Bugle 256 – Troubled Bridge Over Boiling Water

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.

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.

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. 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 andy'saltsman.co.uk

the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 256 of the world's only relevant source of information, the bugle with me, Andy's Altsman, the five-time runner-up in the World Silver Medal winning championships a performance i'm absolutely delighted with and uh joining me from new york city in the area of it's got three syllables uh was it a pope an archbishop a blinkin mexican no mat man hat on all right it's lance corporal laughter himself admiral amusement flight lieutenant funny it's john oliver at ease buglers attention laughter

uh hello hundy hello buglers the bugle is late this week because i had to go to uh la on thursday to do a q a with the television Critics Association to talk about the HBO show I'm doing that doesn't technically exist yet.

Now luckily, I've been fiercely trained through years of doing this particular podcast to be able to bullshit at length about nothing. So it wasn't even a challenge Andy.

But the order of appearances at the TCAs was absolutely ridiculous.

I was on last after Martin McMatthew McConnell Kay and Woody Harrelson talking about their new show, then Julia Roberts talking about her new show, then Lena Dunham and the cast of girls talking about the new series and then me Andy.

I was the closer. I was sent in to cool that room down and consider that job done.
I'm a team player Andy. They want someone to ice the day.
I'm your guy. They call me Johnny Iceman.

Or at least they will after last week. Now that is essentially Andy like having a concert with the Rolling Stones Metallica and Kanye West.

and then bringing to the stage a three-year-old who's going to bang some pots and pans together before shitting himself on stage.

It was a weird experience, Andy. And something tells me this whole thing is just going to get weirder.
Well, I think that was Justin Bieber's first concert, wasn't it?

Boom. There, I've got pop culture references when I need it.
Yep, they're all in the bag.

I just play the club when I need the shot. I mean, he's less relevant than he was a couple of years ago, Andy, but still.

So, we are recording on Saturday, the 11th of January.

On the 10th of January, 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, a river in northern Italy, in which basically made civil war inevitable.

And that became a phrase for to take a course of action that inevitably commits one to a certain destiny.

Other historical acts have also led to common phrases now in everyday parlance, including Henry VIII's, he broke up with his wife, although the word with did come in some years later. In 1776,

this weekend, Thomas Paine published his smash-hit platinum-selling multi-award-winning pamphlet, Common Sense,

which helped inspire the American colonies to declare independence from Great Britain.

Amongst the nuggets of common sense that Paine disseminated were, when walking through a door, always check that it is not in fact a window.

Do not wear swimming trunks made of lead, wait until bridges are finished, do not eat anything that is still barking, and never put your plonker in a bucket of snakes, which coincidentally, also an early Rundy MC song.

And that was enough. That was enough to make the American colonies think, how come the British have never told us these things and they decided to go their own way.

Also on this day in 1927 a man called Ian Gray bought a loaf of bread somewhere probably.

Took it home and said I just bought a loaf of bread. As always a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week a product recalls section that we've been asked to do so if you do have any of the following pieces of kit please return them to the shop where you got them from.

The Gruntsik Home Trapanning kit. That turns out to be just an ordinary masonry drill.

The WACTEC Appliance Training Stick turns out that smacking electric appliances with a stick is not, in fact, effective. Numerous court cases are pending.
The domestic sticks cast iron plug prod,

which was supposed to enable you to check that your power sockets are working but resulted in a series of fatal electrocutions.

The Vegetable It's Potato and Turnip Cannon, too destructive, only for pro-level ultimate food fighting. And the SBF Rocket Sledge, which does not function on either level.

All those should be returned as soon as possible to the shop you bought them from.

Top story this week, Enter the Weatherman. Doom do do do doom, doom do do do do

off to weather, weather land, environment news.

So who doesn't love weather? Andy, it keeps us warm, it keeps us cool, it dries our clothes and it serves as a very popular form of conversational methadone.

Isn't it warm outside? Isn't it cold outside? Oh hasn't it been unseasonably hot? Ooh, do you think it'll snow? Ah, the sweet numb of actually avoiding genuine human contact.

Extreme weather, however, is a tricky tornado to tame. The truth is that most people like their weather like they like their chicken cormers, mild with a splash of heat.

But the weather over the last week has been barometrically bananas. New York has been ball disappearingly cold over the last week.

On Tuesday, it was so freezing that as soon as you stepped outside, your balls instinctively tried to jump back inside your body, saying, f this, it is way too cold outside.

If you need me, I'll be hiding behind your kidneys.

Do you know what that's interesting, actually, because that goes back through evolution to

how women evoluted during the last ice age.

That's how it all began. That is, I think that's true.

And it wasn't even the wind chill, that was the amazing and frightening thing.

It was just relatively still air, so cold, it repeatedly slapped you you in the face for idiotically not being indoors and burned your lungs like a bad brandy.

The explanation here was that America has suffered a polar vortex where minus 30 degree temperatures rolled across the country.

It definitely felt like a polar vortex and I technically don't know what a polar vortex is, Andy. I just know it felt like one.
Didn't we have that as a review for one of our Edinburgh shows?

Yeah.

It was probably fairer than we thought it was at the time as well. Much of America set records that no one here has any interest in breaking.

Minnesota was technically colder than the North Pole this week. That's not ideal because at the very least the next logical step is going to be that polar bears are going to want to move to Minnesota.

And you do not want a family of polar bears moving in next door and dropping over to introduce themselves to the neighborhood, bringing you a decapitated penguin as a welcome gift.

But that's what's going to happen, Andy, if temperatures stay like this. That is literally what's going to happen.

Yes, it was the village of Embarrass Minnesota.

That's the name of a small village, not the preseason instructions by Leslie Frazier, the former head of the Minnesota Vikings NFL franchise, to his team before they went out and had a rubbish season, finished bottom of their league, and got him fired.

I want you to go out there and embarrass Minnesota. Now, this is actually the name of a village, minus 37 degrees centigrade.
That is minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Massive win for Fahrenheit.

There, two degrees hotter on this occasion.

And that was colder, not only than the North Pole, John, that was colder than the recent readings taken by the Mars rover on Mars,

which is considerably further from the Sun than Minnesota is. To put this in context, minus 37 degrees Celsius.
That is the exact temperature of George Osborne's soul. And that...

That really shows you quite how cold the planet has been.

Extreme weather conditions always have unpredictable consequences, but there's one thing that we can always rely on, Andy and that is journalists doing stupid tricks on camera to prove how hot and or cold it is.

Temperatures rise, temperatures fall Andy, but that will always stay the same.

Yeah, so in a heat wave, say a journalist will for instance try to fry an egg.

on the hood of their car and will somehow act surprised when they can't start their car the next day because 15 warm raw eggs have seeped into their engine.

With this cold snap, however, there was a bold new trick after reporters started going outside with pots of boiling water, throwing the water into the freezing air where it instantly and spectacularly turned into snow.

These experiments were a massively popular form of journalistic jackass and the videos went viral very quickly. And I guess it shows something about how we live today.

That my first response to watching, you know, boiling water turn instantly into snow because the air was so cold was not, wow, that's amazing.

It was, wow, I wonder how soon soon it's going to be before someone gets badly burned doing this

and I was not to be disappointed Andy because again as sure as the sun rises and sets someone was going to throw a bucket of boiling water in the air and end up with boiling water and metaphorical egg all over their badly burned face the LA Times reported that by the next day 50 people had claimed on social media being taken to hospital after either throwing the boiling water straight up in the air or not having enough awareness of which way the wind was blowing until the wind started blowing the scorching liquid straight back towards them.

One person tweeted, and I quote, I just threw a pot of boiling water into the air to see if it would freeze and all I did was burn myself. Hashtag Florida problems.
Okay.

So here's the key thing there. Perhaps it should have been pointed out that the freezing water trick doesn't really work if you're somewhere that isn't freezing.
Like, oh, I don't know. Fing Florida.

I mean, if Florida was literally one of only two states that were above freezing for the whole day last week. The only place worse to throw boiling water in the air was Hawaii.

Although, whenever something like that happens now in Florida, you feel it's less an accident and it's more an example of natural selection at work.

Journalists quickly advise people to throw with the wind and not against it.

Although, I really think the simpler and more effective advice might have been, just don't do it at all. God, yeah, but I mean, where's the fun in that, John? Well, that's a fair fun.

I'm not the fun in not scolding yourself. That's fair.
What if

you threw the egg in the air first? Yeah. And then threw water after it, would it land as a poached egg?

There's only one way to find out, Andy. And that is to do it.
Oh, I'll leave that to you, John, because it's not been quite so cold over here.

Well, look, as that guy in Florida showed, Andy, that's not the point, is it?

I will go home and I will do that. It's not science, Andy, it's faith.
Well, but I'll throw it directly in the air.

So hopefully the poached egg will land in my face, avoiding the need for using a plate. Yeah, zero washing up.

That's science. What's the worst thing that can happen, Andy? I'll tell you what the worst thing.
It'll be that you'll have a boiled egg in your face. A boiled egg in your boiled face.

I noticed there was also various videos of people urinating into the freezing air as well.

Which again, I mean, that shows the human instinct for scientific experimentation that has been really the case ever since cavemen started putting their heads in the mouths of Tyrannosaurus Rexes.

You know, we've always been a very entrepreneurial species.

Perhaps the most shocking thing here in New York is not that it was f ⁇ ing cold here in January, but that today, less than a week later, it's basically borderline warm outside.

It is 57 degrees outside today, which is 50, over 50 degrees warmer than it was a few days ago. This city has been riding a temperature roller coaster and it is no wonder that people are getting sick.

Having an over 50 degree difference in temperature from one day to the next is at best weird Andy and at worst fing terrifying.

And the extreme weather conditions in the US and indeed the UK where there have been massive floods and winds have thrown the issue of climate change up in the air like a bucket of boiling water.

Climate change is a controversial issue in the way that Galileo believing the world being round was once a controversial issue.

Sure, some people didn't believe him, but it turned out that those people were fing idiots.

And there are a number of environmental stories that have emerged this week that are not necessarily temperature related, but probably temperature connected.

Researchers have revealed that three quarters of the world's biggest carnivores, the terrifying beast of nature, and the subjects of some of Disney's cutest singing and wisebracking characters, are in decline.

Three quarters. The report claims that the loss of these species could be extremely damaging for ecosystems the world over, although pretty good news for antelopes, to be fair.

I'm sure they have mixed feelings on the whole thing, and there are some emotionally confused antelopes at the moment saying, look, I know this kind of environmental destruction is calamitous in the big picture, but and I feel guilty even saying this out loud.

I'm really tired of having my legs chewed off by lions. Does that make me a bad antelope? I'm not wishing for the extinction of lions.
I'm not a Nazi antelope, please.

But I'm just saying that a few less of them wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for me personally, legwise. Oh, God.
Now you're all looking at me like I'm a fucking monster.

Forget I said anything. I'll sign the global warming petition.
I'm a good antelope.

Well, I'm quite... I mean, I'm from a personal point of view, you know, the fewer predators that are likely to eat me and my family, the better.

The better. And it's time, you know, it's time these speech.
We've protected these species for too long.

You can't interfere with the almighty will of Zeus.

And I think in many ways, you know, that's, you know,

we've got to be consistent, John, because we live in capitalist economies. And this is just the kind of survival of the economically fittest that we pride ourselves on.

All is not lost, however, because some scientific research has shown that when large carnivores are reintroduced to areas where they had disappeared from, such as wolves in the Yellowstone Park, ecosystems tend to respond rapidly.

And this, to me, John, is one of the most exciting pieces of science I have heard in a long time because there's a lot of urban sprawl around the world where greenland has been lost and there isn't much of a connection with nature.

All we need to do, John, is populate these areas of urban wasteland with large-scale meat-eating predators.

You know, chuck a few leopards into, you know, Streatham, where I live in South London, watch these communities spring back to life.

This is where science and the environment can finally come to our aid instead of trying to destroy us. Yeah, you're right.

When scientists looked at the 31 biggest meat eaters, they found that they were under increasing pressure in the Amazon, Southeast Asia, southern and East Africa.

And like you say, in Yellowstone National Park in the US, they found that

with wolves and cougars being there, they found that having fewer of those big predators resulted in an increase in animals that browse, such as elk and deer. That's a direct quote.

And I like the idea of elk and deer just browsing, Andy. I think that's a lovely way to put it.
Hey, elk, what are you doing over there? Can I help you with something? No, thanks. I'm just browsing.

You've got some lovely trees over here.

Researchers.

It's not good if they don't actually buy anything, Don.

That's right, actually contribute to the economy.

Researchers at Oregon State University argue that the rise of these browsers is bad for vegetation and it disrupts the lives of birds and small mammals, leading to a cascade of damaging impacts.

The chain reaction is essentially like the old woman who swallowed a fly or in this case the old wolf who swallowed an elk. But even if the environment does go

fully, fully tits up,

then all is not lost because science will come to the rescue with some absolutely crackpot scheme.

But there are warnings that attempts to reverse the impact of global warming by by using such crackpot schemes might actually make things worse, including injecting reflective particles into the stratosphere,

which apparently could essentially destroy the Earth. It's unintended consequences, John.
And we've talked about this before

on the bugle. It is just one of these things where you hear someone suggesting this idea and you think that is just the opening scene from a massive global disaster movie.

It's true. In fact, my favourite...

The scientists found out that as well as absorbing some of the heat coming from the sun with these particles, they would also absorb some of the heat that comes from the surface of the planet.

And that would be, you know, a massive, like you say, Armageddon-like problem. And my favourite quote from all of this came from Dr.

Matt Watson from the University of Bristol, who had previously been involved in a British project to test out this kind of reflective particle concept.

And he said, I know of no serious scientist who would advocate introducing 100 megatons of sulphur dioxide into a four-degree warmer world.

That's a hell of a sentence, Andy, for a human adult to say out loud. And he's right.

I know of no serious scientist that would advocate doing that, but I'm sure there are plenty of ludicrous scientists who would advocate for it, just because they think it would be a funny thing to do.

Also, I think I know a fair few evil geniuses who'd be pretty keen on the idea as well, because that is the kind of plan that they whisper into the ear of a hairless cat that they're stroking.

Shh, Mr. Whiskers.
Soon the world will be ours, after we introduce 100 megatons of sulphur dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere.

It could be that this is just science's way of opening negotiations, because they've seen with global warming how politics is,

you know,

maybe more sceptical than it might be. So maybe it's just presenting an extreme scenario, knowing that the politicians will have a backlash and that they can then reach some kind of

logical compromise.

Leading the way in such compromise could be China, who apparently have embarked on the greatest push for renewable energy in the history of the known universe.

Let's put this in context.

China will get 2% of its power from wind,

still 75% from coal. So this is essentially a bit like sticking a kumquat on a Donnekebab with extra oil and saying, yeah, I'm getting loads of vitamins from this.
Loads.

It's still a bold move, though. I mean, especially coming from a country who has basically invented their own edible air.
They pollute things so much.

They're the world's largest producer of wind power, China, but they're planning to move from their current capacity of 75 gigawatts to 200 gigawatts by the year 2020.

The entire EU only has 90 gigawatts of wind capacity.

Now, I know nothing about how that all works, but I'm guessing this means that China are now stealing everyone else's wind and that kites are going to lie on the ground across Europe as people desperately try to learn the mandarin for, please China, can we have our wind back?

Is that how it works?

That must be how it works. Well I think, well, throughout our careers, John, we've raised public awareness of the dangers of overfarming wind so you know it's some

very grave concern and also you know the battle for solar power can we stick a flag in the sun and claim it you know these are these are the questions that humanity is just afraid of addressing

troubled bridge over political water news now and Chris Christie Andy is governor of New Jersey. He's a popular man and a major candidate for the Republican presidential nomination next year.

But he's in a spot spot of trouble after some bridge-based shenanigans recently. As a man, he is larger than life as well as larger than medically advisable.
And

he drove slowly, headfirst, into a political scandal this week after it emerged that members of his staff were responsible for closing down parts of the George Washington Bridge between New York and New Jersey for two days, bringing traffic chaos to a local town, all as punishment for its mayor not supporting Christie in his re-election.

Now, this was a rumor that's been going around for a while now, but a bunch of emails have proven that this was indeed an old-style Jersey punitive shakedown.

To understand this story, you really need to understand the emotional involvement with traffic that people in New York and New Jersey have, especially when it comes to traveling between those two places.

Because you might think this is just way too petty an issue to really hurt Christie's political future. But that would be to fundamentally misunderstand how untouchable traffic in this area is.

In fact, this might be the only thing that could seriously hurt him because there are three unshakable codes of conduct in New Jersey. One, respect your mother.
Two, don't have sex with children.

Three, don't f with the GW bridge. And that's it.
Pretty much anything else goes.

If this sticks to Christie, this scandal, never mind the presidential nomination, even the New Jersey voters might want him gone because he will have crossed a line you cannot uncross.

You can feel Jersey voters now going, look, if he was guilty of insider trading, fine. If it was an affair, fine.
If he killed a homeless man with his bare hands, look, we've all had bad days.

But you do not. I repeat, you do not close down three lanes of traffic on a bridge.
That is f up.

Well, I mean, it's interesting to hear your perspective on this, because looking at it from the other side of the Atlantic, when I have such an intimate knowledge of the traffic issues in New Jersey, it does seem to me that as political vendettas go,

this is really disappointing. I mean, it does seem that...
You're wrong, Andy.

You can imagine Kim Jong-un looking at this and thinking, what? Traffic issue. Call that a vendetta.
You guys really need to raise your game.

Although, to be fair, Stalin did begin by letting down the tyres on someone's bicycle to get back at them for teasing him about his hat. And he just got hooked on it from there.

I think, Andy, the mayor of Fort Lee, the guy who was punished for this, I honestly think he would have preferred to have concrete blocks tied to his feet and thrown into the East River than this.

Than having traffic messed with Andy.

That's the ultimate sign of disrespect.

How big a blow is it for Christ?

Because as you say, he's viewed by some as the Republicans' best hope of winning the next presidential election, which I guess you might see as being equivalent to being a slightly moldy carrot in a leased orange vegetable competition.

But still, I guess it's

someone they're clinging to. Well, at the moment, it's his staff and no it's not there's no smoking gun or smoking email that links him to this whole story.
It's just his staff.

Bridget Kelly who's one of his top aides sent an email to Bill Baroney at the Port Authority which said after the election if it was clear the mayor was not going to support Christie the email said time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee to which he responded got it and it was traffic chaos for days adding hours to the commute causing school buses to get to school late and ambulances to struggle to get where they were needed.

Not great. And what one text was sent by a mystery number after all of the severity that came out saying, is it wrong that I'm smiling right now?

There's every part, there are little details that are coming out that are amazing.

They even refer to this guy as in insulting terms as the little Serb, the mayor of Fort Lee, despite the fact he's in fact Croatian. So there's

such a fine line. There are little gems.

What I liked about this, John, was that how initially officials said that the decision to close these lanes on the George Washington Bridge were part of a traffic study.

I mean, what exactly were they trying to find out? Whether or not if you close two fing lanes of a major bridge, some people are going to be late for the Pilates classes.

Well, I think that is another piece of scientific research that definitely needed to be checked out. I think we also need to see this in the context of America

being a

Christian country. And God, of course, massive celeb stateside.
Also a huge fan of infantile score settling, as the people of ancient Egypt would testify.

And of course, not everyone did badly out of it. Locust racket salesman did a roaring trade.
In fact, it's the origin of tennis, swatting locusts away during a cheeky little plague.

But it also was a big traffic issue because locusts really clogged up traffic because you know just imagine if you get a locust stuck in your camel's exhaust system you're gonna break down on the road you know, you know, tailbacks halfway down the bloody no, bloody camels conked out all over the place.

That, of course, followed hail, definite traffic angle. The first six plagues, not so bad from a congestion point of view: your blood, your frogs, your pestilences, your boils, etc.

But then, hail, tricky driving conditions, locusts like hail, but more so. Darkness, I've never seen a camel with headlights.

Finally, counteracted by killing the firstborn, which of course eased the school traffic run a bit. But still, definite traffic angle from God.
That was one of his major tools.

Animal slaughter updates. And there's been a badger cull in Britain, John, which

has been the absolute talk of the town. It turns out that each badger culled has cost £4,121

to kill, which

seems like a lot. That's a lot of money per dead badger.

I can see new luxury food stuff coming on. I mean, it might be disgusting and barely edible, but it is bloody expensive.
and therefore in 21st century terms it's it's tasty.

Now this cull I think might have been a pilot scheme because you know obviously you know we have a crowded island not just with badgers but also with people.

I think the elderly will be next if this cull had

worked out better. But badgers

famous for their misplaced overconfidence in their ability to stop fast-moving cars on roads with their noses have been gunned down in their prime like the murderous killers that they they are in a kind of mafia style retribution for all the bad they've done in the undergrowth in one of the areas of the cull farmers were supposed to be killing 5094 badgers which is a pretty specific number oddly specific I mean it did work with witches back in the day but it still seems a little odd and critics have said that the cull is not the best way to deal with a problem and fans of the badger cull have replied yes but it is awesome fun their little faces when you're shouting look at me absolutely sensational beats running them over in a four by four which is still good good, but you just don't get such a rush of adrenaline.

Um, and the great concern is that badgers now, having been uh attacked in this way, uh, going to go to the hills, John. It's going to be another guerrilla war.

It's like Afghanistan all over again, but in Somerset, and we've got a very great danger of a generation of radicalized badgers with a grudge against the state.

And I do not want them wandering around country roads in my country, John.

Well, this is is Bugle 256, as we said at the start of the show, which means in binary, it is Bugle 100 million. Thanks to Maths fans who alerted us to this fact.

I don't know if it counts as 100 million, if it's only 250, but it is written as 100 million. It's two to the power of eight.
256.

That is an eight-round knockout, John, as I said last week, to find your favorite bugle. And we will be doing this.
We will be taking a three-second snippet of every bugle we've done.

Drawn from a hat, two bugles a week, head to head. You have to choose your favorite to put through to the next round.
Keep a wall chart to follow all your favourite episodes' progress.

Until in six to six and a half years time, we will have a final, maybe do five second snippets from the quarter final stage on to make more of an event of it.

Until we have the best snippet in bugle history, by which time we will have done about another 256 episodes, give or take, and then we'll have to do the same over and over again before a grand grand showdown some 12 years after that.

This could go on anyway. It's round one.
First out of the hat. It's Bugle 37

and Bugle 37 will play

Bugle 155.

So here are your two snippets. You be the judge.

Here is Bugle 37. President of the United States or Mr.
Universe. And now the snippet of Bugle 155.
Named all of his goats after the Western leaders who confronted him.

So there you go. That's, I mean, that is a big matchup to start with.
Absolutely.

Very hard to pick pick a winner by John.

Very hard.

Sports and British national decline news now. And, well, the Ashes have finished, John.

They have finished. Boy, they have finished.

They have finished in a big way. England went to Australia as holders of the Ashes, the only relevant trophy in world sport.

ancient cricket contest between England and Australia that dates back to the 1880s. And we lost 5-0 in five matches.

It might have been a bit chilly in America, John, but that is nothing compared to the coldness of the atmosphere around the England cricket team at the moment.

There were basically only two highlights for England in the whole series. One, one of their young players did quite well, and two, it is now over.

It's basically been like watching a long favourite dog getting mercilessly beaten up, teased, and eaten by a cat that it always used to have on toast for breakfast.

I'm sure that cat turned out to be a lion cub that suddenly grew up into a ravenous tiger after eating a contaminated zebra egg. But still, the dog barely even barked John.

It just whimpered a little bit and doused itself in wildebeest ketchup. It basically felt like the cricketing equivalent of medieval abdominal surgery with cheap vinegar as an anesthetic.

And that was just watching it on television at the safe range of a couple of hemispheres away. So it cannot have been that much fun to play in.

Now, I know there are bigger problems in the world right now. You know, South Sudan, Central African Republic,

Syria,

that kind of shit. But luckily, our elders and betters have ruled that the the first two of those are far enough away from anywhere important to be worth giving too much of a shit about.

And we've done our bit for Syria by not starting a war that we didn't need to start anyway. So that's fine.
And the environment, as we've discussed, probably too late.

So nothing, John, is of greater social and political importance at the moment than England's cricket team going more belly up than Pavaroti swimming backstroke, melting down like a waxwork grandmother at her own cremation, going to pieces like a gun-obsessed serial pacifist leper visiting a chess set, subsiding like a poorly built house in a swamp made of the port and starboard bits of an old German U-boat.

Caving in, John, like an avant-garde Australian rock musician-themed pub that

cave in. I think I've made the point.
They didn't play very well, John. In fact, at times it was barely even possible to discern what sport England were trying to play.

Now, to put this in context, buglers, I am 39 years old.

England being ritually eviscerated at the altar of cricket was a regular aspect of my childhood, just part of growing up and being British, or at least part of growing up and being a middle-class English person from the southeast with an already promising career in reality avoidance.

But in those days when we lost, John, we did so properly, predictably, against teams that were objectively very, very good indeed.

Getting thrashed by the West Indies in the 1980s was like losing to Thomas Edison in an inventor light bulb competition. No shame, he's a hall of famer.

But this time, John, I mean, Australia have played very, very well.

But England, over the last few years, has been somewhere between very good, pretty good, and definitely not shit for quite a long time now. And we've beaten Australia three times in a row.

And still, this happened.

It's probably the worst thing that's ever happened in my life. I don't think

I'm overstating it.

But if sport teaches us one thing, John, and it teaches us all things,

it is that even in the darker situation, we can take positives. And we've learned this from history, not just sport.
The charge of the light brigade.

They came out afterwards in the press conference. It's a terrific effort from the boys.
I think we've definitely dented some of the enemy's bullets. Delighted with the effort as well.

The lads gave 110%. Couldn't ask for any more from them, boys.
And if they can repeat that next time, we'll give anyone a game.

And the experience will definitely stand us in good stead for next time we order the cream of British Manhood to charge straight into enemy fire. So,

even from this, John, even from English cricket having its vital organs ripped out and cooked on a barbecue in front of its own face, we have to find some positives. And there are three.

One, we generously boosted the Australian economy by giving the travelling English fans four extra full spending days off frontline barmy army duty.

Two, life will never be quite as painful again, John. This is as bad as it's ever going to get.

And it's always good to get the worst things out of the way. I mean, that's how life, that's why babies cry so much, because it is, you know, it's awful being that small.

And as I said, one new player did well, a guy called Ben Stokes. That's hope for the future, John.

What's the saying, from small acorns, hungry pigs might have a snack, or maybe from small acorns, a tiny sapling might start growing before being urinated on by drunken teenagers, dug up for a laugh, used to try to pole vault into a skip and then thrown onto a train track to cause minor disruption the following morning.

That's um and fight oh, one more positive. We're all two months closer to the merciful release of the Reaper.
That's it. Four positives, John.

Four positives. It's been a tough, it's been a very, very tough time for me.
Very tough.

I'm slightly regretting ever being born.

That might be the perfect end note, Andy, to England's trip to Australia.

That is definitely how badly badly we've been beaten. I'm slightly regretting ever having been born.
And it didn't help the way I was watching it because,

and I had to watch, well, I say I had to watch quite a lot of it for writing for Crick Info. I basically spent several nights sitting on my own in my shed, in my garden, which I have as an office,

watching the cricket. Just on my own in a solitary shed in a garden in South London.
I mean, that's, I don't know, life doesn't get much bleaker than that, John.

Watching England getting absolutely

torn to pieces.

Dark days.

Dark days. Too soon to laugh about it.
Much too soon.

That's about all we've got time for on this week's Bugle. We'll be back with some more of your emails next week.
Do keep them coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Don't forget to check out our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle. I hope our American buglers enjoy thawing out.
Um, have you got any more gigs with Julia Roberts this week, John?

I think we're gonna go back to our regular number of gigs together, which is whatever slightly less than zero is.

There's two lives that should never have collided, Andy. Right.

And I mean, how was how was her? I mean, how did how did you compare against her as a as a state? What, as a physical specimen? I'm guessing badly, Andy. I'm guessing biologically badly.

I know that's supposed to be subjective, but in this case, I think we can see that one is the superior example of humanity than the other. Yeah, look, that face seems basically symmetrical.

What's that guy's face doing?

So, until next week, buglers, goodbye. Bye!