Bugle 269 – Fiddlesticks to Russia

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 269 of the official United Nations week-by-week Chronicle of the History of the World, also known colloquially as The Bugle, with me, Andy Zoltzman, likes breathing sports, tea, and some of those moments between waking up and falling asleep again.

Dislikes the inevitability of death, being forced to pole vault and unlicensed space travel, ambivalence is the past, the present, and the future all got good bits, all got bad bits.

Joining me from New York City, and also from the biblical cities of satire and side art, looks at the world's news.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

So, Andy, we've just done our third HBO show.

We have it under our belt here, and this one featured full frontal male nudity and a chainsaw massacre in a coal mine.

So I think we're starting to find our rhythm as a show.

You find your furrow and you plow it, Andy.

That's the advice of any farmer worth their salt.

And it applies to weekly premium cable comedy shows with nudity and violence as well.

On Monday this week, I have to be part of a benefit gig.

for the Robin Hood Foundation here in New York.

It's an amazing anti-poverty organisation which does some fantastic work.

The problem is that at these kind of fundraisers, the main and indeed only aim is to get the richest people in the city into a room and then squeeze them for donations.

All of which leads you to standing on a stage in front of some of, if not the worst, then certainly among the worst people in the world.

To give you a sense of how wealthy that room of around 4,000 people was, Andy, I believe they raised $60 million.

in that night in that room alone.

How did they have that extra tax deductible compassion lying around Andy?

Could it have anything to do with the fact they've got a little bit left over from paying zero cap gains taxes over the last year?

Because judging that room by its expensively suited cover, if they're the solution for poverty, it's because they're basically the f ⁇ ing cause of it as well, Andy.

And a gigantic restaurant tent is clearly not the ideal room for comedy, to be completely honest.

You have to get asked as a comedian, which do you prefer?

Comedy clubs or theatres?

And I always say, neither.

I prefer performing to a room full of billionaires while they're eating in a high-end pop-up canteen in the middle of a f ⁇ ing aircraft hangar.

Yeah, you pick up the nuances better in a gig like that.

So this is Bugle 269 for the week ending Friday the 15th of May 2014.

50th anniversary, of course, of Jesus' first attempt at a second coming, in which he was promptly run over by a bus in Naples and carted straight back up on a stretcher, moaning, why did no one tell me about those things?

What do you mean, why did I run across the road?

Well, that piece has has smelled good.

If you're listening to this on August the 23rd, 2016, please return to 2014 immediately.

Your family is getting increasingly concerned about your well-being.

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

A sitting-down feature section, including when benches attack, I get jealous when I see someone else on my sofa.

How can I trust it to still be comfortable?

Is my armchair dead or resting?

If God hates kitchen chairs, as the Bible says, will he mind me eating my lunch on the John?

And did Genghis Khan's hatred of bastards drive him to invade Europe?

All that in the bin this week.

Top story this week, Ukraine update.

This was yet another dramatic week for Ukraine.

On Sunday, citizens in eastern Ukraine went to the polls to vote in a referendum on whether or not they should move towards becoming a part of Russia.

There was just one minor problem with the referendum and that was that before it even took place both Kiev, Russia and even the international community made it explicitly clear that they would not recognize it everyone everyone it is literally the only thing that the entire international community can agree on at the moment that the eastern ukrainian referendum was not worth the paper it was worthlessly scribbled on and and with so little support the whole exercise was essentially pointless it wasn't so much a referendum as an amazon wish list well i would very much like eastern ukraine to join the russia I would also like a robust national manufacturing sector.

And finally, I would also like season three of Friday Night Lych on DVD.

If anyone wants to get me any of those, it would be much appreciated.

Yeah, so sadly, the Ukraine crisis is still bubbling away like a deeply unappetizing rat casserole in a forgetful chef's restaurant.

And as you say, this

referendum, this sort of almost rogue referendum, 89% in favor of Donetsk seceding from Ukraine.

They really have to learn, John, if they are going to hold bullshit referendums.

I know they've scaled it down a bit from the 96% in Crimea, but it still looks obviously bullshit.

When are these people going to learn?

Just say 64% or something like that.

Still a massive majority, but it just doesn't look quite so 1950s.

And it was also unclear what people were actually voting for.

Was it autonomy within the Ukraine, full independence, or voluntary annexation by Russia?

I mean, to be fair, that is generally how democracy works.

You don't know fully what you're going to get, as testified by, for example, the career of Tony Blair and the continued existence of Guantanamo Bay's non-voluntary permanent anti-holiday camp.

You vote, and then you sit back and see what happens with your election promise bingo card at the ready.

The de facto separatist government in Donetsk

now claimed that the Ukrainian army is considered as an occupying force.

This is getting very confusing for the neutral, Don, particularly as just two years ago, Ukraine co-hosted the European Football Championships.

And sure, their team was shit, but everyone dressed up in yellow and they all got along.

Are you telling me now that was a sham?

And let's think back to November.

Ukraine played France in a two-game playoff to qualify for the World Cup.

They won 2-0 in the first leg in Kiev and seemed all set to make it to Brazil 2014.

But then in Paris they went to pieces like a fracturing former Soviet republic, lost 3-0 and destroyed their nation's dream.

And just a few months later, Ukraine is splitting up with itself, the government has been overthrown, Russia is helping itself to the scraps, people are dying and the nation as a whole is thinking, oh dear, this is not going very well.

And it's amazing to think that if they'd just been able to hold on to that two-goal lead, well, Putin would almost certainly not have annexed Crimea.

He would have annexed the French island of Corsica instead.

And he wouldn't have been massing his troops near the Ukrainian border, close to the city of Donetsk.

He'd have had the Russian army holidaying in northwest Italy within striking distance of Santrope.

Upon such slender seesaws is history shaped.

And just some breaking news coming in now:

Yevgeny Bolochenko, a villager from just outside Donetsk, has declared himself independent.

His wife Ekaterina has refused to acknowledge the result of his one-man referendum, which the pro-independence camp led by Yevgeny won by the suspicious-looking margin of two votes to nil.

More on that as it unfolds over coming weeks.

But Eastern Ukraine wants to be very careful about what it wishes for, Andy, because last week their supposed sugar daddy, Vladimir Putin, had himself quite a legislative seven days including signing a new law into effect on Monday which bans swearing on Russian TV in movies and at entertainment events around the country and I know what you're thinking banning swearing in Russia f that f that Andy that is not f ⁇ ing fair you cannot ban swearing in Russia Russia is one of the countries that needs swearing the most how else are they supposed to respond when someone puts a bowl of boiled cabbage in front of them and calls it dinner?

Are they supposed to say, oh fiddlesticks, this is a disappointing meal?

No, they're going to need to say, holy f, I am tired of this cabbage-y shit.

Last week there was a video online that showed a sinkhole opening up in the middle of a Russian motorway.

How are the drivers of the vehicles desperately swerving to avoid it supposed to respond if they're not allowed to say, what the f ⁇ ?

There is a f ⁇ ing sinkhole in the middle of the f ⁇ ing road.

What the f ⁇ is wrong with this f ⁇ ing ⁇ ing country?

And finally, lest we forget, Russia is the country that recently had a near miss from an asteroid, with windows getting blown out as a space rock hurtled through the air.

It is too much, Andy.

Too much to expect a human being, especially a Russian human being, to respond to that by saying, oh, hecky thump, that flipping meteor almost hit me.

No, Andy.

That Russian must, must be free to call the meteor a total f ⁇ .

While some people have expressed concern this is suppression of free speech, it does seem more like just a kind of state-sponsored swear box.

Because the punishment for an individual flouting this rule, John, is £2,500.

That is just £40 UK pounds or £70 US dollars, which shows that the uncontrollable punishment deflation Russia has suffered with over the decades continues apace.

Not

so long ago, well, I guess quite long ago now, this kind of verbal infraction would earn you an all-you-can't eat 30-year stay in a Siberian gulag, subject to not starving or freezing to death at some point in those 30 years, with a no-expenses paid job trying to mine for coal using a plastic golf club and some false fingernails.

Now, £40.

It's probably worth calling Pochin a k for that.

Yeah.

And we should set up a bugle swear farm.

We have to be the official podcast sponsor of bail bonds to sweary Russians.

We could be an Amnesty International for profanity.

Well, it's good to have a golden knife.

Also, a law banning swearing in the media was passed

last year as well, which I understand is why you signed up with HBO, not teleconnect, not teleconal zvazdia.

The Russian Ministry of Defence's channel, I heard, offered you more money, John, and a chance of broadcast from a tank, plus Joan Rivers as a sidekick, but the no-swearing clause saw the deal collapse.

The law has gone down in Russia exactly as well as you would expect it to.

In the Moscow Times, they reported that, and I quote, the law has been met with both criticism and shock, as swearing has been a vital component of Russian art, with some of the nation's best poets and playwrights using curse words prolifically, from classical Alexander Pushkin to contemporary post-modern modernist Vladimir Sorokin.

Exactly, Andy.

Lest we forget, choking first.

He actually dictated the famous 1812 overture to an assistant using swear words as punctuation.

Look, it goes like this: bada bada bada ba ba ba f ba bada bada bada ba ba cock bada bada bada bada bada ba.

Shit, bada bada bada bada bada ba.

Balls, shit

Shit of balls.

That's good to have a bit of history involved.

The Institute of Russian Language at the Russian Academy of Sciences compiled a list of four words that constitute swearing and will thus be banned.

Just four.

That only seems to be the start.

These are words for male gonadulas and

female squiffly nuke.

The process of copular punching.

And the last refers to a woman with, say, shall we say, a touch of the Catherine the Great about her carnal operations.

The previously announced banned words were Flobzhenichin, Baplushka, Mikhail Gorbachevs, and Glabznobs.

To that list, now being added the Glyoblychenko, the Perestroka, Rasputits, and Bolchoi Ballet Balls.

All those now banned in Russia.

And you've got to worry about the impact, John.

As you say, this is going to completely affect the way Russians go about their daily life.

And in particular, it is going to impact on Russian weather forecasting forever, John, because their bulletins will have to go.

Tomorrow, there will be a patch of low pressure coming in from the east with northwesterly winds touching 35 to 40 miles an hour.

So all in all, it will be f ⁇ ing cold.

I cannot afford to do my job anymore.

That's the problem.

They're throwing away a rich, deep heritage of swearing in literature.

One of the greatest writers of all time, Andy Tolstoy, used to love swearing his Russian head off.

In a biography of him, I think Ivan Bunin, one of his key biographers, wrote, even when, as a very old man, Tolstoy would tell an anecdote in the presence of ladies he would let loose words that were not normally said aloud of course he did Andy because he was saucy Leo Tolstoy don't get him to use the lady language and if you tried to rebuke him you'd have a problem on your hands you'd say excuse me what's that you're offended by my language I wrote an a Karenina mate what did you do I'm a master of the epic novel mate so if you'd excuse me I'm off to write a 1200 page tome about a character called you going to f himself

we have to say where will it end John I mean do we want to see a a return to the early 20th century days when Tsar Nicholas II banned swearing and made all Russians carry honkers around with them to parp over any rude words?

In fact, this was not at all popular, and the last thing the Tsar heard when he was being gunned down in Yekaterinburg was, ready, aim, take this, you privileged.

And

it's going to have impact on theatre, John.

An independent theatre director from Moscow says they will stick with existing texts

if the swearing is in those texts, but will stop their actors from improvising, which, I mean, mean i'm not an actor john unlike uh your good self so that must be uh very tricky if you're doing shakespeare not to you know just find yourself saying for f sake othello the guy's clearly a fking or hell hamlet make your shitting mind up or perhaps in richard the third you end to find yourself saying f where's my fing horse where the fk is my fing horse which

next my fing horse it right let's play swapsies free dinner for two at bertrand in london for a horse no uh shit okay summer my kingdom for ten horses still no half a kingdom for two horses Half a kingdom for half scratch that.

One kingdom for one horse.

Good.

A horse.

A horse.

My kingdom for a horse.

Deal.

What are you guys doing sticking those f ⁇ ing swords at me?

I said horse, not hearse.

Ouch.

Bollocks, when you finish with me, can you drop me back in the car park?

I think I left the windows open on the fing vitesque.

And if if you're wondering how on earth is Russia going to be able to monitor swearing effectively, this week delivered a chilling answer, the swear bot.

And sadly, the swear bot is not what it sounds like.

Essentially what it should be, which is a sweary robot.

Say, bleep bleep blop I'm a f ⁇ ing robot bleep lop go get me a sandwich bleep blop no it is a swearing detection computer program which will apparently go live before the end of the year and will root out online obscenity good luck swearbot let me let me let me give you a tip www.bluegal buglepodcast.com

i'm gonna blow your robot mind

This one I was particularly intrigued by.

Where disputes arise, apparently a panel of experts will decide exactly what counts as a swear word.

And you have to say, John, that sounds like the greatest job in the world.

Since my one year as an employee in the outer reaches of the real world, having what might loosely be described as a proper job, in that it compelled me to get up early, go to work on the f ⁇ ing Northern Line and sit at a desk wondering what the f ⁇ I was doing with my life.

Since then, there haven't been many times when I've hankered over the routine and security of a solid 9 to 5.

other than when on stage at the Manchester Comedy Store.

But working on a panel of experts, deciding on what counts as a swear word sign me up John I will work for free in that job if I can just let you gents know that according to Russian law you've now sworn £1360 worth

it was worth it no regrets

Your emails now and we have a great email here from Stephanie Mundo who says dear Chris John and Andy in order whose whose voice I find most soothing.

Congratulations, dear, Chris.

And commiserations, Andy.

I guess it grates.

It just grates, that's all.

Just letting you all know that I recently had brain surgery to remove a tumor.

And during my recovery, about a month in the hospital, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands.

To fill the drudgery, I decided to listen to pack episodes of the bugle.

That should be our new slogan, Andy.

To fill the drudgery.

One night, my nurse rushed in with a panicked look on her face.

What's wrong?

She said.

I was certainly alarmed, and I removed my headphones.

Your heart rate, I thought something was wrong.

Admittedly, she was kind of annoyed when I explained to her that I was not dying.

I was merely laughing so hard I could hardly breathe.

Congratulations, that's the closest I've come to actually dying of laughter.

You're welcome, Stephanie.

You're welcome.

She doesn't say what it was, Andy.

I'll tell you what it was not.

It was a pun run.

Because your pun runs make people want to unplug themselves from machines.

God, that's a bit of rich from you, John, after your recent deluge of puns on televised puns, moreover.

Another medical procedure was sent in to us by Amanda, who writes,

Dear John, Andy and Chris, I thought we'd appreciate stroke be disgusted by the following event which happened in my life recently.

I was in a car crash, it broke my nose, and the doctor decided to conduct the following procedure to correct the problem.

The patient is given a valium and an

oxycodone, then placed in a chair and given injections of local anesthesia.

Then the doctor takes a rod and gently straightens the nose back out so it will heal correctly and here's what actually happened after being given the valium and the oxycodone i became violently ill and had to be isolated in the quiet dark room in the doctor's office before the procedure could continue about five pounds of cotton soaked in numbing solution was then stuffed up my nose.

I was then given five injections of anesthesia, one between my eyebrows, one on each side of the nose, and one up each nostril, at which point in the searing pain the and and the anesthesia and the numbing solution were causing, brackets, go figure, I began kicking and thrashing like a crazy person and unleashed a very loud string of profanity.

Do not do that if you're being operated on in Russia.

When the doctor told me that I had to calm down before he could finish the procedure, with the one part of my brain that was still functioning correctly, I managed to ask, can I listen to the bugle?

That is how you, John and Andy, came to talk me through the most medieval medical procedure I've ever experienced, in which the doctor

repeatedly placed one hand on the side of my head and inserted an enormous metal rod pipe up the opposite nostril, nostril and basically applied brute force to straighten my nose.

So thank you for that.

You make both the doctors and my life easier for the duration of this torture session.

There we go.

So thanks sir for that amount.

It's good that we're basically you our com our comedy functions as an anesthetic.

Yeah.

That could be a compliment or a very very deep insult.

And this one came in from Gustavo, who writes, hello from Honduras.

I've just finished listening listening to Bugle 268, and I listened to Andy tell a joke regarding a Guatemalan midfielder who will miss the World Cup due to a rat-related injury.

Classic Andy.

As in all probability I'm the only bugler in Honduras, or at least the only one with a brass balls to admit it, I felt compelled to clarify that it's Honduras, not Guatemala, who have qualified for the World Cup.

We've also had the most recent coup in the region.

We are bugle worthy, so it's beyond me how Andy got his usually well-researched bullshit wrong.

Thanks.

On the topic of correcting facts and all bullshit, please note that America is a continent, continent, not a country.

When I refer to my dear northern neighbours, I use the endearing term Gringos or the more geographically correct Canada's Mexico.

Best regards, Gustavo in Honduras.

So

here's something for you.

Here's a football question, John, that will appeal to our massive Honduran audience.

Who or what is Carlo Costley?

Is it A.

Roman Abramovich's nickname for the troubled striker Fernando Torres?

Is it B, Oliver Cromwell's nickname for Charles I?

Is it C, a cartoon character developed by George Osborne to educate children about the financial impractibility of the benefit system in an age of austerity and corporate tax aversion?

Is it D, a proven international striker with a with a goal rate of for Honduras of almost a goal every other game?

Or E, a much-travelled journeyman footballer who's played out a barely noticed career in eight countries, the highlight of which was netting twice on his debut for Guizhou Zhicheng in the second tier of the Chinese league.

Any guesses as to the answer to that, John?

Oh, last one, Andy, last one, Chinese league.

Well, in fact, the last two, and

possibly the first three as well.

So you can look out.

Look out for Carlo Costley in the World Cup.

So one of the finest names in the tournament.

And

one-man satirization, the financial excesses of modern football.

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

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

And you can get your bugle merch and voluntary subscriptions at thebuglepodcast.com if it has not been shut down by the Russian Ministry of Language.

World Cup news now and all a lot of squads have been announced this week and personally I'm absolutely gutted to have been left out of the England squad without so much as a phone call from the FA.

At 39 John, I fear my final chance may have gone.

Of course you must qualify on residency for the US national team.

Now.

That's yeah, but they're in the group of death, Andy.

I'm not interested in this tournament.

I'll do it in four years.

Right, okay.

Other squad news, Argentina.

I'm not going to the World Cup to lose, Andy.

I'm going there to win the World Cup.

Other squad news: Argentina has selected Pope Francis as a backup to Lionel Messi.

He's a terrific Pope, said the manager, excellent squad member, guaranteed to get God on our side.

Italy's Giambattista Pizzicitelli is also missing from the tournament due to a quotes

pathological fear of the southern hemisphere.

He's been terrified of going south of the equator ever since almost choking on a piece of South African built-ung as a child, aggravated by having seen the episode of Australian Soap Opera Neighbours where Paul Robinson burns down Lassiter's hotel and whilst Pit Sicelli thought his mother was trapped inside.

The star midfielder Alan Jagoyev controversially omitted by Mexico due to being Russian and in the Russian squad whilst France's Aurelian Lavoscur has been left out of the French squad for being a total arsehole.

I saw this quote, John, from Zico, the great Brazilian player of the late 70s and early 80s.

He said this, I think Uruguay could be the only only team who could psychologically shake the Brazilian team.

Now, why you might think could such a tiny nation as Uruguay, just over 3 million people, they have got a decent team, but why this psychological issue?

Well, it goes back to a previous game when Uruguay beat Brazil 2-1.

So you might think, Bugler, some of the current players may still not over their failure in that game and still regretting a catalogue of missed opportunities.

No, because this game happened not one year ago, not two years ago, but 64 years ago.

This was the final match of the 1950 1950 tournament, the last time Brazil hosted the World Cup.

And everyone had expected them to win and they went down to a nation-devastating 2-1 defeat to their tiny South American neighbours.

And it still burns deep in their footballing consciousness.

Zico and Brazil in general is concerned that a meeting with their vanquishers from 64 years ago would reawaken an entire mass choir of footballing demons.

Now bearing in mind that A, all of the current squad were decades away from being born when that game took place.

B all or almost all of their parents still hadn't been born either.

C only one player from either team in that match is still alive.

And D Brazil have since won five World Cups to Uruguay Zero and they're still worried about it.

It is clear that match still stings like a T-Rex bite in a vinegar bath.

The one possible problem is that the only player still alive is a man called Alcides Gigia.

I hope I've pronounced that right.

And sorry to any Brazilian buglers who've just hidden in the nearest cupboard in a burst of terror, suffering inherited flashbacks to that game in 1950, because Gigia was the scorer of Uruguay's winning goal.

And there have been rumours circulating on the internet that he is, in fact, on standby for a late call-up to the Uruguay squad.

So, if the two countries meet again, the Uruguayan manager can just send him out to hobble up and down the touchline as if he's about to come on a substitute and send the entire Brazilian team, players, government, and population into a hyper-ventilating history-aggravated panic.

That is a nation, John, that takes its football arguably too seriously.

That's it for this week's Bugle.

We will be back next week with Bugle 270

with more on our World Cup countdown.

Maybe we'll have an audio wall chart next week for you to fill in and maybe give out the score.

In fact, I'll give you out some of the scores already for you to fill in on your Bugle audio wall chart, which will be coming up over future weeks.

Nil,

one,

two,

three,

four,

five.

Actually, realistically, you won't need five is a World Cup.

Everyone just shuts up, shop.

More of that next week.

Until then, buglers.

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.