The Bugle – Marchive

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to Bugle 262 sub-episode alpha no full bugle this week.

But instead, we will take you back through the mists of history to tell you exactly what happened on the bugle in this week, mid-March, in each of the six years that we have been on air in our bugle history.

If indeed a podcast can be on air or in air, I don't know what the logistics are.

Anyway, let's go back to our first ever mid-March.

That, of course, was mid-March 2008.

Former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer has resigned after being linked to a prostitution ring.

This was a spectacular fall from Grace.

In fact, it was a plummet from Grace straight towards an open lion's mouth.

Whilst tugging on the release string of his backup parachute.

The now disgraced ex-governor of New York was at one point known as the Sheriff of Wall Street for his pursuing of dirty dealing in finance.

Now he's to be permanently known as that guy who spent $80,000 on whores.

Just goes to show how quick nicknames can change, Andy.

It's interesting though that whenever this story was reported, it always described these prostitutes as high-class prostitutes, in some cases even world-class prostitutes.

But I think that's quite reassuring.

At least the guy was playing top dollar.

And I think if he's prepared to make sure his Wang gets the best available service, then he's probably going to do the same for the state that he's supposed to be governing.

If Elliot Spitzer can't do his job without spending $5,000 an hour to boost his ego, that's not his fault.

That is the fault of the people who elected him without first taking the time to ask him whether he needed the assistance of top-end courtesans to function.

Andy, the greatest country in the world should have the greatest legislators in the world who should be banging the greatest prostitutes in the world.

If he wants to have a political style that relies so heavily on moral grandstanding, then at least he's having the decency to research what it's like to be immoral.

There is nothing more hypocritical than a squeakier than squeaky clean politician standing up on a special plinth and giving an eye-watering speech about how important upstanding moral values are without having the decency and courage to consort with hookers, deal Class A drugs, or take bribes from the mob.

That is the very least they could do.

Otherwise, they'd be no better than the Pope telling us not to play snooker.

Good point.

And

in a now almost unsurprising twist, he had also campaigned for much harder penalties for men who use prostitutes.

And like you say, does this not make him a great lawman though, Andy?

He managed to set legal traps that would ensnare men like himself.

Men who had themselves designed these legal traps and then got caught in them.

Men like himself who had set traps so well that even designers of those legal traps, like men like himself, could not wriggle free, so well designed were those laws.

He must be so proud and ashamed of himself.

This story is both the reason he was and now isn't governor.

It's incredible how often these powerful men turn out to deeply desire that which they rail against the hardest.

We had it here recently with Larry Craig who repeatedly supported homophobic legislation before the whole knock-knock who's there, Larry, Larry Who, Larry Craig, can I please touch your penis in this airport bathroom incident.

But he's not alone, John.

He's not alone.

Noam Chomsky, the arch enemy of the American right, actually goes to bed every night cuddling a little woolly Donald Rumsfeld that his granny knitted for him.

And Shami Chakrabarty, the head of the human rights group Liberty, keeps 750 slaves chained to a giant radiator in her garden shed and makes them write out her speeches in illuminated text.

It's clearly true, whenever someone is railing hardest

And in other resignation news, Admiral William Fallon, the commander of the US Middle East forces, has quit.

He's recently made controversial statements suggesting that invading Iran would be silly and that the US has taken its eye off the ball in Afghanistan.

I repeat, these are allegedly controversial statements rather than bald statements of fact.

He's made the naive unpatriotic mistake of suggesting that diplomacy might be preferable to conflict in Iran, to which a Pentagon insider responded, he might as well have put some Stars and Stripes underpants on and set fire to himself.

He was known to have been heavily against the bombing of Iran due to the lack of credible evidence, to which the president reportedly said, That's a lovely thought, little girl.

Why don't you paint me a picture of it and stick it to my fridge?

So, who do you think's in line to succeed Falanjon as head of the U.S.

troops in the Middle East?

The concept of chaos.

Right.

It's going to be given an official admiralship.

Admiral Chaos, it's going to be called.

I heard a rumour that Joe Torre was in line for the job, the former New York Yankee Supremo.

He's reported to be bored of the major leagues and wanted to see if his trademark hangdog jowls can bring priests to the Holy Land.

And also, an outsider is Brian Ashton, the Underfire England rugby coach.

He's rumoured to have accepted that he really doesn't know what he's doing on the rugby field anymore and is keen to see if he can get the Middle East to do some instinctive unrehearsed peace dealing under pressure.

Well, good luck with that, Ashton.

If you're going to try that, at least pick the right type of negotiators.

There's no use asking them to negotiate off the cuff and then getting Jamie Noon to hammer out the details of a ceasefire.

That's one for our American listeners.

2009.

Top story this week and OMG,

the Pope, as they call him in Queens, pa pa pa pee unit.

Do they really, John?

No.

What kind of church have you been going to?

You know, you know the Pope, the one who does his business in the woods, that one.

He went to Africa this week.

And now, I know that sounds like the start of a joke, but it's actually true.

He's there for a week-long tour.

And what a tour it's going to be.

Andy, he's going to be playing all his greatest hits.

God hates abortions, gay marriage is wrong.

That one's been very good to him over the years.

And of course, the crowd wouldn't let him leave without that old Catholic classic, don't use condoms.

It's the stairway to heaven of his back catalog.

And he put his divine foot in his divine mouth even before landing in a plane he wasn't he wasn't personally flying there the pope can't fly as far as i know by saying condoms are not the answer in the continent's fight against aids

here's the thing andy they are

that's why it's so annoying that he would say something like that and when i say annoying i mean f ⁇ ing annoying

Now, you want to give people space to say whatever they want.

When it's a man in his supposedly holy, compassionate position saying things like that, that, you really want to tell him to go f ⁇ ing.

I mean, you don't say that because of the position he's in, but you desperately want to.

Of course, some in the Catholic Church, John, say that AIDS has no trap with condoms and that your cheeky little AIDS virus looks at latex and thinks, I'm getting through that.

I'll tell you, I'm getting through that, and I'm going to infect.

That is just the way I roll.

Of course, science does take a slightly different view from that.

The Pope, of course, is suggesting abstinence rather than contraception.

And I guess at least you can certainly not accuse the man of not practicing what he quite literally preaches.

I mean, I guess you can't really take abstinence much further than being Pope.

These days, anyway, of course, back in the Middle Ages, being Pope was pretty much an excuse for dipping it in anything that moved.

That's it.

I mean, who better to give advice on sex, Andy, than the Pope?

That's certainly a superb area of expertise for him.

I've always said, if I want advice on theology, I'll go to the UN Surgeon General.

But if I want advice on sexually transmitted diseases, I head straight for the pontiff.

You can't buy that kind of experience.

Benedict said that the Roman Catholic Church was, and I quote, at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.

Let's really hope they don't actually represent the forefront, or people are going to want to know where all that AIDS research money has gone.

Oh, they are at the forefront, John.

They're just on the wrong side of it, putting up barbed wire and machine gun posts.

He went on to say, you can't resolve this with the distribution of condoms.

On the contrary, it increases the problem.

And then went on to even object to the use of condoms between married couples.

Okay, that pushed him over the edge, Andy.

He can now go f himself.

As long as he does it safely.

I think the best way of looking at this situation is that reality and the Pope have basically had a divorce.

Now,

I know the Catholic Church has a very strict view on divorce as well, but let's face it, the relationship between the Vatican and Reality has been increasingly strained for decades.

I'm not sure they've even been talking for the last few years.

It's best for both parties that they go their separate ways.

And good luck to them.

let's hope they each find someone else.

I think the Pope may have a very happy future with magic.

I don't really want to talk about this John.

I've had far more children than the Pope has.

I've had two to nil I think.

So that means I've had infinitely more children percentage-wise than the Pope.

So in many ways he's done more personally to curve overpopulation than I have.

But I guess on a broader scale I have never discouraged the people of the world from taking basic health and safety measures to control the spread of disease and reduce unwanted pregnancy.

So I guess in this one it's sort of sort one all, I guess.

Yeah, this issue has divided even clergy who work with AIDS patients.

About 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV and in 2007 three quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide were there.

So to combat this, instead of condoms, what is the Vatican's big plan for combating the AIDS pandemic in Africa?

They favor non-artificial contraception, including fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex.

And that's it.

Keep it simple.

It also seems to be a plan from the 17th century when people were too busy dying of plague to worry about dying of AIDS.

And not content to throw Hail Marys at lethal diseases, he also turned his holy eye to the global economy, making an appeal for international solidarity.

Now you might think, oh, what does that mean?

Is the Pope about to say something interesting?

Well, no, he isn't, because he went on to point out that while the church does not propose specific economic solutions, it can give spiritual and moral suggestions.

Oh, that's great.

Everything's going to be fine then.

Spirituality is, of course, the cornerstone of Keynesian economics.

I don't blame the Pope for the spread of AIDS.

I think we're shooting the messenger here.

I think there's only one thing to blame for the spread of AIDS, and that is the AIDS virus itself.

Right.

When it's cocky, it's arrogant, it's selfish, has no real regard for the well-being of others.

It's an arsehole, isn't it?

Yeah, well, without wanting to sound racist, I'll go as far as to say as I dislike all viruses.

I'm not a violent man, but if a virus knocked on the door of the bugle officers right now, I would punch it right in the face.

A little shit.

Spoiling people's lives.

Of course, you then get the virus rights campaigners picketing the bugle and trying to shut us down, and you have some guy abseiling down my microphone wrapped in a save the virus banner, but, you know, no one wants to see that.

I'm prepared to stand up for my beliefs.

Both the French and the German foreign ministers agreed that the Pope's comments was a hugely irresponsible move.

And when you've united the Germans and the French behind something, you know you are doing something bad.

Because to get those two together is not easy.

Throughout history, it's basically only only been the opposition to the last Iraq war and this.

That's it.

Pope also told a mass in Africa that Africa is a continent of hope, which does seem to me looking at the state of Africa at a bit of a positive spin, John.

I guess it's a bit like an estate age in telling you that a property's got a lot of potential after it's just been bombed during an earthquake in the middle of a snake infestation.

2010.

A truly memorable ethics violation is a thing of beauty.

It's a work of art.

It must have that perfect balance of a large element of hypocrisy, an undertone of arrogance, and maybe the occasional dash of sexual assault for flavour.

And someone who mastered...

Someone

who mastered...

Mastered this recipe recently was Congressman Eric Massa of New York's 29th district.

Hold your head up high, Eric, and now hang it down in shame.

He resigned on Monday under the cloud of an ethics probe, having been accused of groping three of his staffers.

But that is just the tip of his extremely tawdry iceberg.

All kinds of male sexual assaults dating back to his time in the Navy are now emerging around the married father of three.

It's also not a charge he particularly denies.

He went on Glenn Beck's hourly pulpit bonanza on Tuesday, defending himself by saying, Not only did I grope a staffer, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe, and then four men jumped on top of me.

It was my 50th birthday.

First off,

first off, it sounds like Massa was under the misapprehension that the staffer involved had a particularly ticklish penis.

And also,

that is not, unless I'm horrifically mistaken, a 50th birthday tradition.

You get to pick someone in the room, ticker them to the point of asphyxiation, and then four other men will pile on.

There's no better way to say goodbye to your 40s.

Yep, facing an ethics probe following alleged sexual harassment of a younger male member of staff.

And ironically, member of staff is the nickname Masa uses for his Django Badango.

He's admitted also that he used language that he described as salty.

Which is

pretty vague, but I guess kind of expressive.

He said, I did use language in the privacy of my own home and in my inner office that after 24 years in the Navy might make a chief petty officer feel uncomfortable.

Crumbs, the mind boggles.

What could he mean?

Could he have said, holy shit, there's a torpedo about to hit our ship?

If I was a chief petty officer, that would make me feel pretty uncomfortable.

As would, hey, fellas, let's liven things up and see if we can ram that iceberg.

Or even, that Japanese pilot looks like he doesn't know where he's going.

This isn't an airport.

What a nitwit.

Perhaps the best detail of this whole story concerned Ram Emmanuel,

the famously foul-mouthed White House chief of staff, who massacre confronted him in in the Congressional Gym showers over his refusing to vote on the presidential healthcare bill.

He said, I'm sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Ram Emmanuel, not even with a towel, his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn't going to vote for the president's budget.

Masse said, you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?

I don't know that, Andy.

But I'm guessing that the answer is extremely awkward.

I think it depends, John.

No, I mean, it's just, it's one of the fundamental questions of human life.

How awkward is it to have a political argument with a naked man?

You know, that goes back to the very start of humanity.

Adam and Eve probably wasn't that awkward.

You know, just imagine it.

Adam saying, well, I just think democracy is a needless luxury in a world with a population of two love.

Now put that apple down and stop talking to snakes.

But, you know, if you're having a, it also depends who you're having the argument with, John.

Hitler, for example.

I'd guess any political argument with Hitler is awkward, whether he was wang in or wang out.

I guess in a way, probably harder to keep a straight face if he was in the

probably harder to keep a straight face if he was in the Nazi buff as he used to get quite animated talking about politics and he must have well had a bit of bounce and flop whilst he was banging on about stuff.

Also I guess depends on your attitude towards nudity.

I mean the Swedes probably think nothing of having a political discussion in the raw.

They probably think it's odd to talk about anything with clothes on in fact.

And also depends on the location, you know, in a sauna or a nuda speech you probably just forget about the nudity after a bit.

But more awkward in a more formal traditional political setting like the houses of parliament.

I mean, why do you think British MPs voted for the Corn Laws in the 19th century?

It's because then Prime Minister Lord Liverpool started stripping off until people agreed with him.

Or the UN.

Now, now I think Chavez is the man to put this to the test, John.

Oh, yeah.

I can think of no more appropriate naked man to launch a political discussion at the UN than Chavez.

I want to find out if his balls are anti-American, too.

That would be great.

Chavez just walking naked up to the podium and the first word out of his mouth being, what?

Because it also depends on what you're discussing, John.

True.

How awkward it is.

If it's whether or not underpants should be punitively taxed, it might be appropriate.

Whether or not Willys should have the vote, similarly.

But how to legislate against illegal sex trafficking, that would look bad.

But I guess under my modern British repress standard, Dandy, it sounds excruciatingly awkward.

But the problem is it also sounds funny enough to know that you couldn't really relay that anecdote in an interview and expect people not to find it hysterical.

And apparently, interestingly, quite a lot of business gets done in the Congressional Gym, and

perhaps this butt-naked bipartisan summit should be continually encouraged.

If Congress cannot get a piece of legislation moving clothed, they should have to do it naked.

WAPs and wangs waggling in the wind.

It might stop the kind of political grandstanding that's poisoning both houses at the moment.

It's a well-known fact that people are 84% less pompous when they're naked and 62% more hony.

Because if you think about it, Andy, the ancient Greeks got a lot done because they did most of their legislating when in the bath together.

You see a whole new side of someone.

I'm telling you, Andy, naked Congress.

It'll help Washington work much more effectively and will make the State of the Union address unmissable television.

Furthermore, any nervous president will not have to try to picture everyone naked because they'll already be that way.

God, it's probably lucky that didn't apply when Clinton was in charge.

Otherwise, he'd have been standing some way back from his podium.

Now,

2011.

Andy, I think I'm suddenly starting to look forward to the royal wedding.

That is how bad things are.

That level of distracting nonsense is all of a sudden very enticing.

In fact, they really need to ratchet up this wedding a notch now.

They're not just distracting Britain from our disastrous economy, they're distracting the entire planet from the world of shit that we're currently wading in.

Never mind, never mind, Andy, the cost-cutting measures and Kate Middleton travelling in a car rather than the gold carriage.

That's over now.

What we now need is for her to be travelling not only in a golden carriage, but a golden carriage that's hanging from the bottom of a golden helicopter before driving through the streets on a golden hovercraft.

Anything less, and they're going to allow people to start staring into the abyss again.

We need something big and something shiny, and we need it now.

Finally, the royal family are relevant again.

It's been an absolute titanic tussle, John.

And just when you think mankind has worked its way back into the lead as the biggest tool versus nature, nature pulls another piece of dickery out of its capacious nutsack.

I mean, this we had Gaddafi versus plate tectonics.

It's been like the Federa Nadal 2008 Wimbledon final, but more so, and with a similar sense of deepening gloom at the Tennessee Fabloom was merely due to the British evening, not an inescapable chasm of despair.

And we've had the big the nuclear scare in the fing humankind nuclear plant in Japan.

And I've said it before and I will say it again.

I fing hate the Earth's crust.

I mean

I know it's not all bad, John, but it can be a real prick when it wants to be.

Selfish, inconsiderate, always doing what it wants to do without thinking of the effect on others.

It's like a badly behaved two-year-old after a disappointing Christmas.

And this millennium has already seen way too much of Mother Nature really letting herself down as a parent.

And if the authorities had any balls, they would take all of her 7 billion children straight into care.

She clearly hates most of them.

Well, that's it.

This is not the first time you said it, Andy.

Regularly on the bugle, you have said vocally that you are not a fan of tectonic plates.

And I'm guessing that nothing has won you round on that score recently.

Tectonic plates are complete arseholes, and nature has a lot to answer for there.

Clearly, some big arsehole points, in fact, going to nature regarding the events in Japan.

But let's also award a few arsehole points to mankind as well for building nuclear reactors right on top of those tectonic plates.

Quite a collaboration between the worst part of nature and humanity there, Andy.

Quite a depressing duet.

But another way to sum up just how big the news has been

would be this.

When was the last time you heard the word Egypt mentioned in the news?

That revolution there was only just over a month ago.

Has a revolution ever so quickly fallen out of the headlines?

They must have thought a month ago Wow, this is a pivotal moment in world history.

People are going to be talking about us for years.

Hold on a second.

Why is that camera crew packing their stuff up?

Where the f ⁇ are they going?

2012.

And Andy, you don't really think of murderous dictators as human beings, and that's generally for a pretty good reason, because they tend to lack any of the behavioral qualities that qualify you for humanity.

Things like conscience, mercy, and kindness are not high on dictators' personality profiles.

But, you know, you don't want to humanise them, but sometimes it is worth it when that humanising turns them out to be not so much intimidating monsters, but rather pathetic little dweebs who in another life will be having their lunch money taken from them and hung from coat hooks by the back of their underpants.

Hitler, for instance, was rumoured to only have one testicle, of course, which does help in a way to slightly demystify him, even if it also makes you slightly concerned about what he would have been capable of doing with the power of both testicles intact.

So Assad of Syria has been very busy over the last 12 months doing some intensive interior decorating of his own country in the form of bombing his own cities and murdering his own people.

He's a flawed human being, Andy.

He really puts the cock into that man is a total cock.

But we now have quite a lot more personal information about him than we did this time last week, because the Guardian newspaper in London has published more than 3,000 documents the Syrian opposition claims are emails downloaded from private accounts belonging to Assad and his wife.

It's basically a glimpse into the internet history of a tyrant and a missus tyrant.

And you can't help but juxtapose what they were doing online with what they were doing in the real world.

For instance, in February When the siege of Homs was taking place and Syrian citizens were being killed in the streets, Mrs.

Assad was apparently browsing the internet for luxury shoes and writing to her friends about six inch high heels that cost more than five thousand dollars.

That's a little let them eat cakey Andy.

Just a touch.

That's a little let them wear three inch heels.

It'll be easier for them to run away from tank bombardments they're about to receive.

Also, she is really screwing up the customer recommendations for other people who buy those shoes Andy.

If you like these six inch high heels you may also like firing on unarmed groups of civilians.

Oh, I'm not sure about that but I do love those shoes, so maybe I'll give it a go.

Customers who bought these shoes also tortured political dissidents for information.

Well, that does sound fun.

It'll be much easier to do that in a flat-soled pump like this one.

Do you think there's a correlation between the height of her heels and the murderousness of her husband?

Because didn't she always used to wear pumps in the old days?

Just flat-soled pumps.

Or before he just started unloading tanks on people.

And then the higher her heels got.

So are you appealing for Mrs.

Assad to

lower your heels?

All I know is that Mrs.

Pol Pott was a professional stilt walker.

That's a fact.

That is a fact.

Also in February, at the outset of the assaults on Homs,

Assad sent

Mrs.

Assad the lyrics of a song by the country star Blake Shelton.

I'm not aware of Blake Shelton's Urvor.

He's quite a big star here, here, isn't he?

He is a big star, yes.

If you like country music.

And does he wear

bad country music?

He's no stranger to the massive hat.

That's good.

I mean, he'll not wear a hat as well, but he will also wear a hat.

It's an acoustic thing with country singers.

What?

The massive hat.

Does it like keep the vocal tonature

angled downwards to get a more

decent timbre?

It's more than just angling it downwards, it also projects it skywards because of the rim of the brim towards God in heaven.

yeah so that he can hear

some of the worst sounds that his creations have ever created so anyway I went online to find some of Blake Shelton's songs and played them backwards to see what coded messages they contained that maybe Assad's had been influenced by and his 2009 hit Hillbilly Bone, a duet with Trace Adkins, John, the 21st century's Wilfred Owen, and of course the creator, overlord behind the unofficial U.S.

national anthem, Honky-Tonk Badonka Donk.

That song Hillbilly Bone contains this lyric: We all got a hillbilly bone down deep inside.

No matter where you're from, you just can't hide it.

When the band starts banging and the fiddle soars, you can't help but hollering, yeehaw.

When you see them pretty little country queens, man, you got to admit that it's in them jeans.

Ain't nothing wrong just getting on your hillbilly bone, ba-bone, bone.

Now, very

moving lyrics as they are, but played backwards in Arabic, what it says is: Show no mercy to those who would overthrow you, but visit upon them devastation from the sky and from the ground, as a hail of holy pain rains upon their infidel heads, until the streets run crimson with the blood of the unfaithful, and the echoes of your vengeance reverberate through the corridors of the Syrian soul, such that none shall dare again raise hand or voice against your powerhead for all eternity.

Yeehaw!

2013.

Well, Andy,

the Papal Conclave...

That was very much the unspoken subtext of all the news reports.

Yes.

Yes, that's right.

They just didn't have the balls to actually say it or sing it saying.

Andy, the Papal Conclave clearly didn't take too long to put his fingers down his throat and throw up a pope.

Because on Wednesday, after just two days of discussion, white smoke billowed out of the Sistine Chapel and the Catholic Church took a bold new step into the future by electing an old white man with reactionary views on homosexuality and birth control.

But wait, this one speaks Spanish, so it's different.

So

who de Pope Andy?

Well Jorge Mareo Bergoglio, he de Pope.

Or as he is now called Pope Francis or Rome's most eligible bachelor.

If you like the thrill of the chase ladies, look no further than Pope Francis.

There is a man who is playing really hard to get.

Yeah, it's an interesting choice of name.

After almost 2,000 years of waiting, we finally have the first ever Pope Frank, which is great news for everyone.

As you say, they did.

They concleft the shit out of that decision.

They really concleft it beautifully.

Or concleaved it.

I don't know.

What's the past tense of that?

I like conclaved.

Concleaved.

They both sound nice.

They're both nice to say, but I'd go concleaved.

He's the first ever Pope from South America, Argentinian, from Buenos Aires, Bishop of Buenos Aires.

And in his opening Pope speech, my Latin is a little bit rusty, but the first thing he said was, we in the Vatican City now lay claim to the Falkland Islands

and then he's also a big hip-hop fan he wowed the crowd by saying I love it when you call me Big Popper

and he also said this these were other touching words he said this is a wonderful journey from infinity back to infinity

Sorry, no, that wasn't actually the Pope who said that.

That was a deranged man talking to himself on the tube on the way in today who said that.

But it could have been the Pope.

And I think, you know, who does that tell you more about?

The Pope or the man on the tube?

Well, it tells us an equal amount about both of them, Andy.

And the fact that I wrote it down, it probably tells you something about me.

That's right.

I think that's much more.

The bigger lesson is there.

So let's take a closer look at the man who has seized this pope opportunity with both flippers.

And the man

who will presumably have asked the question on his very first morning as Pope that all of us want an answer to, which is, how, with all the money that the Vatican has, do they not have robot butlers?

It just makes no sense, Andy.

So there's a lot of firsts that this Pope is.

Pope Francis is the first ever Pope Francis.

He's also the first Jesuit to be Pope.

Also the first Pope from outside Europe in a thousand years, over a thousand years.

Also the first Pope from the Americas.

Also apparently the first Pope to have wind beneath my wings as his karaoke and I quote go-to tune.

Also, John, he's the first Pope with only one lung.

Yes.

That's true.

Which is wonderful because, you know, clearly they're reaching out to the Catholic community in South America, reaching out beyond the Vatican's traditional papal breeding grounds of Europe to more of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics and also reaching out to animals who only have one lung, which predominantly are snakes, as as we know from my stag weekend in Scotland.

But it's good to see that beach being built by the Catholic Church finding because it's been tricky between us and the snakes ever since the whole Eve and the Apple business.

So that's great to choose a pope who can relate, who snakes can relate to on a just in terms of

body issue.

Yeah,

he apparently had a lung removed when he was a teenager due to an infection, which means he's a one-lung pope.

And that really sticks into the other cardinals, Andy.

Yeah.

Who couldn't become pope, even though they had twice as many lungs as he did.

I mean, it's pathetic when you think about it.

Also, the first pope for over 300 years to have a tattoo.

From some angles, it looks like Jesus blessing a donkey, but from others, it looks like Jane Mansfield in a bikini cleaning a car windscreen.

But

that's the 1950s for you, isn't it?

Well, let's look at his pope stats, Andy.

He can fire off 32 prayers a minute with no warm-up.

He's batting 326 at getting prayers into heaven with those prayers in scoring position.

He takes a papal rope size medium and a papal headgear size maximum.

He can run 100 meters in full papal regalia in less than 45 seconds.

And his record in fist fights with other popes is currently zero wins, zero losses, but that may be amended after he meets with Pope Benedict.

We'll have to re-up those stats.

He was very much an outsider at becoming Pope.

Most betting sites had him at around 33 to 1.

So congratulations if for some inexplicable reason you were betting on that.

That would be a...

Why wouldn't you bet on it?

It would be an amazingly strange response, Andy.

Someone in St.

Peter's Square as the news came out.

And the new Pope is Jorge Mario Bogoglio.

Yes!

Yes!

Well, I'm so glad you feel so passionately that he's the right choice for the church.

Oh, never mind that.

I just won 300 grand.

Hallelu fing Luja!

Well, just, I don't know if you saw that, there was a lot of litter in St.

Peter's Square after the crowd had dispersed.

Maybe it's just a lot of betting slips.

Tornado.

Oh, shit.

I thought the Brazilian was a shooting.

Perhaps that's why the cardinals were not allowed cell phones in there, Andy.

You didn't want them to be tempted to go in big just before before the white smoke went up.

It is a little strange that he was seen as such a long shot, as he was apparently the second choice of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict eight years ago.

So, you know, never the bridesmaid, never the bride, Andy, but now he's the Pope.

He's Gary Goblet Service, he's God's official answer phone.

I'm afraid God's not available right now, but if you leave a message with me, he'll get right back to you.

Well, there you go.

We will be back with a full bugle 263

next week.

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Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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