And to be honest, Andy, the most honest and intellectually consistent response many of the wealthy attendees of Davos could have to those snowmen would be to A, sit back in a leather chair and watch those snowmen melt to the ground while chewing on a lobster and laughing.

B urinate up the side of those snowmen while chewing on a lobster and laughing.

Or C, both A and B together.

Or D, just let them melt so all that's left is the little bits of coal that were its buttons.

A little satire on humanity's over-reliance on fossil fuels.

The in fact, this year's winner of the award for breathtaking lack of self-awareness was U.S.

real estate magnate Jeff Green, a man who was worth over $2 billion and who apparently flew to Davos on a private jet with his wife, kids and two nannies to deliver a speech where he warned Americans that they need to live with less to help the economy.

Bloomberg News quoted him yesterday as saying, America's lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence.

We need to reinvent our whole system of life.

And here's the thing, Andy.

He's not entirely wrong about that.

And he's not even a terrible man.

He's joined the Buffett initiative to give away most of his money before he dies.

But there's a time and a place to deliver a message like that, Andy.

And the World Economic Forum in Davos is neither of them.

There's been quite a lot of publicity over the report that's from Oxfam that suggested that the richest 1%

of the world will earn more than the remaining 99% put together within just a few years.

But whenever there's sort of complaints about this, and suggesting that maybe the super wealthy should give more, often people are accused of the politics of envy.

But I'm not sure it is it's the politics of envy, John.

I think it's more just the politics of basic politeness,

not quite hoarding so much of the world's resources for yourself.

And it reminds me very much of a birthday party I went to a few years ago with 15 other people.

And there was a cake sliced into 10 slices.

Now, fat Alan, who'd invited himself to the party and just marched in, helped himself to nine of those ten slices of the cake.

I complained to him and said, Alan, that's not fair.

And he replied,

I said, Alan, it's not fair you're having almost all the cake and he replied

don't be jealous Andy I said Alan you fat prick there's hardly anything left for everyone else he replied there wasn't enough to go around anyway well ten of us could have had a slight slice each said someone else well Alan replied that leaves me eight slices down how is that fair okay big man I said but there was enough that you could have had four slices someone else could have had two three people could have had one each and the other ten could at least have had just a little nibble to see what it was like I don't see your point replied Alan.

I've got nine slices.

That is way more than the four slices you are now offering me.

Yeah, I see that, but it's still not fair, Alan.

He replied, it's fairer than no one having any cake.

I said that wasn't a choice.

He said, wasn't it, Trotsky?

Tell you what, I'll vomit two of the slices back up onto the plate and then you can all have a bit.

Is no one up for that?

You ungrateful little shit.

Besides, I paid for the cake.

No, you didn't, Alan, I replied.

We all chipped in with a pound each.

Apart from you, it cost £14.

Here you go, he said.

Here's £8.

I've now paid for the cake and you owe me £6 change.

I thought, hang on, £8 plus £6 is £14.

That must be...

Hang on.

He said, I'll let you off two pounds with a change if you let me have the last slice of cake.

Do we have a deal?

I said, where is the last slice of cake?

And he said,

very reminiscent of that for me, John.

This chilling new research was released with an excellent sense of timing by anti-poverty charity Oxfam to coincide with Davos pointing out to reiterate that the wealthiest 1% of the world will soon own more than the entire rest of the world's population put together.

And they say that they expect the wealthiest 1% to own more than 50% of the world's wealth by 2016.

And at that point, presumably, the wealthiest people will celebrate by urinating on a completely melted snowman.

The director of Oxfam actually co-chaired Davos this year and stated beforehand that she wanted to use her role at the forum to demand immediate action to narrow the wealth gap, saying business as usual for the elite is not a cost-free option.

Failure to tackle inequality will set the fight against poverty back decades, and that's clearly true.

But for many extremely wealthy people, the cost is not going to be felt either financially or emotionally, because for them to feel a cost, they would need to be invested somehow in poor people rather than seeing them as an occasionally unwanted jet ski obstruction.

What was that thud?

I think I may have just hit one of them, Jeremy.

God, I hope that was a dolphin.

Fingers crossed, whack it with your foot, will you?

Well, in response to that

comment,

the the world's elite did reply

this means you can actually track developments over the years and last year oxfam made headlines when they revealed that the richest 85 people on the planet have the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent and luckily there's been a bit of a development on that number unluckily it is in the wrong direction because it is now the 80 richest people that have the same wealth as the poorest 50%.

And you really have to feel for the five people who fell off that list, Andy, at the top, not the 3.5 billion people who remain at the bottom.

But I mean, there's two sides to every coin, John.

It's also true that the 3.5 billion spiritually richest people in the world are as spiritually rich as the...

That sentence is going nowhere.

I think there's possibly a joke in there somewhere.

But it definitely did not come out there.

I'll work on it for the next month.

The barrier of entry to Davos alone is interesting.

To get to Davos, you need to be one of two things: A, either a professional henchman, or B, riot-inducingly rich.

Just have the opportunity to be invited to Davos.

First, you have to be personally invited to become a member of the World Economic Forum, a Swiss non-profit organization.

And I'm not sure that any combination of words sets off more alarm bells in my mind than Swiss non-profit organization.

It literally feels as if a room has just gotten slightly colder whenever those words are uttered out loud.

In fact, if you utter Swiss non-profit organization three times out loud, it's automatically punctuated by a clap of thunder.

Once you've been invited to become a member of the World Economic Forum, you then have to choose from several levels of membership.

Now, you would think that those three levels would be douche, power douche, and sociath.

you'd actually be wrong because the New York Times revealed back in 2011 the cost of attendance and it worked out like this the basic level of membership to the World Economic Forum will get you an invitation to purchase a single ticket to Davos no plus one and that membership alone will cost you $52,000 the tickets itself cost $19,000 plus tax though I'm guessing that if you're that rich you're not really paying any tax on your income so you're sure as shit not going to be paying tax on a fing ticket now this means that to get in for the first time, you're going to be shelling out $71,000.

And that's at the lowest level.

The industry associate level would cost you $156,000 all in.

And at that point, you may as well just bump yourself up to the strategic partner level, which apparently will cost you $527,000.

That is the annual membership, which entitles you to up to five invitations, all of which you will still have to pay for at $90,000 a park, bringing you to a total of $622,000.

At that point, Andy, Bono had better fucking be there, and he'd better be sitting in the corner of the breakfast buffet playing where the streets have no name and giving out free head massages.

I think you do get a free sports holdle with the top-level membership, though.

Okay, well, that kind of offsets

because everyone loves a hold.

It's nice to have free things.

There are a number of issues on the agenda.

The oil crisis, the globe plunging oil costs, oil prices has, of course, been plunging like a French coffee addict.

The current slump is good news, John, because it means that the fuel in my car is cheaper.

But it could be leading to a catastrophic rise over the next few years to up to $150 a barrel, which will be bad because that means the fuel in my car will be much more expensive.

That is the only possible terms we in Britain can understand the oil crisis according to our news coverage.

And the Eurozone as well, which of course has been flagging like Leo Tolstoy at the live semaphore edition of War and Peace.

And

there's been some massive quantitative easing announced, John.

$60 billion a month worth of quantitative easing as Europe tries to stimulate its apparently dead flesh by throwing not really good money after bad, because it's already thrown the good money after the bad, and now it's throwing in pretend money after both the good money and the bad money to see if it can break up the fight that broke out between them.

Davos Fact Box.

Davos was in fact named after the person who founded it, an Australian explorer who stumbled upon a cowshed during a blizzard whilst backpacking through the Alps in the 13th century.

He claimed it as his own, slumped in the corner drunk and never left.

A settlement that evolved around it has been known ever since as Davos.

Davos was once the self-styled cote d'azur of coughing hot blood.

It became the must-be-heard coughing venue of choice for the 19th century celebrity tuberculosis sufferer.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous Scottish writer, author of Dr.

Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde, a savage critique on the relative merits of private and public healthcare provision, went to Davos to splutter his guts out in 1880.

But he didn't do him any good.

He died 14 years later.

Davos has a special place in the heart of English sports fans because it was there that England became European champions for the only time.

Did you know that, Chris?

No.

In 1913, in the little-known sport of bandy, which is basically giant outdoor ice hockey we're still that's the only time the european championships have been ever been held 102 years ago because we are still unbeatable at a sport that no one in this country has ever heard of um davos is in a mountain valley that's a fact but if it were on desert plain it would be a very different place with fewer skiers and no annual meeting of the minted according to the census in the year 2000 there were eight Jews in Davos.

Most of them probably looking around the local art gallery thinking, yeah, that's probably one of ours.

I reckon that is definitely one of ours.

And here's a final fact about Davos.

The birdie song, also known as the chicken dance, was composed by an accordion player called Werner from Davos.

Do you know that, John?

Can we have a little blast of it, Chris?

Is that available with

Cop...

You've got it.

The dance which involves making a chicken beak shape with your hands, flapping imaginary chicken wings, waggling a pretend chicken tail and spinning around in some form of ironic flight is now seen by most economists as a brutal critique on the heartless spiritual void at the core of global capitalism.

The chicken representing the battery-farmed mass of humanity placed at big business's mercy, able to be only a parodic version of itself without its prime function, laying any eggs.

That is your Davos fact box.

Bugle appeal updates and last week we launched an appeal to raise money for

cancer treatment for my daughter's friend Michelle

who needs some pioneering immunotherapy treatment at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Buglers, I cannot thank you enough for your frankly heroic response to this.

We've in just the first week raised more than £37,000

from

almost 1,800 different donors.

You've been frankly spectacularly generous and thanks for all your contributions and the kind comments comments you've left on the page.

For those of you who still want to donate the page is www.gofundme.com slash this-is hyphen Michelle and I'm hoping that by next week we'll have an update on when she might be able to start the treatment but yeah thank you so much for all those who've given and do if you can continue to contribute to this it could make a a massive difference to Michelle and her family.

The page again gofundme.com slash this hyphen is hyphen Michelle and I think there's a

link on the Bugle website now.

Nice one!

Sports news now and American sport has been rocked to its very core in the build-up to the Super Bowl by DeflateGate.

Probably the biggest scandal ever to hit America.

I think this puts Watergate very much back in the sock draw where it belongs.

There have been allegations that the New England Patriots may have deliberately deflated balls in their championship playoff against the Indianapolis Colts.

Have I used the right terminology there?

Championship playoff, that sounds about right.

Yeah.

Which they won by a massive margin, I think 45.7.

Turns out 11 of the 12 balls they used were deflated beyond legal limits.

John, how is America reacting to probably the biggest scar in its ethical history?

Well,

a little like, you know, we reacted to the wall street meltdown in 2008 andy yeah it's incredibly annoying but you kind of assume they were up to this kind of shit anyway and i guess the chickens finally come home to roost the patriots andy are not you know the most

ethically pristine organization they have been involved in this kind of petty shit before and they'll be involved in this kind of petty shit again.

Well, it does turn out the Patriots did show their patriotism to cheeky underhand tactics land by supposedly deflating these balls to make them easier for ace quarterback Tom Brady to throw.

But of course this has been an issue in top-level football for a long time, John.

Really, ever since the Denver Drillbits used homing pigeons inside balls in a match in 1927, that, of course, in the game with the Nantucket gobblers.

Later on, of course, there was the famous controversy when the notoriously hard-nosed Texas lettuces gained a shock victory over the mighty Los Angeles lungs by making them use balls which transpired to have been severed dogs' heads coated with soap and then painted to look like normal footballs using icing sugar and food colouring um plus today's further allegations against the patriots um that the not particularly crucial sixth touchdown was used uh was scored using a drone not a football so i mean what are the likely punishments for um for the patriots after this this shocking breach of uh inflation regulations

something akin to a slap on the wrist but it's closer to a stroke on the wrist

okay because i i heard that it's possible that if if found guilty, they will not be allowed to listen to the half-time show at the Super Bowl.

Which, I mean, that's...

They never, ever get away.

It's Tom Brady and Bill Belicek, Andy.

They never get away with a level of punishment that harsh.

That's the shock because it's a big game.

It's Katie Perry, Andy.

Well, it was Katie Perry.

She's unfortunately had to step out because she's busy.

She's been replaced by ace classical pianist Daniel Barrenboim, who's going to be tinkling out some of those classic hits ranging from Beethoven's A Passionata Sonata to Barbara Black Sheep, Have You Any Wool, to Schubert's Piano Minuet Number 34, f this shit, to his own solo version of the Boney M hit, Hooray, hooray, it's a holly holly day.

Other possible punitions for the Boston-based franchise include a $500 million fine to be paid in weekly installments of $10 in coins over the next one million years.

They might be forced to play the Super Bowl in nothing but speed-off swimming trunks and tutus, or they could have to play the whole of the 2015 season using an 18th-century lead cannonball instead of a conventional football.

And I mean, a lot of people have pointed the finger at Brady, John.

And I mean, it is true.

He wrote in his autobiography, I believe, that he's always found squidgier balls easier to hurl since growing up in his Uncle Wendell's tropical juice factory, where young Tom was paid to tenderise already overripe mangoes, papayas, and Spanish melons by hurling the ovoid fruit as hard as possible into the juicing vats at the far end of the factory, thus saving Uncle Wendell up to $3 a year in wear and tear on the upkeep of the juicing grinders.

So it'll be interesting to see how this story pans out.

By the time you get this message, either we will have dug ourselves free or we will be dead.

And whoever finds this car and my friends and my corpses will have followed the final instructions I fully intend to leave and sent this email on to you regardless.

I hope you and other buglers can draw joy from the image of two young women adrift in the Australian desert, baking in the summer sun, with no sounds but the ruffling breeze, buffing of insects and bugle 250 drifting across the wastes.

I for one will die as I lived enjoying the heightest grade of quality refined bullshit.

Also, I find to haunt one or both of you, Sammy.

Now for a start, before we get to the epilogue here, one or both.

If you're haunting both, that's a lot of commuting for a ghost animal.

You ain't going to have to fly across the Atlantic.

You have to ghost fly.

Right.

Or you're going to have to be at a lot of air miles you're going to have to put in as a spirit.

And you're going to have to dodge all those very stroppy Titanic passengers as well, because they really churn things up towards the state side of the Atlantic.

Luckily, she says, P.S., we did not die before the desert claimed us.

Some lovely Polish tourists came along with with a winch.

You can remain unhaunted unless there are some hotties from history runners up, or runner-ups or runners-up holding a grudge.

Apparently the bugle also serves as an adequate snake repellent.

It does.

And that is not said enough.

Oh, right.

I mean, it's it's not as good an email now that we know that it all ended up all right.

And I guess that's probably one of the very few occasions in which you're probably pleased to see Polish people turn up with a winch.

Otherwise, it just might look a little bit threatening.

But it's

the broader point there is that the bugle is repugnant to snakes and that's worth knowing yeah if you ever find yourself needing to uh you know throw an iPod earbud at a snake who's about to attack you right just crank us up that's that's basically how some patrick got the snakes out of Ireland I think wasn't it just by the power

bugle 7 he used

well bugle 250 I mean it's I'm I'm just having a look see if that was Obama no one is madder than Obama right I wonder if you can maybe play a clip of that and see what it would be like to die to that.

Could maybe just have a little

bit of a double-I think, Andy, on my end, I feel like that would hasten your death.

It's like when they put the spear in Jesus' side as an act of mercy.

You just think you're welcoming oblivion at that point.

I thought it was acupuncture.

So let's see.

Buglers, now you can all imagine passing away in the middle of a desert.

So these dulcet sounds...

This email came in from Tyler in Indiana.

Dear Andy, John and Chris, in decreasing order the amount of blame to be assigned to the decimation of my relationship.

Well decimation that just means that it's lost 10%

technically.

So unless you

had 10 wives and you've had to kill one of them.

Anyway, let's not get into that.

My now ex-girlfriend of more than a year, writes Tyler, came home the other night very upset.

When I asked her how her day was, she responded that she had, quotes, had a foul day.

I resisted the impulse.

A further inquiry into the course of her day.

Oh no.

I inquired, asked about her co-workers.

She stated that they had all had foul days as well.

But now I could not resist, writes Tyler.

I interjected to clarify.

I asked her to ensure that her co-workers were not running around ruining her day whilst dressed in chicken costumes, for that would be a foul day indeed.

My memory of the events of the next 20 minutes are a haze, writes Tyler.

But I do distinctly remember asking her how recently she had hatched the idea of breaking up with me.

I also distinctly remember that it was in that instant that she made the decision to break up finally and irretrievably with me.

And now, because of my love of your bullshit podcast, I'm serving my punishment as a single bugle listener.

Sincerely, Tyler from Indiana.

Well, I would say that

any relationship needs to be tested.

It's like a stress test.

You have to take it to the brink using the power of the pun.

And if it survives it, it will survive literally anything, as evidenced by the fact that I am still now with my wife.

And I've been together with her for nearly two decades, and she could be doing a f of a lot better.

So

I think you have to put your relationship through that Tyler and

I don't know maybe we should set up some kind of bugle dating site.

No, no, no.

Punfetter shit.

She's been there with the dating.

Anyway,

yeah, better off without her, Tyler.

So

do keep your emails coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Don't forget to check out our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com slash the hyphen bugle.

The webpage again for michelle's appeal is gofundme.com slash this hyphen is hyphen michelle i can also announce some uh gig dates i'm shortly uh heading uh to the wrong hemisphere to uh watch and write about the cricket world cup in australia and new zealand and i am doing shows in the following uh great connobations of the southern hemisphere christchurch on the 20th of february and auckland on the 24th then in australia saturday the 21st of march in adelaide the 25th of March in Sydney, and the 28th of March in Melbourne.

So, do come along to all of those shows if you live in that part of the world.

I will see you all there.

The tickets, I'll tweet a link to the ticket website, or just look up Live Nation and Andy Saltzman on the internet, and you will find

everything that you need to know for that.

I've phrased that really badly: ruthless self-promotion for 15 years in Showbiz.

We'll be back next week with Bugle 286.

Until then, if you're listening in Davos, do enjoy the skiing.

If not, enjoy watching some very wealthy people ski.

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.