Bugle 266 – Flip Modi Squad

Speaker 1 I will be in Australia for the next few weeks, hoping that the cricket can provide the distraction for everyone that it has so successfully provided for me since I was six years old.

Speaker 1 If you want to come to my shows, there is a Bugle Live in Melbourne on the 22nd of December, where I'll be joined by Sammy Shar and Lloyd Langford.

Speaker 1 And I'm doing the Zoltgeist, my stand-up show in Melbourne on the 23rd of December. And we've just added a possibly optimistic extra show in Sydney on the 3rd of January.

Speaker 1 The 2nd of January show is sold out, but please, please, please come on the 3rd. My UK tour extension begins begins at the end of january all details and ticket links at andysaltsman.co.uk

Speaker 2 this is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

Speaker 2 the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world

Speaker 2 Hello buglers and welcome to issue 266 of the Bugle audio newspaper for an unapologetically visual world for the week beginning Monday the 14th of April 2014 with me Andy Zoltzman, the man recently voted least likely messiah by Expectant Jew magazine, which

Speaker 2 is a fair call I reckon. Just I don't have the admin skills.
I keep falling off donkeys. I can't work a crowd.
I get on with my dad and I don't have 12 friends. And

Speaker 2 joining me from New York City is the man whose poster campaign for his new TV show made David Letterman instantly pack it it in after 78 years in showbiz? It's

Speaker 2 Big Bertie Billboard himself, John Oliver. Scorched wall policy, Andy.
That is what they're going for. I did, that wasn't even the strangest thing I had to do this weekend.

Speaker 2 I did do a particularly weird thing on Monday.

Speaker 2 I had to do a charity gig for a new theater in which I was supposed to roast ex-Mayor Bloomberg, which wouldn't have been that big a deal, apart from the fact that he was there, which always makes any joke a little trickier to tell when you can see the direct consequence of the joke

Speaker 2 kind of desperately faking a smile in front of you.

Speaker 2 And there were some options that we'd written in terms of degrees of harshness of joke, let's say, you know, between light ribbing, heavy ribbing and partial removal of the rib cage entirely.

Speaker 2 And there's one joke in particular I thought I'd decide whether or not to do on the fly because I was fairly sure that in a room full of extremely rich people it might be a little too harsh to go down to anything other than aggressive silence.

Speaker 2 The joking question was, I know that Mayor Bloomberg is a tremendous fan of theatre, so I'd like to show off my acting chops for a moment, if I may, and then I would turn around, ruffle my hair, turn back around and say, you did a fantastic job as Mayor.

Speaker 2 Now, the problem with that being that one, everyone in that particular room loved him, and two, it involved looking him directly in the eye.

Speaker 2 However, the decision of whether to do it or not ended up being made for me, though, because I've a reaction he had to another joke about the controversial stop and frisk policy that he oversaw the New York police enact on minorities during his time in office.

Speaker 2 And that joke was, people have criticised stop and frisk, but I truly believe it's completely random. It's just like roulette, where you spin the wheel and the ball lands on black 87% of the time.

Speaker 2 And he laughed at that so hard

Speaker 2 that I thought, you know what, f ⁇ him. Because

Speaker 2 he was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. despite the fact that he was literally the only person in the room who was definitely not allowed to laugh at that joke.

Speaker 2 So I then mentally decided not just to do the first joke, but to close with it and when I did, it bombed so hard that honestly the only person laughing in the entire room was me. That was it.

Speaker 2 Still, you know, bit of fun, honey, bit of fun. I like roasting.
Bit of fun. Bit of fun.

Speaker 2 Some world-class graffiti, though, as you mentioned, already appearing on my posters around the city. One, my favorite, worked ambitiously in the medium of collage,

Speaker 2 which entailed ripping my face off my body and attaching it to the face of a bikini model in the next door poster. Meaning that essentially my body had no head and my head had a body of massive boobs.

Speaker 2 The bar has been set pretty high. A Hitler mustache won't cut it anymore.
You need to bring in other mediums to it.

Speaker 2 I had a very odd gig this week as well in which

Speaker 2 I gave a speech at the launch dinner for the Wisden Cricketers Almanac, which is the annual Bible of cricket, the most revered book in the greatest human invention

Speaker 2 ever concocted. And I had to give a speech in the long room at Lourdes, basically the most famous room in cricket, in front of some of the most famous cricketers England's ever produced.

Speaker 2 And last year... Where did that go, Andy? Where did that go?

Speaker 2 The guy who did the equivalent speech last year was

Speaker 2 international showbiz legend Michael Palin of Monty Bython fame. So

Speaker 2 it was, I guess you would say the recession hits hard.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean that is definitely that is that is a trade down. That is going from that is basically going from a top-end Lamborghini to an aged donkey in terms of transport.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 it went went reasonably well, although David Gower, who was one of my favourite cricketers growing up, didn't laugh quite as much as I was hoping he might. But

Speaker 2 it was still, it was basically as close as I will ever get to playing international cricket, is doing a gig in the home of cricket in its inner sanctum. So

Speaker 2 yeah, it was,

Speaker 2 it certainly went a lot better than it could have done. Yeah.
F David Garrow there.

Speaker 2 Even if he did have a cover drive that just made you want to write poems.

Speaker 2 This is Bugle 266 266.

Speaker 2 Of course, the 266 were a six-piece punk band in the 1970s who never actually played a gig together because they were generally too sick due to all of them having chronic illnesses.

Speaker 2 The most they ever got on stage was four, and even then, one of them had to leave after one song due to a stomach virus. The 266, I believe you can still get

Speaker 2 their works on some websites.

Speaker 2 The 14th of April, John, this is a historic anniversary in the history of words. In 1828, this was the date that Noah Webster copyrighted his first dictionary in America.

Speaker 2 So in tribute to that, the first Webster dictionary, we will be using several words that appeared in that dictionary almost, well, it's 186 years later. Shows the power of the man.

Speaker 2 As always, our section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, with spring springing, summer on the way, hemisphere permitting, we give you part one of the exclusive Bugle Audio Picnic.

Speaker 2 Ah, there we go.

Speaker 2 That story in the bin this week.

Speaker 2 Top story this week, Ballot Bonanza, India Election Edition. John, I'm going to have to stop you before you get into that.
There's just some breaking news that's far more important than that.

Speaker 2 British baby shits itself in brand new hemisphere.

Speaker 2 Alleges New Zealand-based scientist George Windsor-Middleton, the naught-year-old professional prince, has been accused today of soiling his God-given royal nappies south of the equator for the first time on the New Zealand leg of his lifelong bow down before me, I could have you all killed world tour.

Speaker 2 Kneel before the baby, Dr. Zinzanette.
Kneel before the baby, you sheep!

Speaker 2 Dr.

Speaker 2 Zinzanette Ratapatutu Frauch from the Auckland Institute of Science claimed that Prince George, who's reportedly princed at least one thing or person every single day of his nine-month-long life so far, is likely to have, in her words, done some extremely unroyal business at some point during the first three days of the tour, on which his support acts include his father and mother, who work respectively as a prince, family business, and a prettily dressed balm for all her nation's woes.

Speaker 2 Dr.

Speaker 2 Ratapatuju Frautch admitted that royal babies might be magic and excrete their unusables in the form of a high-end designer perfume, but claimed that, if not, all those cute little pictures of a happy baby playing with its future subjects and possessions are just a big stinking lie.

Speaker 2 Why don't they tell us what's really going on?

Speaker 2 Prince George of several fixed debaux did not deny the accusation directly, but was overheard gurgling in Morse code words to the effect of, be thankful that I am merciful, for my vengeance would otherwise be deadly, before hurling his crown across the crush and knocking a child minder spark out before glaring at the camera and belching kepiche.

Speaker 2 There was some terrible reporting here about the baby in New Zealand. And

Speaker 2 they were following the first baby play date with him, you know, the baby king basically in a room of baby peasants crawling around.

Speaker 2 And a lot of news was made of the fact that apparently he stole one of the other baby's toys and he did not steal that toy Andy because under the monarchy under the rules of the monarchy he merely found a toy that was already technically his

Speaker 2 he's taking that toy back he's entitled to that toy and that other baby can come visit that toy in the British Museum between the hours of nine and five weekdays otherwise that baby needs to shut the f ⁇ up

Speaker 2 so are you going to get him on your show as a as a guest that's that is the plan because he's not done many

Speaker 2 He's not done many interviews yet, has he?

Speaker 2 No, I mean,

Speaker 2 if you could get the first words of the baby king,

Speaker 2 that would be a huge scoop.

Speaker 2 First words. I don't know if Googoo Gaga counts or if give me all of your money, I deserve it.

Speaker 2 That's probably what that's probably what his blood is going to be telling him to say.

Speaker 2 Power to the people. That'll be it.

Speaker 2 Power to the people.

Speaker 2 Power to people.

Speaker 2 Behold the baby king.

Speaker 2 So anyway, in a smaller news,

Speaker 2 the India's election began this week and it is so big that it's technically going to take five weeks to complete.

Speaker 2 This truly is a big deal, this election, but somehow not quite so big that there is any f ⁇ ing coverage on TV about it here whatsoever.

Speaker 2 Because that would presumably interfere with the current round-the-clock CNN coverage of the search for the missing plane. Did it ping, Andy? Did it ping?

Speaker 2 Everybody be quiet. I think I heard heard a ping.

Speaker 2 The scale of the election in India alone is staggering before you even get into the political relevance. More than 814 million Indians are eligible to vote in the polls.

Speaker 2 It is the biggest election in the history of the world. Well, biggest political election.

Speaker 2 I believe that technically more people may have voted here on whether or not a squirrel falling asleep on a chipmunk was, and I quote, the cutest video ever.

Speaker 2 But more people will vote in the Indian election than voted in the last six US presidential elections combined. And America should frankly see that as a direct challenge.

Speaker 2 This is a country whose entire belief system is based on American superiority. Andy, they cannot let this stand.
They have to find a way to get more people to vote next time.

Speaker 2 Give hamsters the vote, if that's what it takes, and then frantically breed hamsters. They must respond.

Speaker 2 They must.

Speaker 2 It is a big challenge. I mean a five-week voting period as well, split across nine stages across India's many states.
I mean, maybe America should consider that. A five-week vote.

Speaker 2 I mean, that could lead to a lot of TV pundits just physically exploding on screen.

Speaker 2 Bio buildup got too much to sustain.

Speaker 2 I mean, technically, it's already an 18-month-long season, but sure, we could spread out the actual voting as well.

Speaker 2 Done, done.

Speaker 2 Obama described American democracy. He said,

Speaker 2 in a nation of 300 million, he said, democracy can be noisy, messy, and complicated.

Speaker 2 I think he said that just after he'd woken from a nightmare about trying to change the diaper on a giant baby Congress that simply wouldn't stop simultaneously crying, screaming, giggling, vomiting and shitting.

Speaker 2 So when you upscale that, John, as I believe the technical term is, to a country of 1.2 billion people with, as you say, 800 million voters, it's not so much noisy, messy, and complicated as being like 250 simultaneous megadeth concerts on the battlefields of Passchendae being attended by emotional teenage neuroscientists who've all just submitted scripts for the new Matrix movie.

Speaker 2 It is complicated, John. It is beyond the comprehension of any human brain.

Speaker 2 There are 15,000 candidates running from 500 political parties and yet for the first time ever in India there is a none of the above category on voting machines.

Speaker 2 So India could still end up voting for no one out of 15,000 options. And if that happens, Andy, does that not technically mean that India becomes British again? Isn't that the default?

Speaker 2 None of the above, I'm reading between those lines. Hello, Sanjip.
Put that bag over there and get me my toast.

Speaker 2 There's an old way Britain could get back in control. According to the

Speaker 2 2001 census, over 70% of the Indian population lives in a total of 640,000 villages.

Speaker 2 Now, if it's anything like the villages where I grew up in southeast England, then there is a lively possibility that the British Tory Party could win this election. election.

Speaker 2 I imagine Indian villages aren't quite as well to do as the villages of Kent. But you never know, John.
You never know.

Speaker 2 Those 15,000 potential candidates or candidates are expected to spend around $5 billion on campaigning, which is apparently second only to the most expensive campaign in history.

Speaker 2 $7 billion on the US presidential campaign of 2012, Andy. Yes, number one, suck it, India.
And that really puts the 2012 campaign into perspective.

Speaker 2 Because to spend that much money on so many fewer people than live in India, that really brings it home that holy shit, we spent a lot of money on the election back then.

Speaker 2 America spends more on democracy than anyone else, Andy. Therefore, it clearly loves it more.
The more you love something, the more you spend on it. That is the rule of any good absent father.
Fact.

Speaker 2 Fact.

Speaker 2 And the records are still said to be broken here too, so don't even think about going big at India because Kentucky is apparently potentially spending a hundred million dollars on just their senate race in the midterms this year.

Speaker 2 $100 million to become senator of Kentucky. Kentucky, Andy.
I mean no offense, Kentucky, but you know, you are Kentucky. That's...

Speaker 2 It's just Kentucky. So I'm just presenting that as a fact.
$100 million for Kentucky seems like, you know, it's a lot for what is undeniably Kentucky.

Speaker 2 But as I said, trying to understand Indian politics, to me, that is like trying to cook a 12-course haute cuisine dinner in someone else's kitchen, in that it is very difficult from the outside and pretty confusing, even if you're a top chef and have been basically staying in the kitchen for your entire life.

Speaker 2 And obviously, corruption is a huge issue in Indian politics, and it's starting to affect the electoral landscape.

Speaker 2 There's not so much fingers in the till is India, as giant designer gloves made of tills.

Speaker 2 The Economist magazine claimed that in the past decade of Congress party rule in India, politicians and officials are reckoned to have taken bribes worth between 4 billion and 12 billion US dollars.

Speaker 2 Now, you just, you have to admire the work rate on that, John. That is.

Speaker 2 India's economy has been growing, so maybe they just see it as some form of commission. But that is, these guys are the knobby styles of political corruption.

Speaker 2 The two key candidates, the two favourites, are Raul Gandhi, member of the dynastic Gandhis,

Speaker 2 who is somehow underdog to Narendra Modi, the ex-Chief Minister of Gujarat. And Modi is running on a bold campaign slogan of toilets, not temples.

Speaker 2 So he's running on a pro-toilet platform, and that is a strong platform, Andy.

Speaker 2 It works both as a positive for him and a negative for his opponent, because he's essentially saying, my opponent wants you to shit in the streets. And that is a strong attack.

Speaker 2 Or to shit in the temple, which is even stronger. Even stronger.
The point is, it's brilliant campaigning.

Speaker 2 He's a very controversial figure, Narendra Modi. To say he splits opinion is like saying Wayne Gretzky wasn't afraid of putting on a pair of ice skates.
It is a considerable understatement.

Speaker 2 In one article, in successive sentences,

Speaker 2 I read one writer say, no other chief minister in India evokes as much hatred as Narendra Modi. And no other chief minister in India commands as much respect as Narendra Modi.

Speaker 2 So there we see the divisive nature of the man. I guess, you know, a lot of political leaders have been divisive.
King King Solomon in that famous baby slicing incident. So potentially divisive.

Speaker 2 The difference being that Narendra Modi, I don't think he would necessarily wait for one of the mothers to say, please don't cut that baby in half.

Speaker 2 By that time, he'd probably already be halfway through cooking two massive portions of roast half baby whilst announcing, look, I've made enough food for everyone. Why is that woman crying?

Speaker 2 His opponents say that he is an autocrat who failed to control what was a deadly anti-Muslim riot in Gujarat in 2002 where a thousand people were killed.

Speaker 2 And he's not only denied wrongdoing, Andy, he said that his only regret from the time is that he failed to control the media well.

Speaker 2 That is not an ideal response. Just say,

Speaker 2 I should have handled the media better. For that, I apologise.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 Short of putting blindfolds on them, I'm not exactly sure what he's implying there.

Speaker 2 He was on the same subject, because

Speaker 2 a lot of people do understandably hold this against him. When I

Speaker 2 asked my Indian friends about him, their response has generally been a kind of hollow look of fear for the future of their countries and a swift change of subjects.

Speaker 2 One of my friends just refers to him simply as the mass murderer,

Speaker 2 which is also a term that was used about him by the chief minister of state for Karnataka. So it's not just ordinary people.
It's his fellow politicians describe him as a mass murderer.

Speaker 2 And he was quoted again in The Economist magazine as saying that he regretted Muslim suffering as he would that of a puppy run over by a car. Now,

Speaker 2 I guess there's a number of explanations for this. One, he really, really loves puppies.
Two, he really, really hates Muslims.

Speaker 2 Three, he is obsessive about not damaging the suspension on his car, which is understandable given the state of Indian roads.

Speaker 2 In which my in my experience, booking a booking making a booking with a taxi company is tantamount to making a will.

Speaker 2 Or the other explanation

Speaker 2 his own explanation was that Hindus care about all life, puppy, Muslim, or otherwise. I guess the difference being that he's never authorised the mass slaying of a thousand puppies.
But

Speaker 2 he didn't go on to say that anyway.

Speaker 2 So basically, many Indians trust Modi about as much as Zoe the Zebra would trust Leopold the Lion if he came round to a house and said, Can your little boy Zach come round to play with my lad Lionel?

Speaker 2 He loves playing with other animals his age whilst slavering unstoppably with a napkin tucked into his collar and hiding a bottle of ketchup behind his back.

Speaker 2 But he does still have a massive level of support. He did a, seems to have done a reasonable job with the Gujarat economy.

Speaker 2 He's relatively untainted by the corruption stick, but it is frankly a little bit terrifying that this man who's basically built his career on the politics of division could soon be in charge of the world's largest democracy.

Speaker 2 I know a lot of my Indian pals are not altogether comfortable with this. In a curious twist, this week, after the voting had started, Modi admitted something about himself for the first time.

Speaker 2 Now, I'm going to give you a multiple choice quiz, John. Can you guess which of these things he finally admitted for the first time?

Speaker 2 Was it A, that he once broke into Mahatma Gandhi's old house and drew a pair of cartoon trousers on a portrait of the great man? Was it B, that he once travelled on a bus without a ticket?

Speaker 2 Was it C, that he is totally addicted to bass? Was it D, that he is indeed an Islamophobic mass murderer and was just stringing people along for the the last 12 years as a joke?

Speaker 2 Or E, that he is married?

Speaker 2 Well, I think probably I'm hoping for his sake, Andy, it's that he's totally addicted to bass because that is a struggle that we all fight on a daily basis.

Speaker 2 Because we're all addicted to bass. It's just some of us choose to fight it on a daily basis.
I'm a recovering bass addict myself, Andy.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm afraid it wasn't that. Well, he's not said that out loud, either.
It was E.

Speaker 2 He's admitted for the first time that he is married.

Speaker 2 Which is odd when you compare it with Western politics, where politicians generally are desperate to parade their spouses around like a walking military badge, even when they spend most of their time confluting with other women, other men, cameraphones, or fruit.

Speaker 2 But it's a kind of bizarre story. Apparently, married when young, separated when almost equally young, took a vow of celibacy to devote himself to politics.

Speaker 2 Which again is opposite to how most people in our part of the world approach politics, which is basically just to have some improved chat up lines. And so there it is.

Speaker 2 It's finally come out this week in his official election registration that he has a wife. I also found a webpage listing five good points of Narendra Modi.

Speaker 2 They listed these: one, excellent oratorical skills. Two, charisma.
Three, quick decision-making ability. Four, clarity of vision.
Five, strong base support.

Speaker 2 Now, can anyone think of any other political leaders from history who who possess those five qualities?

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 2 I guess what we can infer from that is that those five good qualities could equally be described as five bad qualities, particularly if you score five out of five from those five.

Speaker 2 Arts news now and well I'm imagine John America has been absolutely captivated by the exhibition of the artworks of the former president George George W. Bush.

Speaker 2 Have you seen the pictures? I have seen them Andy and you know I've sat in front of them and I've asked myself the question I think

Speaker 2 lots of people do when they stand in front of a work of art great or otherwise and that is what the f?

Speaker 2 What the f?

Speaker 2 Is that Angela Muck? What the f?

Speaker 2 Bush has always split the critics. The paintings are basically a series of portraits of great world figures that Bush found himself playing alongside, as I believe he recalls it.

Speaker 2 Described by various art critics as, quotes, the most erotic set of world leader portraits since Queen Victoria's New D Kings calendar of 1857.

Speaker 2 Another critic said, this is what Rembrandt would have done had he been alive today and had both of his arms cut off in a combine harvester racing accident.

Speaker 2 Another said, these truly awful schoolboy-level portraits are the best thing Mr. Bush has ever done done by a fing mile.

Speaker 2 Whilst Donald Rumsfeld described them as the greatest cultural achievement in the pantheon of human creativity.

Speaker 2 Bush has announced plans to paint a mural of some husky dogs playing wiffle bore on the roof of the Senate building.

Speaker 2 But of course he's not the first world leader to have done similar portraits.

Speaker 2 In fact, we've dug through the archives and discovered this audio portrait done by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the late 1930s, who used to do little audio portraits of all the world leaders he encountered.

Speaker 2 Mr. Hitler is a rather small man with a funny little moustache, hair like a wet rat.

Speaker 2 And the most extraordinary thing about the man is he has a quite ferocious six-pack and abs like a fucking wildebeest. The most intimidating man.
I found myself putty in his paws. Fascinating.

Speaker 2 That's never been broadcast before. That's been stuck on

Speaker 2 eight decades.

Speaker 2 Stunning. It's just stunning.

Speaker 2 In other news, and a bit of a follow-up to the environment story that we

Speaker 2 covered last week, if any of you can remember it beyond the story about Napoleon's penis,

Speaker 2 of course, there's concern about who's going to pay for all these measures that have to be taken.

Speaker 2 And the United Nations World's Institute for the Science of the Environment, UNWISE, has announced the selling of naming rights for cloud formations.

Speaker 2 Popular cloud types such as Cirrus, Cumulonimbus, Stratocumulus, Altostratus, Fluffy and Woolly are now set to be branded with the names of some of the world's leading companies.

Speaker 2 Virgin, whose interests range from airline travel and consumer finance to television, mobile phones, olive oil, islands, freshly fallen snow and the 1960s former Somerset batsman Roy Virgin, the first fully sponsored county cricketer, are reportedly interested in taking over the Cerro Cumulus Stratiformis clouds.

Speaker 2 Group overlord Richard Branson explained, We see these clouds as very much in tune with the 21st century customer. They don't want something heavy, brooding and portentous.

Speaker 2 They want something nice, pretty and unthreatening. The Virgin Sea Strats, as these clouds will be renamed, is the perfect cloud for today's busy young professional.

Speaker 2 I already own a collection of some of the most historic Serrocumulus stratiformacies in history, the ones that were in the sky on the day of Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953, and some of the ones from the day that Elvis died as well.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, Russian petroleum giant Babushko, that of course is the multi-billion ruble oil giant owned entirely by grannies, is rumoured to be considering a bid for the stormy classic Cumulonimbus, but could face competition from the Russian government itself, which is said to be keen on buying the cloud as a political gesture to symbolise its looming threats to the global political equilibrium.

Speaker 2 No further bullshit. Your witness.

Speaker 2 Your emails now and we have one here from Barbara Mendes-Joche

Speaker 2 from Brussels, brackets waffle capital of the world. You got there first, Barbara.
Well played.

Speaker 2 She says, dear John, Chris, and Andy, in order of perceived skills as MCs. Yes, Barbara, I think that's fair.

Speaker 2 I thought I would let you know that tonight I'm going to the European Parliament to watch MEPs take part in a freestyle hip-hop battle dueling on topics relevant to Europe.

Speaker 2 No, this is not a plotline from an as-yet uncreated European political satirical comedy where the political advisers

Speaker 2 it's a real event. MEPs are teamed up with real MCs

Speaker 2 and there are several rounds of the battle. The best thing is how transparent they are about courting the youth vote.

Speaker 2 They say this show aims to get young voters interested in European politics and the upcoming elections. Well,

Speaker 2 Andy,

Speaker 2 politicians engaging in a rap battle is going to drive young people not just away from politics, but probably towards suicide.

Speaker 2 You watch this and you think, I can't live in a world where this is allowable.

Speaker 2 I found a WebLink cadet. Here's just the audio.
I mean, the visual, believe me, is sickening enough. This is just the audio of a section of the one-hour 42-minute rap battle.
DJ! Okay, here we go.

Speaker 2 This is

Speaker 2 the saddest thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 Oh, BBC shout-out.

Speaker 2 a folks. We want to create more jobs, no people.

Speaker 2 Oh no,

Speaker 2 if you don't try, everybody knows it's our work, you will die.

Speaker 2 That's okay. Don't open the borders, it's not a solution.
We need to stop all the stores of order. It's to create more discussion.
Everybody knows that the time is rushing towards a new place.

Speaker 2 EU needs to be stronger. That's why.

Speaker 2 God, it has to stop.

Speaker 2 I can't take anymore. I can't stop.
Democracy is dead. I think that's what we've learnt.

Speaker 2 We've learned from that.

Speaker 2 I think that single event might have done more to destroy political unity and consensus in Europe than two world wars could ever manage.

Speaker 2 That's slightly unforgivable, isn't it?

Speaker 2 I mean, I guess the ancient Greeks have to take some responsibility for this and obviously the hip-hop movements in America.

Speaker 2 Here's another guy, Andy. Let's see.
Let's see what his flow is like.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 that was a random. Oh,

Speaker 2 oh, no. These are elected.

Speaker 3 By the way, I'm on Twitter.

Speaker 2 Oh, f you, by the way, I'm on Twitter.

Speaker 2 Oh, f

Speaker 2 you.

Speaker 2 Is there anything more revealing of that entire event than a man in the middle of a

Speaker 2 rap battle saying, by the way, I'm on Twitter. What does he rhyme that with? Hold on, what's the next line?

Speaker 2 That's clear.

Speaker 3 I was 17. Well, maybe we should league last week.
It was we could play some.

Speaker 2 He didn't even bother to rhyme it with Twitter, Andy. That was just a shout-out.
Shitter.

Speaker 2 Rhyme well spat, Chris. Thank you.
I think, you know, that could.

Speaker 2 I mean, we've got a potential referendum coming up on our membership of

Speaker 2 the European Union. I think they'll just

Speaker 2 play those raps. Come out.
I think that would be Britain basically rowing across the Atlantic.

Speaker 2 Dark days. Dark days for the concept of politics.
This email came in from Christine, who writes, Dear Hoagie the Dog, Freddy the Noman, Tash the Dead Dog.

Speaker 2 Too soon. Brackets in order of liveliness.
I mean, that's only 16 years ago that my dog passed away. That's

Speaker 2 that's an edgy joke.

Speaker 2 That's an edgy joke. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's unacceptable. I note from the BBC website that an article from October 2006 has for some reason just become the fifth most read on the BBC website.

Speaker 2 The article says that by the year 3000 humanity will split into two subspecies, one tall, handsome and intelligent and the other short, unattractive and dim.

Speaker 2 I would contend, however, that contrary to the findings of Herr Dr.

Speaker 2 Oliver Curry, evolutionary theorist at the London School of Economics and presumably a fully paid-up member of the National Socialiste Deutsche

Speaker 2 Arbeiterpartei,

Speaker 2 this has already happened in the sense that the world is split into buglers and non-buglers.

Speaker 2 Should I alert the media? asks Christine. Yours insincerely.
She signs it. So I don't know which side buglers

Speaker 2 would be on. I know I'm very much split between those

Speaker 2 when it comes to tall, handsome and intelligent.

Speaker 2 I used to be a maximum of one of those and even that has seriously fallen by the wayside due to an obsession with sport and an inability to concentrate.

Speaker 2 It's the more fun group. The second one's the more fun group, Andy.
That's where you want to be.

Speaker 2 So, do get your emails coming in to info at thebuglepodcast.com. Don't forget to check out our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle.
Just time to quickly replug my forthcoming gigs.

Speaker 2 17th of April, this Thursday, me, Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steele and Joe Wells doing Political Animal, The Utter Belly on London South Bank.

Speaker 2 1st of May, I'm doing my Cricket vs the World show and then two more Political Animal dates on the 8th of May and the 11th of June. I'm doing the Edinburgh Festival 13th to the 24th of August.

Speaker 2 I'm doing my Satirist for Hire show at the stand. Further details, no doubt, to be bombarded at you in a desperate effort to improve my ticket sales over the next few months.

Speaker 2 Just time for a quick roundup of the horoscopes. Libras, Capricorns, Geminis, and Tauruses may well hurt themselves if they hammer a rivet into their arms.

Speaker 2 Aries, Cancers, Virgos, Pisces, danger may lurk if you drop a toaster in the bath.

Speaker 2 And Sagittarius, Leos, Aquariums, and Scorpioids never give up unless things are looking unpromising or you've run out of time and money.

Speaker 2 So that's it.

Speaker 2 John, so you've got two weeks to go until

Speaker 2 the big launch of the

Speaker 2 showbiz event of this or any other millennium. Yep.

Speaker 2 How's it all shaping up? It's good, Andy. It's good.
Yep, not panicking at all. It's good.
It's fine.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 2 I love seeing my face plastered on buildings. I'll be entirely comfortable with it, Andy.
It's not weird at all.

Speaker 2 Well, what you need to do is have it plastered all over the walls in your own flat as well, and then you get more used to it. Yeah, that's a good idea.

Speaker 2 I know I've certainly done that. I've got a 10-foot portrait of myself above my bed, so when I wake up every morning, I feel special.

Speaker 2 So, we may or may not have a show next week, depending on

Speaker 2 various things, including quite how the tension in John's voice that you probably just picked up on there is registering.

Speaker 2 So, hopefully, we'll be back next week, but if not, we will have a sub-bugle to keep you going over the Easter weekend. And, yeah, have a fantastic Easter.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's a tough time of year for my lot.

Speaker 2 Well, you got what you wanted, Andrew. We lost a lot of market share.
Lost a lot. That was short-term decision-making.
Justice. Justice.

Speaker 2 He was killed. Bye-bye.

Speaker 2 Bye.