Bugle 275 The Ebola Tombola

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 275 of the Bugle audio newspaper for this unapologetically visual world.

I'm Andy Zaltman, now aged 40.

I have lived as long as my parents' three dogs put together.

Humans One, Animals Mill.

Only 25 more years of this shit, and I can pack it in.

I'm live in Sheffield, city of steel, snooker, and

stuff.

And joining me from New York City, USA, the city where angels fear to tread.

In common with most cities, angels still struggling to adjust to modern urbanization.

It's the Walter Cronkite of weekend comedy, the Stevie Nicks of Saturday nights.

It's the human toasting fork, skewering the marshmallow of politics over the campfire of comedy until they char and disintegrate at a dangerously flesh-burning temperature.

It's John Oliver.

Well happy birthday Andy.

People have always called you three dog Andy.

It's been confusing before.

At least it now makes mathematical sense.

It's been a strange couple of weeks for me and pretty much anyone else in this country Andy.

Especially whenever anyone has had to walk past any new stand of any notes because for some reason I cannot begin to understand.

I've been on the cover of Rolling Stone for the past fortnight and that's without being a musician or a terrorist and I thought that was the only two ways you could get on the front of it in recent times.

It's clearly

you know slightly surprising for me and a truly sad day for Rolling Stone.

To go from having Jimi Hendrix on your cover to having me on it really functions as a dead canary in the coal mine of print journalism.

I still can't quite get my head around it.

Lots of people have asked is it exciting?

And I guess it definitely would be exciting if I was say the lead singer of a rock band in the 1970s it would be incredible then it would put the band into the next stratosphere andy you just need to watch the movie almost famous to understand that but as a mid-range comedian in the year 2014 i just don't really know what it means my guess is nothing i did get to do a Rolling Stone photo shoot and in my head it was going to be absolutely incredible.

I presume that there'd be leather jackets, cigarettes, lots of fire and I'd be sitting on some kind of large motorbike doing a wheelie.

Instead, it was just me in a suit in front of a justifiably bamboozled photographer.

He had taken some amazing photos of some amazing people in the past and yet my photo shoot with him ended in much the same way that all my photo shoots seem to end with anyone and that's with the photographer slowly lowering their camera and saying I think we got it.

And that is never a sentiment delivered in triumph, Andy.

It's never, hey guys, I think we got it.

I think we just made some photographic history here as the room exploded to high fives and tears.

No, it's not that.

It's always, I think we got it after a deep but barely audible sigh.

It's really just a sense of, look, we may as well just stop at this point for the sake of everyone in this room.

At some point, you have to acknowledge that the horse is dead and yet you're still hitting it.

Well, you might be on the front cover of Rolling Stone magazine, but I think there's going to be an interview with me on page 34 of the Stockton Gazette next week in advance of my gig at the Stockton.

I don't even know if there is a Stockton Gazette.

Anyway, I am in Stockton on Tees on

the 18th.

Litham St Anne's on the 16th, the Louther, Birmingham, Glee on the 17th, and Brighton on the 19th.

All details at saturators4har.com.

Keep those emails coming in.

I've got a record number for my Sheffield gig tonight.

22 different emails, John.

This thing is fully taking off.

Albeit that there have only been about 40 people at the first two gigs this week.

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

This week, after the recent spate of controversially leaked stolen photographs of famous people doing things they're legally entitled to do, we at the Bugle have managed to acquire, by fair means and or foul, private audio selfies of some of the world's sexiest celebs.

We are, you understand, only releasing them because it is in the global public interest.

The world has a right to know what these people sound like in the privacy of their own privacy.

And if you disagree, you're a fing communist.

So here goes, hacked from the personal sound recorders of the famous in various states of undress.

Firstly, actress Kim Basinger boiling a kettle for her morning cup of tea whilst wearing pajamas and a dressing gown.

Now pop star Carrie Underwood starting her car on a cold morning whilst wearing a bra and panties underneath her other clothes and getting annoyed that there is a 15-foot bronze statue of Dolly Barton in the way.

Now it's actress Jennifer Lawrence jousting, totally naked apart from a suit of medieval armour.

And finally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel secretly recorded testing out a chainsaw before chopping a tree down.

In bondage, kids.

Look Andy, if they didn't want people to hear them do those things, they shouldn't have done those things in the first place.

Testify, brother.

We have a right to know that section

in the bin.

Top story this week, Ebola is very close to out of controller.

Ebola, Andy, is, I believe the medical term technically is a mother f of a disease, which is currently both terrifying and killing people up and down West Africa.

So far here in the US, there has been just one fatality, but that hasn't stopped the media losing their collective minds.

If Ebola is contagious, Andy, then reporting on it terribly is truly an airborne disease here.

Yesterday, CNN had a lower third, which read, and I quote, is Ebola the ISIS of biological agents?

Which is a statement so stupid it's hard to even begin to break it down because it falls apart before you even start examining it.

Ebola is not the ISIS of anything, Andy.

If anything, Ebola is the Ebola of diseases.

It is already its own reference point for biological outbreaks.

It infects humans through close contact, as we know, with anyone who is carrying the disease, and also through infected animals, including chimpanzees, fruit bats, and forest antelope.

And look, I'm sick of saying this, Andy.

But f ⁇ forest antelope.

They're nothing but trouble.

And I know that every time I say this, people claim it's just blind hatred.

They say, oh, look, you can't say that about forest antelope.

That's just ignorance.

You can't call them stripy little shits with wonky horns or grass-munching four-legged sprinters.

You have to stop.

And you know what?

I did stop for a while, Andy.

But guess what?

This time I have a reason.

And don't get me started on fruit pats, Andy.

Don't get me started on those little shits.

Chimpanzees, however, I've got no problem with.

They are innocent victims in this entire mess.

Ebola, of course, founded in the mid-1970s, I believe, by the International Institute for Viruses,

combining the lottery elements of the contagious disease with the strong probability of death.

So half Tombola, half

and concern is now growing that this could spread, John.

We've had it's been an unfolding tragedy of massive proportions in Africa.

Thousands of Africans killed, clearly a little bit of a worry.

But now a black Liberian man in America has died and it's starting to get to the point where we really have to start thinking about genuinely worrying about it.

Now in Spain a white European woman has the disease we are listening and as a result of this her dog has been put down.

F ⁇ ing hell!

Something must now be done.

A dog has died John.

An innocent dog has been put down.

We weren't fully paying attention while it was just people far out of sight, far out of mind.

But now a little doggie has died.

What if a British dog gets this disease?

Where, John, will this end?

Well, that's the point, because while the the threat to America may be getting wildly overstated at the moment, the threat to Africa is very much real and current.

The top US medical official Thomas Friedan said this week that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is unlike anything seen since the emergence of HIV and that a fast global response was needed, or it could become, and I quote, the next AIDS.

And that comparison is never presented as a positive, Andy.

No one is ever saying, have you heard Iggy Azalea's new album yet?

I'm I'm telling you it's gonna be the next AIDS.

It is catchy.

It is seriously catchy and it's everywhere.

The chances are you're gonna get it.

You say you're not gonna get it, but one day you'll find suddenly you have it and then you have to learn how to live with it.

Catchy stuff from Iggy.

I don't know who you blame for it, but for me, John, this whole outbreak became kind of inevitable when gay marriage was legalised in Britain.

Just seemed that it was inevitable one thing led to to another.

I mean, it might not have been that specific piece of legislation.

These things are often driven by government legislation.

If it wasn't the gay marriage legislation, it could have been the 2004 Horse Race, Betting and Olympic Lottery Act.

Maybe even the 1971 Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act.

We just don't know how these legislations pan out.

Or even the 1822 Duties on Brimstone Act, which meant there was less fire and brimstone to go around the world.

It could be an economic disaster for Africa.

So, I mean, I guess that's the silver lining.

Go Europe increases our chances of finishing the 21st century, still in the top five continents.

Europe, Europe.

And the Liberian Finance Minister, Amara Kone,

said that many people have, quotes, wished Ebola away.

And sadly, it turns out that that has not worked.

Maybe we just need to give it a little bit of time or just wish harder.

So, I mean, if we all come together and we have seven billion people wishing simultaneously, surely even a hard-hearted, badass virus like Ebola has to listen.

There are some truly incredibly brave medical workers working in West Africa at the moment.

What Doctors Without Borders or Médecins Saint-Frontière are doing right now is truly amazing.

If aliens landed on Earth this week and saw what was happening on this planet right now, their report back home would basically be something on the lines of, it seems there are two kinds of human, those who work for something called Médecins Saint-Frontière, and then a bunch of assorted arseholes.

That pretty much covers it.

Bleep blop.

They're not just fighting the disease, they're fighting some incredibly dangerous misconceptions.

Villagers in remote settlements are understandably terrified when they turn up in what looks like yellow hazmat suits spraying everything down with chlorine.

And they've also had to deal with some very dangerous rumors.

For instance, healthcare workers in Guinea have reported people believing that the best way not to catch Ebola was to eat raw onions once a day for three days or drink condensed milk daily.

And whilst that's certainly a good way to keep romance away, Ebola is likely to find a way through that particular digestive wall.

But there is actually apparently a genuine rumor about miracle onions in Guinea, which I can only assume was started by an extremely irresponsible local onion salesman.

I'm guessing he's been proposing onions as the solution for basically everything his entire life, hoping that one day it will eventually catch on.

Oh, are you angry with President Condé?

Try eating 14 onions and he'll probably go away.

Hey, do you want Guinea to win the next World Cup?

The secret is for the team to eat nothing but onions for the next four years.

Worried about Ebola, how about some miracle onions?

What?

Really?

You're going with that one?

Holy shit, we need more onions.

Well, John, this is a classic catastrophe,

as coined by you on this podcast

some time ago.

And I'm sure all you blue buglers have been flocking to buy shares in pharmaceutical firms that specialise in tropical illnesses.

Rich pickings to be had there.

One report I read said that if GlaxoSmithKline's pharmaceutical tests go according to plan, the firm and its partners could produce more than 10,000 Ebola vaccines by early next year.

Now, John, I am not a mathematician and I am 110% sure of that.

But 10,000 vaccines, that sounds like, in pharmaceutical terms, NFNE, or in layman's terms, nowhere f ⁇ ing near enough.

So I hope they crank out a few more if it works.

They do, after all, make about £5 billion profits annually.

So

it's a massive opportunity, John, for profiting from a global catastrophe.

David Miliban, the former British Foreign Secretary, said that the disease has now reached a tipping point.

And I think there's only one thing for this, John.

I think the world needs a new Twitter hashtag to deal with the situation or this thing could get completely out of control.

I don't know if Ebola is itself on Twitter.

I think it was briefly but then shut its account down because it got so much abuse.

But the hashtag is possibly our only remaining hope.

And Barack Obama said the international response was not moving fast enough, and he said it had to be, quotes, like a marathon, but run at the pace of a sprint.

In other words, we are going to have to cheat big time and use a fload of drugs.

Yes, there might be something in that.

And one of the great problems, and as you've highlighted, the actions of the world's

volunteer doctors is truly extraordinary.

In Liberia, I think they have one doctor to approximately 100,000 people which is not enough when you have a disease like this and you compare it with our more prosperous nations when we pop to see the doctor when we have for example an itchy shirt or the newspaper makes us feel sad or we got some of our generals trapped in the wrong letterbox or picked up a nasty headache watching the latest on the Ebola outbreak on a 55 inch television.

And I'm just hearing that a new computer game has been released, Ebola Virus of Doom, in which you play the parts of the Ebola virus.

Can you build build yourself up from a localised disease with small pockets of fatal mayhem into a global pandemic causing panic and devastation across the planet and possibly beyond?

Can you become the first virus to kill something in space?

Well, if it's okay for war, it should be okay for illnesses as well.

Now, we don't usually do this on the bugle, but we have to issue a missing person alert.

Authorities are increasingly concerned about the whereabouts of a 31-year-old North Korean male now missing for several weeks, following years of increasingly confused and erratic behaviour.

The man is described as of short stature, above-average girth, sub-1980s coiffuring, and an autocratic dress sense, as well as possessing a general aura of I could have you killed with one twitch of my eyebrows, but it doesn't make me happy inside.

Known variously as Kim Jong-un, the great successor, the corpulent Commie, the dumpy despot, tyrant tubby, comrade wobblechops, and Big Mickey Miserable, the man is reportedly unarmed and extremely dangerous.

Please report him to the police.

Brazilian election news now.

And well, the first round of the Brazilian presidential elections took place on Sunday.

And the result was that there will be a two-way runoff now on October the 26th.

Winner takes all.

And if by all, you mean the presidency of Brazil for the next four years.

Brazil is a big fucking deal, both politically and physically.

It's the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and with its population of 200 million people.

The election has been spectacularly dramatic.

For a start, Brazil has compulsory voting, leading to many, I believe they're called, voto cacareco candidates, joke candidates on which

Brazilians can waste their vote.

But at the top of the ticket, it was supposed to be a two-way race between President Dilma Rousseff and Eduardo Campos, the former governor of Pernambuco.

However, he was apparently tragically killed in a plane crash in August, so was replaced by his running mate, Marina Silva.

And Dilmarusef has struggled in recent months.

Not only is the economy sluggish, there's also an oil scandal hanging over her head.

And perhaps more importantly, let's not forget, she was also in office when Brazil were beaten 7-1 by Germany in the World Cup, Andy.

And you might think, well, that has nothing to do with her, but does it have nothing to do with her?

I mean, what did she really do to stop that from happening, Andy?

At 5-1 down, she just f ⁇ ing sat there.

She didn't start warming up on the sideline sideline and demand to be put into the game.

That's what a real leader would have done, Andy.

If Queen Victoria had been in the stands when England were getting thrashed by Germany four years ago, she'd have been running onto the field and just kicking lumps out of people.

Why?

Because she wouldn't have taken that shit.

Yeah, that game.

Well, they conceded...

Five goals in what about 25 minutes?

It was like watching a man lose both arms, both legs, and his penis in five consecutive attempts to recover a digital watch from the mouth of of a crocodile.

So, however, though, Dilma Rusev still has an impressive backstory.

She joined a guerrilla group as a young woman and was eventually captured, imprisoned, and reportedly tortured by the Brazilian government.

That's a pretty tough, folksy backstory to beat.

However, try this for size.

Her opponent, Marina Silva, was raised impoverished in the rainforest, one of 11 children, was orphaned at 16 and taken in by a nunnery where she became the first person in her family to learn to read and write.

She also survived five bouts of malaria as well as hepatitis and metal poisoning.

Holy shit, Andy.

That really destroys the whole I was the son of a turkey farmer bullshit tradition.

She had metal poisoning.

She fought metal, Andy, and she won.

She's not so much a politician as a f ⁇ ing X-Man.

However, she came in a surprising third place after being attacked for backtracking on support for same-sex marriage and not having enough experience for the job, all of which is a bit depressing for Brazil, which now has to choose between candidates from the same two large parties they always have.

Now, people seem anxious to have something other than the status quo in Brazil, despite the fact that's exactly what they're going to get.

One of the more incredible protest banners in the run-up to this election and in the run-up to the World Cup was, teachers are more important than footballers.

And the amazing thing was, Andy, that that wasn't a joke.

They weren't joking.

And it also wasn't referring to teachers who could teach football better.

Both of which would have made much more sense in Brazil.

But no,

they're actually coming to some kind of sense.

There's a shortage of around 300,000 primary school teachers in Brazil at the moment, which clearly is something that someone should do something about,

but probably won't.

And we're now into, I guess, two weeks.

two weeks of exhaustive campaigning.

Dilmarusev apparently recently rasped at a press conference that she would not be answering any questions imminently as she was losing her voice.

So I don't know if she's just taking a dive.

I don't know if she is actually losing her voice or she's just, I can't even, I can't do this anymore.

Just vote for me or don't.

What do you want me to say?

Well, we've got an election coming up here as well in a few months, next May.

It's general election time.

And last night, as we record,

the UK Independence Party got its first MP in a by-election caused by Douglas Carswell, the former Conservative MP, resigning from the Tory party and

joining UKIP, the lunatic fringe party that has mutated with alarming rapidity into a lunatic mainstream party.

And he absolutely waltzed to victory, and which was a victory not only for UKIP but also for the death of British democracy.

Now David Cameron had warned in his conference speech last week that a vote for UKIP in the election next year will be in effect a vote for Labour, by which what he meant is our first past the post electoral system does not fing work.

This is a significant problem for the Conservatives and indeed for all other major parties.

And Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, is a significant weakness for Labour.

He delivered what was widely regarded as one of the most incompetent conference speeches by a leader in the run-up to an election in British history.

He is about as convincing as a political leader as Lance Armstrong playing Jesus in a nativity play.

And aside from the obvious drug cheating, he just spends the whole place cycling everywhere.

And he managed to forget bits of his speech, such as addressing the problem of the

national deficit and anything to do with economics.

And because he did it unscripted, he did it without notes.

But how this is just not a relevant skill to have.

If you are a prime minister banging on for an hour without notes, you are doing your job wrong.

So

Miliband is very much coming across at the moment as like a shit fist in a toilet paper glove.

Syria news now and

this was an article I was sent by a Bugle listener.

It's from the German newspaper Der Spiegel

which so I was looking at their website because I'm a forgiving guy and it was ages ago.

And it was an article about

pronounce it properly, Andy.

It's not.

I don't know what Der Spiegel is.

I don't know what that is.

Der Spiegel.

I do know what...

Der Spiegel!

Der Spiegel!

I know what that is.

That's a German newspaper.

Beautiful language.

The article entitled Can the Islamists Be Stopped?

And it can have a little insight into the kind of people that we are finding ourselves rather uncomfortably pitted against.

In Raqqa, in Syria,

all women in the city are required to wear the niqab veil.

Hair salons are required to black out pictures of women on the packaging for hair dye solutions, and opponents are publicly crucified.

And at livestock markets, the hind quarters of goats and sheep must be covered in order to prevent men from viewing their genitalia and having, quote, uncomely thoughts.

Oh my god.

Now, John, I'm not going to tell Islamic State how to run their franchise.

I've never really

run a business and, you know, they can do what they want, but I just don't understand

the logical step that took them from death to the west and we hate women to we must cover up the hind quarters of goats and sheep.

And I also can't understand how at no point when they were discussing this and whether to implement this rule, no one piped up and said, do you think if we just let men see a tiny, tiny bit more of women, they might not be quite so keen on fing goats?

Now, I'm not a sexologist, but that surely had to be worth a go.

Previous rules, they've also imposed bans on the sales of cucumbers at markets because similarly they could encourage prurient thoughts.

Now, I don't know about you, John, or I don't know about any buglers listening to this, I don't know if anyone been in a supermarket or at a grocery store and seen a cucumber out the corner of their eye and thought to themselves, I really must try penis.

Preferably 15-inch long dark green penis that wilts when it reaches body temperature.

That is the penis for me.

It is very hard to fight against this kind of logic, John.

Very hard indeed.

Charity news now, and

well, following on from the ice bucket challenge, police have appealed for calm around the world after 12 celebrities were seriously injured in the human cannonball challenge, firing themselves out of cannons to raise money for the Mitt Romney Memorial Goldfish Sanctuary.

The craze started after 83-year-old actor Robert Duval fired himself out of a specially configured howitzer while screaming, save those goldfish, they don't deserve to die.

As he was hoisted down from a tree and bundled into an ambulance, Duval boasted that he'd raised enough money to feed 10 goldfish for 1,000 years each, and then challenged tennis player Anna Ivanovic to be the next to fire herself out of a cannon.

The Serbian former World No.

1 duly did so in between the first and second sets of a match against Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska in last week's Papua New Guinea Open final in Port Moresby.

Ivanovic broke a clavicle, two legs and several ribs when she flew into the umpire's chair at around 100 miles an hour after being blasted from an 18th century Flemish siege gun, but nevertheless won the tournament as Radwanska had to default due to being terrified of anything made between the years 1650 and 1904.

Romney, the runner-up in the hit 2012 US reality TV show I Want to Rule the World, said Ivanovich his prize money would fund some new sea-themed decorations for one of his fish tanks.

After emerging from surgery, Ivanovich passed the challenge to pop star Selena Gomez, who raised $8 billion by being fired out of a World War II naval cannon through the stained glass windows of Nantucket Cathedral, an ordeal from which he emerged unharmed and god-fearing.

Other celebrities to have taken part now include the former Olympic sprint champion Justin Gatlin who covered 100 meters in 1.2 seconds thanks to a Soviet-era condensator howitzer before leaping to his feet shouting, I just broke the world record by more than eight seconds.

That counts, doesn't it?

I didn't do anything wrong.

It's fine.

Beat that bolt.

Beat that.

Your emails now and thanks to all of you, which I think was probably about 90% of our readership who sent in emails or Twitter comments drawing our attention to someone who daubed a graffiti penis on a £1.5 million supercar,

which I think might be the logical end point of all civilization.

It's slightly unnecessary.

That's the only problem I have with it.

I think the penis is implied.

It's slightly unsubtle to see it, but it's not a bad thing to happen.

Let's let's just say that

but so thanks.

Uh we we are now aware of this story, and you no longer need to send in any more emails with links links to the picture, albeit that it is unquestionably a funny picture.

Uh, do keep those emails coming in to info at thebuglepodcast.com.

That's it for this week's bugle.

Uh, we will have a sub-bugle next week, and then hopefully be back in two weeks' time with bugle 276.

Until then, from New York Stroke, Sheffield, 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.