Bugle 270 – Fruitcakes and Loonies

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 270 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world for the week ending Friday the 30th of May 2014 with me Andy's Altsman in London.

I recently picked up my fifth consecutive second place finish in the annual British Silver Medal winning championships, a result I was absolutely delighted with.

And in New York City, USA, it's the Frank Sinatra of funny stuff, the Judy Garland of Great Jokes, the big bird of barbed fill banter.

It's Sergeant Shobiz, John Oliver.

Hello Andy, hello buglers.

We are back.

I was in the UK last week shooting a couple of interviews for the HBO show.

More on those in the next few weeks.

It was great to be back.

Andy and I managed to watch the Champions League final together, Athletico Madrid against Real Madrid.

It's often said that football is like life and that was definitely true in the case of this game Andy because the richer club won.

Money wins every time.

It was a happy inevitable ending.

It was especially good to be back in the run-up to the World Cup to basically remind myself how f ⁇ ing excited I am about it.

It was great to be in a country where there was an actual story on the news, a story that was not short, about a player at England's training camp stretching.

It was amazing seeing adults talking to microphones saying, Gerard looks loose.

Look at him stretching there.

How do you think that hamstring looks from 70 yards away outside his body?

I think it looks good.

Also on my way back, I had myself a sweet little eight-hour delay.

for the flight and it is never ideal when your delay is longer than the flight itself but it did afford me the chance to witness a truly unnatural wonder of the the world Andy and that was the sight of two visibly wealthy teenagers unironically reading yacht magazines it's one of the single worst things i've ever seen anywhere at any time

that's the future john yachts is where it's at that is the

who says they're rich john they are just preparing for a kevin costner water world style future they're just concerned citizens john it's like it's like john john steinbeck said Americans are just temporarily embarrassed yacht owners.

Do not judge a book by the magazine cover it is reading, as the old saying goes.

This is Bugle 270, 270s.

Of course, one of the legitimate criticisms about the birth years involved in this podcast, BIC 270s.

270, of course, the number of decoy great-grandchildren of Winston Churchill currently alive in the UK.

Now, in World War II, there were several decoy Churchills to try and hoodwink hoodwink the Germans into assassinating an actor instead of the real Churchill.

I think it was a pro-Churchill thing more than an anti-actor thing, but I guess it worked on two levels.

They did manage to keep Churchill safe through the war, but afterwards they started all breeding with the decoy Mrs.

Churchills, which I guess, you know, that's understandable, they would fancy each other.

And as the generations passed, these have increased exponentially.

The Churchills attendance.

Now 270 bogus Churchill great-grandchildren, even the family don't really know who's who anymore.

And if this continues, by the year 2843, 99% of the UK population will be decoy descendants of Winston Churchill.

And then maybe UKIP will finally be happy.

This is the week ending Friday the 30th of May 2014, 17 years to the day from 30th of May 2031, which is when computer projections predict will be the first day that the tabloid press run a negative story about Prince George after he flies on a rocket pack into one of the massive greenhouses in Kew Gardens at the Duke of Nantwich's 18th birthday party whilst dressed as his great-grandmother the Queen and shouting, I could have you all killed with one phone call.

That's 17 years from today.

Top story this week, Europe goes to the polls.

Polls suggest that Europe hates itself.

Europe Andy has a complicated relationship with itself.

It's a fiery relationship.

Like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor will have explosive fights, dragging the whole world in, and then we'll follow us up with marathon sessions of make-up bureaucracy.

Let me just put it this way.

When there's a sock hanging on the front door of the EU building in Brussels, you do not want to open that door because they will be bulls deep in the middle of a 12-hour constitutional drafting orgy.

It's not so much a love-hate relationship in Europe as it is a tolerate-hate relationship.

The European Union was supposed to be a way of taking our differences and turning them into a positive, rather than taking our differences and using them as a springboard for bloodbaths on an unprecedented scale.

And in a general sense, it's been a success.

But last week, there were elections to the European Parliament across the country, and there was something of a lurch to the right.

And historically, Andy, when Europe lurches to the right, terrible things inevitably happen afterwards.

The European political spectrum is something of a batshit barometer.

It is the canary in the crazy mine.

And when that thing starts squawking too loudly, it's probably time to start digging some f trenches in Belgium.

Yes, well, as you suggest, you don't need to be a rocket historian to think that if there's one single continent in the world, one continent that should know the dangers of swinging politically to the right, Europe would be pretty fing high up that list.

I would say top four or five.

Antarctica, you can probably excuse if it sinks into retrograde extremism, but really, Europe should have picked up on those hints from history.

And by hints, I mean cautionary cricket bats to the face.

And

it's been concerning, John.

It's been a huge, basically extended middle finger to the European political establishment.

A Pandora's Jeroboam of resentment has been uncaked and basically a full, in fact a full double bird flip to the entire EU.

And another factor in this drift to the right is we might think, well, I mean, how has Europe allowed this to happen?

And one of the factors in it is the importance of the European elections to the voters across the continent.

And that importance is basically roughly as important as wondering what the difference between table tennis and ping pong is or trying to remember all the words to Boney M classic of historical gangster pop Mark Baker.

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, two countries released from the yoke of communism and embraced into the bosom of the EU tent there were 19 and 13% turnouts and in Britain

We

yeah, that was worth the wait, wasn't it?

In Britain, 34% of people could be asked to struggle all the way to their local polling station, which is about standard for a European election.

So basically, this is Europe just basically pressing the snooze alarm button and saying, oh, it's probably not going to be as bad as last time we swang hard to the right.

And there's been a lot of debate over what the causes...

of this have been and I think a lot of it comes down to the perception amongst the people around Europe that the EU political elite basically sit around eating scrambled Fabergé eggs for breakfast and not really doing what they're supposed to do.

It's hard to draw significant conclusions from any single set of election results, but the European parliamentary elections make a pretty strong case for the argument that Europeans are complete assholes.

Because in a worrying waltz as old as the continent itself, Eurosceptic and far-right parties seize significant ground in what the French Prime Minister called a political earthquake.

And I don't know if it was truly a political earthquake, Andy, as much as it was a shame-inducing shitstorm.

Some very depressing parties around Europe made gains, although to even call them parties is slightly misleading.

They're not a party-like expression of joy in any form.

They're more like parties in the sense that awake is a party.

They're essentially funerals for humanity.

The UK Independence Party, or UKIP, or C for short,

made big gains in the British election.

And the French National Front, led by the abomination of decency in a pantsuit form, Maureen Le Pen, also made big gains and the truly terrifying Greek neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn also won seats.

They are misleadingly named of course after a sunrise but it would only be the kind of sunrise you mistook for a sunrise when the world in fact was actually on fire.

The French National Front won 25% of the vote in France and were described as fascist by Germany's finance minister.

And when a German leader describes you as fascist, Andy, the label sticks.

Good luck peeling that thing off.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the far-right victories as remarkable and regrettable and said that the best response was to boost economic growth and jobs.

Although, again, she really has to say that, Andy.

There is no world in which a German Chancellor can say, I actually understand the frustrations that people have and will work to restore the pride so we should feel it's a country.

She can't say that.

That's not an option without people starting to kick the tires on their Spitfires.

Miss Le Pen,

the

rather charmless,

as you say, French right-winger, said this, our people demand one type of politics, politics by the French, for the French, with the French.

Good luck with that.

May I remind you, Madame Le Pen, of the words of Charles de Gaulle, who said, how can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

Marine Le Pen said that she will now use her mandate to defend France and fight crazy measures like votes for immigrants.

Although, to be historically clear, France's idea of defending itself is usually completely rolling over and waiting for someone else to come and defend them for them.

So

maybe that's the kind of national defense she was referring to.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said the British public was disillusioned with the EU and that their message was received and understood.

Francois Hollande asked Europe to pay attention to France after describing his party's defeat to the National Front as painful.

And the week was split between political leaders saying they had heard the dissatisfaction and the right-wing groups claiming a seismic victory that would propel them even further.

But as you say, Andy, let's get all this in perspective.

The election turnout in general was 43.1%,

according to European Parliament figures.

So this is still an overwhelming landslide victory for people absolutely not giving a shit at all.

We've got to be able to do that.

Always got it.

The EU even tried to spin that that continental turnout as a positive, saying this was the first time that turnout had not fallen since the previous election and that this was an improvement on last time of 0.1%.

Wow, Andy.

They've taught Europe to dream again.

We have started lifting our testicles out of the electoral food processor.

That is a good sign.

Marine Le Pen also said this.

Tonight is a massive rejection of the EU.

What is happening in France prefigures what will happen in all European countries, the return of the nation now I think nationalism has a pretty checkered record as we've suggested on this on this continent and also I would argue there is a time and a place for nations John and that time and place is in Brazil starting in two weeks time with footballs that is the only time that you rig that that that this kind of thing is acceptable foot football sport

the saving John in the United Kingdom as I saw UKIP purple posters were every uh everywhere uh on the streets like a stick-on siren call to self-destruction.

And much has been written and bloviated about UKIP's leader Nigel Farage, who is like a one-man echo from a time Britain should be desperately trying to forget.

He is constantly photographed with either a pint of beer or a cigarette in his hand, and his supporters claim that he's a man of the people and every man.

And to that, Andy, I say this: if Nigel Farage is every man, then I hate everybody.

This is part of Farage's current popularity that he's viewed as the kind of man you could have a chat with in the pub, albeit that that chat would probably end up with you calling him a f ⁇ ing nut job, him calling you a,

and you then telling him to stop ruining the quiz night by shouting out Brussels as every answer.

He suggested that the election had put the UKIP fox in the Westminster hen house.

Which I'm not sure, I mean, do you really want to be aligning yourself with a fox as a political party, a large vermin renowned principally for thieving stuff from people's bins, people's British bins, murdering defenseless British poultry with low levels of personal hygiene and high volume sexual intercourse.

Is that something for a political party to aspire to?

Even this nation's once favourite celebrity fox, Basil Brush, the former TV star, currently is embroiled in lengthy legal battles over unpaid tax and a noise abatement order.

I should state that Mr.

Brush, real name Basil the Fox, insists the tax schemes he was investing in were technically legal and that he was supporting grassroots banking in the Cayman Islands.

And regarding the noise abatement order, he said, are two foxes not allowed to fall in love anymore?

What the f has this country become?

One of Farage's supporters said, when Nigel speaks, he doesn't sound like he swallowed a book of sound bites.

And you know, that is true, Andy, because when he speaks, it sounds like he swallowed an English history book from the 1920s, a bag of marbles, and three bottles of red wine, and is vomiting them all back up simultaneously into a microphone.

That is what he sounds like.

There is justifiable concern in Britain about what UKIP's electoral victories mean for the future.

Ed Miliband, the opposition leader, argued that UKIP had won votes by touting simple solutions to serious problems that have built up over generations, then saying, but there isn't a simple answer.

And that's clearly ridiculous, Andy, because as the UKIP manifesto perfectly simply testifies, what could be simplifyingly simpler than pledging to build a simple time machine to go back to the late 1800s and live permanently and selectively in Britain's glorious past.

God save the Queen Andy, not Elizabeth Victoria, the real one.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

She was all queen.

And also ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair said that UKI's

soul.

What's that?

God rest his soul, John.

I mean he's still alive, but his soul is long dead.

That's true.

Said that UKIP's views on immigration were regressive and that

under that facade, there is something unpleasant and nasty.

And the problem with that statement is that it implies that UKIP's facade is pleasant and unnasty in the first place.

They are a disgusting book wrapped in a revolting cover.

But they've managed to pick up, I think it was around about 29%

of the votes.

And clearly not everyone who votes for them is got in the image of their

opinion splitting leader.

And I think part of the problem is there's just this massive dissatisfaction and disconnection with mainstream politics.

And this is proved by the fact, John, that the number of tattoos of politicians that people in Britain have has fallen dramatically over the years, even as the overall number of tattoos has rocketed up.

I mean, back when we were growing up, a solid 60 to 70% of this nation's ink was the likes of Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill, little Stanny Baldwin, and Nia Bevan.

Now you go to the beach, you're lucky if you can see a single Chris Grayling tatton in an entire afternoon.

And that shows what British politics has become.

And Ed Miliband is sort of in the forefront of this.

He is

possibly the least appropriate party leader in

this nation's history.

I mean, it's hard to think of anyone less suited to leading a political party other than me, because he has no relevant experience.

He comes from a privileged background and he is unnecessarily young for the job.

The very least he could do is look and sound authentic.

If you're going to have slick, media-managed politicians, at least make them A, slick, and B, look like they've paid attention during their media management classes the British electorate is about as convinced by Ed Miliband as a vegan would be if a pig walked up to him in a salad bar and said you can eat me I'm a lettuce go on sucking

and he got he was picked up in one of these completely irrelevant political micro storms for getting the price of an average family food shop wrong I think he said it was £70 and the actual figure is £100 a week but frankly if you're a leader of a of a political party you should not have time to even contemplate going to the shops.

You should just be living on takeaways, frankly.

And also, I mean, to be fair,

he does spend £70 on his weekly shop, but he spends it all on watermelons, which he then paints faces on, lines them up around his dinner table at home, and pretends to be holding a cabinet meeting.

And that is the closest thing he will have to relevant experience should he become Prime Minister at next year's general election.

So are there any grounds for optimism?

Well, you know, I'm not a God-fearing man, John, and that feeling is entirely mutual.

But if,

I assume, if I thought praying was worthwhile, I'll be asking the big man to pull out some of his old magic for one of his finest ever continents, because Europe needs it now, John.

The European Union, flawed as it is, is one of the greatest political ideas in history.

It would be a real shame if it wazzed itself up the wall in a morass of needless legislation and bloatedness.

And for one, you know, it's one of the founding missions of it was to stop Europe from killing itself.

It began in 1951 with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community.

And in the the Schuman Declaration of 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann, little Bobby Schumann popping up there in the box with a terrific little proposal for a supranational community.

He said this, Europe will be born of this, a Europe which is solidly united and constructed around a strong framework.

And he said

one of its intentions was to make war not only unthinkable, but materially impossible.

And the nations involved, France, West Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Why not Luxembourg?

Why not join in for fun?

Bearing in mind, twice in the previous 35 years, most of those countries had been killing the living shit out of each other.

And that much of the European history prior to that had also been spent killing the living shit out of each other.

And when Europe got bored of that, we sailed around the world and killed the shit out of whoever we found elsewhere in the world.

Sometimes we got them to do it, sometimes we did it ourselves.

Other times we outsourced it to our key strategic allies like smallpox or forced starvation.

So it's been a step forward.

And I don't like massive continental wars, John, because A, I'm a coward and B, as a consumer, I don't think they represent good value for money.

So I think this European idea is something that the continent should be clinging to.

There are some shafts of hope, it was not all a right would drift.

There was also a swing to the left in some areas.

In Spain, there's a brand new political party called the Podemos Party, and it was only formed way, way back in 2014, and it registered 1.2 million votes.

8% of the Spanish vote, and now has five seats in the European Parliament.

And amongst its aims are poverty reduction, social dignity, strict controls on lobbying and trying to stamp out tax evasion, which I'm sure are lefty affectations that they will simply have to grow out of when the harsh realities of government come calling.

A quick bit of animal news now and footage captured by scientists has revealed a parasitic wasp that appears to have evolved a zinc-tipped drill on its snout to bore into fruit.

Now this is very exciting development.

Uh,

John, I imagine it's been huge news in the States.

Uh,

I think Marvel have already bought the rights for that.

Um, the new superhero, the zinc-tipped wasp.

Well, I think it's the first sign of the animal kingdom finally fighting back in its age-old battle with the top dogs, humans.

And when you've knocked dogs out of the top dog slot, you know you're a pretty fing special species.

I'm gonna option that, Andy.

That is gonna re-kickstart my movie career.

I'm gonna be the zinc-tipped wasp

Buzzing around, stinging people, but not dying from it.

John, I think when people are kicking your movie career, they're not trying to make it start again.

I'm going to defeat the pewter-tipped bee.

But it's very interesting that this zinc-tipped drilled wasp appears to have concentrated on developing industrial machinery rather than transport or military hardware.

And it's not the first time it's happened.

Of course, the 19th-century naturalist Darnelius Polkoon came back from an eight-year expedition in africa with sketches of gorillas with rotating swords for arms and giraffes with tv aerials in their heads uh there are also rumours that an armadillo with a machine gun snout somewhere in madagascar is uh at large but those rumours are as yet uh made up but we cannot rest on our bipedal laurels anymore these animals are out to knock us off our evolutionary perch, John, and we have to respond as we've always responded to any threat from the animal kingdom by hunting it to extinction and beyond.

I downloaded the Bugle Back catalogue and it's taken me six months of listening to way through all the bullshit to get to the present in May 2014.

As a consequence of what could be called a punishment or self-flagellation, I've learnt one, penises are always funny.

True.

Particularly if on a roof belonging to a congressman, nailed to red square.

That was a particularly funny penis.

Or wangled from Napoleon's corpse.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that and that was the most recent one

actually i did a gig in paris recently and i i did some of that those napoleon penis jokes that we've done on we did on the bugle the previous week and um

i don't know i think france still still holds account if not for the whole of napoleon then certainly for his penis

um two wearing my orange bugle socks and orange bugle scarf and drinking from my fing eulogy mug makes life better well that never has a truer word been spoken and you can buy all that much at thebuglepodcast.com and three I know more about cricket now than I ever wanted to know.

Well, that might be more than you ever wanted to know, Robin, but it's not all that you need to know.

You need to know more.

You need to devote yourself to it.

Cricket, cricket will save you from the harsh realities of reality.

And he concludes: I want to give Andy special praise for his 121 joke in Bugle 127.

The best joke I've heard in ages.

It was a great joke, no question about that.

This was a world-class joke.

Well, for those of you who didn't hear it at the time, we were talking about this last weekend, William, here, by coincidence.

Here is

that joke.

It came a little while into a particularly cuss-heavy bugle.

It stings a little bit, John, to be honest.

As a citizen of the United Kingdom, as I still am, do you still have the papers?

Yeah, yes, I do, Andy.

We f ⁇ ing use them every now and again, we

know, it's been awfully sweary with the bugle recently.

Yeah.

I don't know why that is.

Prison any suggestions?

Well,

maybe you just need to listen to the words of the Pope.

All right.

What did he say?

Don't fking swear.

Right, that's now 12 fks one c today.

Oh, God.

Actually, now I've just said that.

That's 13.2.

I was going to say 12 fks one cs.

That's pretty much the

Jewish attitude to the New Testament, isn't it?

Oh, Andy.

I'm going to burn in hell for that.

I'm going to burn in hell for that, Joe.

That's a way to make the absolutely foul truly sublime.

Well, I hope you enjoy that joke, Bugless, because I'm going to suffer eternal pain for your laughter.

So there you go.

That's,

I mean, in many ways, John, that is not only the highlight of my professional career, but arguably...

It's in the top four moments in my life.

And

I only say that because I I have one wife and two children who might at some stage listen to this.

So I have to say top four, not top one.

Today's count is ten fks and three ks.

There we go.

Excluding the clip of the last one.

Oh, right.

Well, that I mean, that gets into a whole philosophical areas of what counts as a f and a k.

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

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

Don't forget also to buy your tickets for my Edinburgh show at the stand.

Also, there's a charity gig on Wednesday, the 4th of June, at the Hideaway in Streatham, right by Streatham station in South London.

Starts at 8:30, doors from 6:30.

Tickets, £15, raising money for the Streatham Youth and Community Trust charity that my wife works for, featuring me, Russell Howard, and Tiffany Stevenson.

You can get tickets at hideawaylive.co.uk, which will unquestionably be the show is events of the millennium.

Now, just time for a quick sports section.

And a quick report now from the Bugle Pool Championships held last week in Gypsy Hill, South London.

And, well, John, as I'm sure you remember, the Bugle Pool Championships resulted in a convincing wing for a very deserving champion, Andy Zoltzman, the 39-year-old father of two, who absolutely demolished the well-beaten former British number 8.3 millionth ranked John Oliver in one of the finest displays of tactical pool and queumanship this that the game has ever seen.

Many fans had expected a close contest but Zoltzmann won frame after frame as Oliver's potting and brake building well frankly it collapsed like a hippo's hammock and Zoltzmann's masterful safety play

allied to clinical potting of the pool balls and the pool pockets and well the lapsdew ran away with it.

The lapsed due and bacon aficionado claimed the title in considerable style and I'm delighted to say that we're joined now by the Bugle Pool champion Andy Zoltzman.

Andy, hello thanks for taking some time off from this recording to talk to us.

That's fine, absolutely no problem, I was in the studio anyway.

Now you must have been absolutely delighted with your form on the day.

It was a truly magnificent performance and you won by, frankly, an almost embarrassing margin in the end.

Yeah, well, I just got out there and concentrated on my pool shots and let all the hype get to me and I was delighted with an absolutely thumping victory over John, my thoroughly and rightfully demoralized opponent.

Where next for you, Andy off, they're surely going to have to seek tougher challenges than the challenge John Oliver was able to provide on the pool table.

Yes, well, with all due respect to John, these are the kind of matches that I expect myself to win and I did win by an absolutely colossal distance.

Thank you very much for speaking to us, Andy.

And now joining us from New York is the defeated Bugle Pool Championship finalist, John Oliver.

John,

so what went wrong?

What went wrong, John?

I mean, that was an absolute shooing.

Absolutely shooting.

That's a one-off aberration, Andy.

I mean, just look at the scoreboard for the series.

That's all I'd say.

This proves nothing.

You couldn't do it on the big occasion, John.

That's what it shows.

That's what it shows.

We'll be back next week with the official bugle football world cup preview and that tournament cannot start soon enough from a point of view of ignoring all world news thanks for listening buglers we will speak to you again next week 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.