Bugle 252 – (Product from) Pigs Might Fly (Off The Shelves)

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome back after a few rather disrupted weeks to Bugle issue 252 for the week beginning Monday, the 9th of December, 2013.

I am.

Hang on, I'll just get the scanner.

Andy, thanks, Mission.

Oh, that is reassuring.

And joining me from the Lincolnshire Seaside Resort of Skegness.

Who am I kidding?

From Manhattan Island, New York, it's the 21st century's Ugel Vrug.

Have you not heard of him?

Funniest caveman of the 12th millennium BC.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

We're back, Buglers, after a couple of weeks of partially earned break.

It was Thanksgiving here last week, Andy, a solemn celebration of America's birth as a nation, which it chooses to recognise through attempted caloric suicide, the inflammation of family arguments, the watching of men in helmets and shoulder pads giving each other concussions and the inability to walk without wincing in their 50s, the ceremonial pummeling of strangers fighting to get into a Best Buy store, and of course, a gigantic inflatable Charlie Brown.

It's how the Native Americans must have imagined their masochus would be commemorated in the future, Andy.

The previous week there was no bugle because I was in LA filming my final episode of the next season of Community and it's going to be great.

It's going to start here in America on January the 2nd on NBC and I can't recommend it enough.

If you like watching half-hour television shows that make you think, how the fuck did they manage to get that past a major network?

Then this is the show for you.

And also finally a little bit of a catch-up.

Long-time buglers will know that we have a long-standing interest in the profane tweetage of the Iron Sheik.

And I was alerted to very interesting developments over the last week as it emerged the Iron Sheik had turned his 140 character Venom on a project that I was personally involved in.

The tweeting question was this and I quote

what movie better?

The Smurfs 2 or your mother dumb bitch go f yourself 3?

Hashtag Smurfs2Holiday.

Now

personally Andy I've not seen either of those motion pictures, so I'm not in a great position to judge.

But seeing as the second one is on its third instalment, I'm guessing that that is the Superior franchise.

But like I say, it's just a guess at this point.

Well, we'll have more from the Iron Shake later on.

Oh, really?

This is Bugle 252, meaning it's now the same number of bugles as drafts of the first line of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud that ace poet Willie Wordsworth tried before nailing it with cloud.

Discarded things to wander lonely as included a box, a rat, a worm, an idiot, lunch, a condom in a monastery, a thingamy jig, a floating turd in a paddling pool, a man called Colin whose wife has just left him for someone less obsessed with dungeons and dragons, a dismembered penis with prosthetic legs, and a cunt.

This is for the 9th of December, International Anti-Corruption Day on Monday, John.

Which

I believe is probably not enough days in the year for the world to be anti-corruption.

And politicians and businessmen and various rogues and vagamonds seem to see it as carte blanche to be pro-corruption for the other 364 days of the year.

So here at the Bugle, we do encourage you, if approached on Monday by someone offering you bundles of cash in brown envelopes in exchange for political favours, please say either no or maybe later.

As always, a section of the bugle is going, let's be realistic, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week, a Christmas TV section.

We review all the latest Christmas celebrity TV shows that are coming on to entertain us over the festive season on both sides of the Atlantic, including Back to the Drawing Board, a classic career change reality documentary in which former England rugby player Neil Back is appointed as executive director on the management board of a struggling coloured pencils manufacturer.

The Kitchen Sink, that's a documentary about Justin Tim Blake and his former fellow band members' lifelong love of tacky art and memorabilia.

The Kitchen Sink offers a fascinating insight into how five young men's compulsive collecting of lowbrow sentimentalist artwork tore apart one of the 1990s greatest rock acts.

And finally,

Watts goes up, must come down.

Actress Naomi Watts is fired into space with a giant barrel of grapes, which he has to trample to make grape must before returning it to earth to be used to make some wine.

Also, we look ahead to the Downton Abbey Christmas special.

Will Lord Grantham finally discover who trod on that stick?

Can Branson adjust to life with a new pair of gloves?

Lady Ethel looks out of a window.

What's that all about?

What will be the repercussions after Lady Mary's visiting suitor, Sir Michael Snidsbury, is found making love to a flowerbed?

Can ageing butler Carson remember to unbutton his flies before urinating?

And with the series moving into the mid-1920s, will the invention of the portable chainsaw provoke old Mrs.

Hughes to go on a blood-curdling rampage through downtown screaming, Die, cs, die?

I am the Archangel of Vengeance.

Ring, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Tune in on Christmas Day to find out.

Now, we're recording this on Friday, the 6th and our planned bugle was rather overtaken by the sad death of Nelson Mandela, one of the great figures of modern, any

time of history, and received this email came in from Manny, who writes, Dear Andy and John, I guess, I don't know if you are making any more bugles anytime soon, zing, or if you're just letting the podcast fade away.

But the two are not mutually incompatible.

If you are making more bugles, please can you say something nice about Nelson Mandela in the next one?

My parents were anti-apartheid activists, and the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 is the one and only time I ever saw my late father have a real normal person emotion.

Mandela's death is harder than we at my family expected.

Please tell a joke that cheers us all up.

Perhaps you could go with a thank eulogy.

So, which is that's a lovely development on the old f eulogy.

It's a good idea.

I think it's a good idea, Annie, because just as you know, f eulogies are, you know, seldom earned,

I think the same is true true of a thank eulogy, and if there is any human being who deserves one, it is Nelson Mandela.

I will attempt, we'll come to that thank eulogy as a the feature section later in the show, but uh Manny asked, please tell a joke that cheers us all up.

I found it quite hard to write a joke on this

on this subject, so I tried this.

So this man walks into a jail and he walks out 27 years later and says, hey, let's all be friends, and dedicates the rest of his life to the fulfillment of his dream of equality in a nation wants to find by the prejudices that had incarcerated him.

What's up with that?

I think we'll agree that needs a little bit of work.

So we'll return to the thank you, Logie later on in the show.

Top story this week: Ukraine protests kicking Kiev.

Ukraine, Andy, the country that should have, but still cannot.

No, no, it wasn't.

No, it wasn't going to pick you up.

No, it wasn't, Andy.

It was not a pun.

All right, as long as you're sure.

Nope, nope, nope.

It was a.

At best, it was a slip of the tongue.

Or a word that sounded like another word.

It definitely wasn't a pun.

Ukraine, Andy.

The country that should have, but somehow didn't, invent the ukulele, has been in a state of serious upheaval this week.

Much more serious, in fact, than my last glib comment about their country sounding like a small Hawaiian string instrument might imply.

Thousands of protesters have besieged Kiev all week, bringing the city to a complete standstill over the last few days.

Elsewhere around the country, more than a million Ukrainians have hit the streets, numbering even more than during the Orange Revolution nine years previously when the Ukrainian people booted their government out of office like a world-class NFL punter.

The trigger which led to this explosion of anger was President Viktor Yanukovych's last-minute decision not to sign a wide-ranging partnership deal with the EU despite what amounted to years of negotiations that have now been essentially pissed up the wall like piss going up a wall.

Now I'm saying it out loud, I guess that's why it's a phrase.

The concern that the Ukrainian people justifiably have is that instead of moving towards the EU, Yanukovych is attempting to move Ukraine towards Russia and a life governed by their eerily muscular shirtless king Vladimir Putin.

And in case you've forgotten who the Ukrainian president, weird Al Yanukovych is,

he's the guy whose opponent in 2004 was mysteriously poisoned with dioxin and whose opponent's face consequently resembled a background character on Babylon 5.

And then whose other opponent in 2010 is currently in jail.

So nice guy.

Nice guy.

Money is right at the absolute coaching manual of

crackpot leaders.

We've had vote rigging, jailing former MPs, beating up unarmed protesters at a vigil in the middle of the night with massive trunches.

Not him personally, obviously, you know, he hires his goons to do that.

Economic problems on a massive scale, allied with huge corruption, former leader, as you say, jailed in suspicious circumstances, and international power circling his country opportunistically like hyenas with jetpacks.

This, John,

this is a classic.

He is ticking every single box that you could want as a neutral from a crackpot Eastern European leader.

Probably not what you want as a Ukrainian, but as a neutral, he's good value.

Good value.

Right, for the spectator.

Adding even more flavour to this combustible crowd of protesters is that one of the leaders of the opposition movement is Vitaly Klitschko.

Yes, that Vitaly Klitschko, the only Vitaly Klitschko you've ever ever heard of.

The reigning WBC heavyweight champion of the world and a 6'7 inch destroyer of faces and now major political pugilist.

He has been in the thick of the protests all week trying to calm people down, even at one point, shoving supporters to keep them from confronting the police, screaming, don't fall into a trap.

He's actually already an MP in Ukraine and is rumoured to be likely to run for president in 2015.

Klitschko leads the Udar movement, which means punch, because of course it does.

You know, if Hulk Hogan ran for office in Ukraine, it would be with the Chokeslam Party.

Anyway, Udar won 40 seats in parliament last year with pro-European, anti-corruption stances.

And I presume that after the punch party won each seat, a woman in a bikini walked around holding up a sign saying seat one, seat two, and so forth.

So if Klitschko wins, Ukraine would essentially have a real-life president Rocky as their leader, except he has a much much better win-loss record than the fictitious fighter.

And this actually might be food for thought for Yanukovych, because his supporters may have poisoned one opponent and jailed another, but good luck fing with Klitschko because you would not like him when he's angry, or indeed when he is chillingly focused.

Well, it's a big thing for Putin as well, because I mean, he's long traded on having

easily the best six-pack of any

G8 leader.

And, you know, if all of a sudden, next door in Ukraine, there is an actual heavyweight boxing champion, he's going to have to do some serious gym hours, John.

Seriously.

It's true.

Serious hours.

I actually met Vitaly Klitsko's brother, Vladimir, last week, Andy.

I think it was inevitable that our two lives would collide eventually.

Well,

I think I would.

I assumed it would be in the ring, or you know, the fact we know so many of the same people.

Instead, we met at an award show that I was hosting in New York, and he's a very handsome man, Andy, and it was

slightly bemusing to see the symmetry of his features after he spent a career being passed in the face.

It made me look at my own face and wonder whether it could have benefited from a lifetime of pummeling.

And I'm sure there are some people on the internet that would be only too quick to agree with that sentiment.

The only weird thing was shaking Vladimir Klitschko's hand because they're all lumpy.

and sharp from broken bones and you can't help thinking that he mainly broke his hands hands by repeatedly slamming them into people's bodies and heads and that really does give a man pause for thought when he's about to engage in witty banter with another man so masculine that he makes you feel like a four-year-old girl in a princess dress

so what what witty banter did you go with john i literally ran away

it's true they'd they'd set up this terrible well yeah you know They'd set up this kind of awkward witty banter between the two of us.

And so I was going to kind of insult him and then we'd go back and forth.

And I got halfway through the insult, I looked at his face, and I physically ran away.

What were the awards?

They're international Emmys.

All right.

He was giving one to a friend of his.

But

Putin and Russia have come out strongly against

the protesters in Ukraine in some pretty inventive and unusual ways, including a TV anchor on a news show

showing clips from a Swedish children's TV show

designed to explain to children how their bodily functions work, basically entitled what will be translated as Wee Wee and Pooh Pooh.

And he showed clips from this as an example of the exemplifying the Western decadence that awaits Ukraine if it decides to join the EU instead of allying itself with Russia.

The programme itself is amazing.

It's probably called Bliss Och Case, which is, yeah, a reference to Wee Wee and Pooh Pooh.

It teaches kids how their bodies work with the help of two popular characters, Bliss and Case, with occasional music numbers from the Rump Orchestra, which is bottoms dressed in hats, glasses, and ties.

And

what the journalist calls singing genitalia.

So, I mean, basically the police provides by the sound of it.

If it's true, Andy, if it's true that that kind of Western decadence awaits ukraine if it decides to join the eu and turn its back on russia then you know showing it is probably accomplishing the exact opposite of what that russian journalist is hoping for because that tv show sounds amazing andy singing genitalia the rump orchestra with bottoms dressed in hats and glasses come on what does russia possibly have to compete with that a cartoon potato who teaches children about the pain of life and the inevitability of death not good enough a sad dog puppet reading reading extracts from Dostoevsky.

Nobody wants that.

Sounds like you're workshopping ideas for your new HBL show there, John.

He said, well, actually, he went, he doubled down Dmitry Kizilev, who was the Russian journalist in question, saying that Sweden, in Sweden, there has been a sharp rise in child abortions.

Early sex is the norm from the age of nine, and it is not surprising that child impotence starts at 12.

There you have European values in all their glory.

Impotence at 12, Andy?

I couldn't even spell impotence at 12, let alone suffer from it.

I didn't even have a 12-year-old.

No 12-year-old boy suffers from impotence, Andy.

If anything, they suffer from whatever the exact opposite of impotence is.

I think it's literally called being 12.

And also, you have to raise questions of exactly what his picture of decadence is, all those decadent bodily functions like urinating and rect spulsion or whatever you want to call it.

To put this in context, the news anchor in question, Dmitry Kisilev, is,

I guess, from the lunatic fringes of TV news.

He's basically a gale force fit, a certified homophobe, a xenophobe, and it seems also a wasophobe and dumperphobe as well.

But it didn't stop there.

Also on

a weather forecast, Vadim Zavodchenkov

on the Rossiya 24 news channel, senior weather forecaster at the Phobos Weather Center, says, not for the first time has a sharp deterioration in the political climate in Ukraine coincided with a change in the seasons.

Basically blaming it on winter.

So

quality effort from

Russian media.

Yeah, Ukraine's leadership are pushing back as well.

Ukraine's prime minister has claimed that the protests as the protests intensify, he sees all the signs of a coup, referring to the fact that demonstrators are apparently blockading the main government building.

And Yanukovych himself said in his first TV interview since Sunday's violence, any bad peace is better than a good war.

Wow, that is not true.

Nice try, Chamberlain.

But I think the ship has sailed on that one.

The best case scenario that they could possibly explain this to the international community with and the Ukraine's leaders is that this essentially is just about the World Cup.

Ukraine didn't qualify for the World Cup.

Look, if England had failed to qualify for the World Cup, there'd be people setting fire to the gates of Buckingham Palace right now.

That is just a fact.

So look, essentially, it seems that Ukraine has a choice to make.

You know, do they want to ally themselves with the classic Russian sense of fun, which has thrown pussy riot in jail, or do you want a full round-the-clock access to the rump orchestra?

It's

your move, Ukraine.

Don't move.

And there's only one choice to make there.

Don't make it.

What part of bottoms wearing glasses and hats do you not find appealing?

Which is basically what the British Empire was based on.

Mr.

Yanukovych is currently on an official visit to China in what is reported to be a bid to forge closer economic ties.

And coincidentally,

basically at the same time, David Cameron has been on exactly the same trip to China to try and persuade China that we are not a historical relic, as they've suggested.

A Chinese newspaper described Britain as just an old European country apt for travel and study, which is both insulting and bizarre.

I mean, travel and study.

I don't know where the hell they pull those two rabbits out of the bag.

I don't know whether to be flattered or into, they must be taking a piss, John.

Our literacy and numeracy standards are languishing down in the mid-table internationally.

And it's long been a problem, the traditional three R's of education, literacy and numeracy.

For travel, I mean, the weather's a bit crap, the people are rude, everything's expensive, and train fares are based on some obscure algorithm based on the death rate of maggots in a cauldron of soup or something.

But this appears to be all we're good for in the eyes of this Chinese newspaper.

So a big zing for Cameron.

He came back strongly.

And the way we came back strongly, John, was by signing a trade deal to sell China $73.6 million worth of pig sperm.

That's right.

You've heard right, Buglers.

There is no finer way to state your

seriousness as a nation than by selling millions and millions of pounds worth of pig pig spaff to a trading partner.

There's just no better way to do it.

Yeah, because Vice President Biden is also in China.

He's had a tricky diplomatic trip to China this week, having to delicately avoid exacerbating the controversy over China enforcing claims over airspace above a set of disputed lands.

But you know, perhaps he should have taken a page out of Cameron's book and he had walked away with a huge trade deal regarding Porkine Seama.

Or indeed, as you put it, Pig Spurt.

Pigspur, Mandy, we're back.

Britain's back.

Number one.

Number one in pig semen exports.

This is where it all started last time, Andy.

Let's not forget, we exported a couple of bottles of pig semen.

Next thing you know, we're controlling two-thirds of the world's land mass.

We are back, baby.

Under the spectacular, economically, genuinely important, and in no way inherently funny deal with China, the porkine semen, which again is not an amusing phrase whatsoever, can be flown to China in both frozen and fresh form.

The pigs themselves will stay in the UK, they'll not be flying in first class while wearing Q Hefner-style smoking jackets.

And apparently the exports start in the first quarter of next year.

Four UK artificial insemination centres based in England and Northern Ireland will start making preparations for the pig semen exports in the new year.

A government spokesman, an actual adult government spokesman, said, and I quote,

the UK porkine semen will be key to help the Chinese improve their pig production and make the industry more productive in the long term.

The quantities are not the important factor for this trade, it is the quality that is important.

No one, Andy, I mean nobody, has a higher quality of pig semen than the UK.

I will put the contents of our pigs' penises up against the contents of other pigs' penises from all over the world.

In fact, I really think that is something we should be pointing out more as a nation.

Maybe our new tourism slogan should be: come visit Britain, the location of the highest quality pig semen on earth.

Wait, where are you going?

I want to see that on billboards everywhere.

It should be mentioned in our national anthem, Andy.

God save our gracious queen, long live our noble queen, and God save our high-quality of pig semen

we have the greatest queen and highest quality of pig semen those two are not connected but we're proud of them both

I'd like to see I'd like to see it represented on the on the national flag as well

I think you might actually be right Andy because even Business Insider reported this week this being a great deal for the UK, saying sperm is one way to make money off high-quality pigs without affecting the domestic supply.

And there are broader hopes within the UK agricultural industry that Britain could turn itself into something like the Saudi Arabia of sperm, selling its liquid gold not only from pigs, but also from cattle and sheep to China and other places around the world.

Did you hear that, Andy?

The Saudi Arabia of sperm.

Now, we definitely need a new flag.

That's the point.

Just a picture of a pig with an oil derrick over its penis

the saudi arabia of sperm andy don't act like this is a bad thing the saudi arabia of sperm

we are back andy we're so back i'm not sure we ever left

well it just goes to show john what a great nation this is because whatever else we may lose in this country, John, we may have lost our empire.

We may be unsure of our national identity in a changing world.

We may be an increasingly marginalised player on the international scene.

We may have lost any semblance of what we truly value as a nation beyond the creation and retention of wealth.

But whatever we lose, John, we know as a nation we will always be able to wank off pigs in industrial quantities

and wank them off well.

Who cares if the pigs end up feeling emotionally used when it turns out it wasn't quite the love across the barricades affair that they thought?

We are Britain.

And when there is a pig's penis to be scrumpled for money, we will do it.

Where porky testicles need to be climacticized, we will roll up our sleeves and get to it.

Because whatever else we are as a nation, we wank pigs for Chinese money better than anyone else.

Yes!

I haven't actually checked the figures on that.

$73.6 million of pigs lodge does seem like quite a lot, but maybe it's not actually that much.

How much does each sample of pig flop bubble go for?

I bet the Germans have no qualm in uh about uh about pig stimulation.

And the French would not even back neither the quick manipulation comes agriculturelle erotic de la pig.

The amazing thing about this deal, Andy, is that it doesn't even stop there.

Because this deal is also rumoured to include a large export of pigs trotters, which, while not used much in British cooking, are a massive delicacy in China.

In October, apparently, a Chinese official was apparently suspended after running up bills of over 700,000 yuan, nearly $200,000, at a pig trotter restaurant over over just three years.

I mean, a side note, Andy, wow, that guy loves eating pig trotters.

He loves them more than the pigs who have them attached to the end of their legs.

I have never heard a politician have to call a press conference to announce his resignation due to a debilitating pig trotter addiction.

Anyway, that's not the point.

So the point is, with the pig semen and pig trotter deal, this is genuinely...

Great news for the British economy, albeit mixed news for British pigs.

Because shortly after they've been assisted in making a semen deposit, they're going to look at the person who helped them and say, oh, thank you very much for that.

That was delightful.

Hold on.

Why are you looking so closely at my feet?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

What the f are you doing?

I need those.

Ow!

Stop it!

I was not aware this was part of the deal!

Also, that is a tough job.

to mention on a first date, Andy.

So, what do you do for a living?

Oh, I'm a farmer.

That is interesting.

What kind of farmer?

I specialise in making footless pigs ejaculate.

Well, it was lovely to meet you.

I've just remembered I have to be miles from here immediately.

Well, I guess so.

You know, if we are ejaculising the pigs, they're not going to need

their own, you know, limbal appendages to do it for them.

So what not chop their feet off?

Well, what's extra impressive about this, Andy, and this goes full circle, is going back to that quote that you mentioned at the start,

that very snide cutting quote from the Chinese newspaper saying the camera administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese.

It's just an old European country apt for travel and study.

This has gradually become the habitual thought of the Chinese people.

Oh, really, China?

Well, that's pretty insulting.

And I guess you better just hope that we don't remember that when you're on your knees begging for pig semen.

Wow, that came out wrong.

You've been spending too much time in Hollywood.

Toronto Mayor update now and a key story that we've missed over the last few weeks concerned Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, the so-called crack mayor, on account of the fact that, you know, he smoked crack in office, which is, you know, illegal, something which, you know, he doesn't seem to think is a major problem, which it kind of is due to, you you know the mayor running the police force in Toronto

so it's been a slightly strange story for the bugle to miss out on due to its inherent ridiculousness

and the fact that this man is a walking clown but

a report came out this week in Canada claiming that police documents indicate he may actually have attempted to buy the video the first video of him smoking crack before it was publicly released for $5,000 in cash and a a car.

Apparently, according to the Wiretap, the men said they would meet with him, but then they would ask for $150,000.

Wow, Andy, crack dealers drive our heart, Mark.

You just can't trust them.

So sad.

Are there no heroes left anymore?

Was that $150,000, but no car?

I don't know.

I'm not sure.

I think that was probably $150,000 just negotiating on the cash.

Then the car might have become a helicopter.

Okay.

Because the $5,000 and a car does sound like a prize on a kind of 1980s game show

Maybe 150 grand and a tumble dryer or something.

I don't know and then the offer might have been you know not so much that he was buying the the videotape but that he was buying the right to keep his knees I think that you know, it's amazing how quickly those escalations those negotiations can escalate

It does seem that Rob Ford is drifting away from his lifetime goal of being viewed as the Canadian Nelson Mandela.

And you really have to admire his work rates, John, because he has crammed a hell of a lot of spectacular wrongdoing into an extremely short space of time.

I mean, this guy really

works hard.

He works hard at it, John.

And the most extraordinary thing is, early in November, when police announced that the video Ford had denied existed not only did actually exist, but was also in the police's possession, his approval ratings went up.

That is the opposite of down.

Up.

And clearly, Toronto was thinking to itself, well, let's be realistic.

We're Canada.

All publicity is good publicity.

Say what you like about 4D.

He has got us in the news.

He's taken one for the team.

And it also shows that people have had enough of PR primed lozen-smooth politicians.

And more to the point, I think they want someone in office who is a bigger dick than they are.

That gives us reassurance that, you know, if only we could be asked, we could make it to the top as well.

So he's very much a hero and an inspiration.

And we've reported in the past on people voting for dead politicians and rhinoceroses and things like that.

And this is really another shot across the bowels of the political classes.

Toronto basically happy with a crack-smoking lunatic with the self-control of a turkey-hating psychopath doing overtime in an abattoir not long before Thanksgiving.

Thank eulogy time now.

And well this will be slightly tricky seeing as this is a podcast that has proven itself to be relatively immune from sincerity over the years.

But I think we can probably all agree Nelson Mandela was an incredible human being.

I remember watching him get released

on TV.

I was 12, standing in my parents' kitchen as he walked out of jail.

I remember the small things that led up to that moment.

I remember it being important that we didn't buy bananas from South Africa during apartheid, to always look for a South African sticker in the supermarket on a banana and then put the banana back down if you saw one.

I remember his face on t-shirts at Free Mandela concerts on TV.

I remember growing up knowing in the abstract that this was a better human being than most other human beings.

But it wasn't until I went to South Africa in 2010 that I got a sense of exactly what impact his life has had on every single human being in that country.

We were there shooting some pieces for the Daily Show about the World Cup and we did a piece about race relations which involved me asking people in the streets in Johannesburg how it was that white people were still alive in South Africa, how it was that they were not hated and every single person, literally 100% of the around 50 people that I spoke to on the street, said a variation of this.

Well we couldn't hate because Madiba told us not to.

He didn't hate anyone and if he didn't hate after everything that he'd been through, then how could I?

This was an unbelievable human being.

He sacrificed everything physically and personally for his country.

If it wasn't for him, there may not even be a South Africa today.

When people pass away, it's often said that they're not gone, that their memory and impact lives on.

Let's be honest, a significant amount of time, that is complete bullshit, Dundee.

Nelson Mandela, though, perhaps more than anyone else that we get to share the earth with in our lifetimes, will never be forgotten.

He was, to put it in an inappropriately profane way, f ⁇ ing amazing.

And obviously very popular all around the world and particularly in America.

So So popular, in fact, that he was removed from the U.S.

government's terror watch list, John.

In which year?

Which year is a little quiz for you?

Oh, well, it was probably almost immediately, Andy.

I want to say,

I mean, we're going decades back, right?

Yeah, I mean, you might think...

Right, Andy?

Well, you might think, why was he on that list in the first place?

Maybe it's a trick question.

Maybe he was never on the terror watch list.

That's right.

It was a typo, so that's why it came off so quickly.

In fact, it was in 2008 that he was finally removed from the U.S.

government's terror watch list.

The bugle, of course, began in 2007.

I'm not saying we were directly responsible, but you can draw your own conclusions.

But 2008, that is just the 18 years after he was released from jail, 14 years after he became president of South Africa, nine years after he stopped being president of South Africa, and four years after he largely withdrew from public life due to failing health.

So why?

finally in 2008?

Well, that was the year that he turned 90, John, and America clearly finally thought, oh, he's probably okay now.

Best keep an eye on him.

In fact, he seems to be popular not just in America, but all around the world.

Let's keep an eye on everyone in America and the entire planet.

One, two, three, mega snoop.

So basically, Mandela is responsible for all

the snooping scandals we've seen of recent years.

That's his true legacy to the world.

He was put on the

terror watch list

by President Reagan whilst he was in a fairly high security jail on an island

with apartheid in full swing, which does suggest that Reagan was not only barking up the wrong tree, but he was also barking at the wrong cat.

Mandela, of course, was not only a figure of inspirational dignity and

idealism and a symbol of humankind's intermittent ability to rise above its own destructive self-interests, but much more importantly, John, he was a massive sports fan.

And he famously turned up to the Rugby World Cup final in

1995 in Johannesburg, wearing the Springbok jersey, the South African National Rugby Jersey, very much a symbol of white Afrikaner South Africa, one of the most potent acts of sporting symbolism and a kind of landmark moment for the modern South Africa.

There were then shots of him through the match watching the game and enjoying it and smiling.

Clearly not a real rugby fan, John.

If he'd been a real rugby fan, he would have spent the entire match shouting at the referee.

Shouting, Ref!

Ref!

Penalty!

His knees were in contact with the wrong plate of glass for a fraction of a second.

Are you blind, Ref?

Offside!

His toe is one millimetre in front of someone else's ass!

Wake up, Ref!

Wake up!

But I guess he had to put that aside for the day and realise that he had a broader responsibility to his nation.

And that is the kind of man that he was.

My family had

a branch of my family had quite very close relations with Mandela.

My father's uncle and cousins were in the ANC and my father's cousin, in fact, subsequently in government, is currently the governor of the Reserve Bank in South Africa, suggesting that that branch of the family got all these serious genes that I've missed out on.

That's right, they yinned out while you yanged and they.

I'd like to play my own personal tributes to Mandela, because as has been said,

not just on this esteemed programme, but around the world, his forgiveness was quite extraordinary after everything he was put through.

And it kind of really shows what an amazing man he was.

Because we humans, we are genetically programmed to hold grudges.

That is why we eat chickens and turkeys because birds are descended from dinosaurs who used to eat us on a daily basis so we we we get our vengeance through eating chickens and turkeys we are basically naturally a grudge-bearing species as proved by for example history politics and global current affairs now i personally find it difficult not to hold a grudge even about fairly minor things.

That is part of being human and part of being in showbiz like I am.

Now, two years ago to illustrate this, I was on a ferry to Spain with my wife and two children who were then aged four and two.

As part of the onboard entertainment, 2.30pm, much trumpeted by the ferry, was a show featuring the ferry company's mascot, Pierre the Bear.

Well, off we trooped to see this light entertainment legend, this ursine Sinatra of the Seas, in the ship's barstroke entertainment area.

There were only two other children there.

The top clock ticked past showtime.

No Pierre the Bear.

Two more kids turned up.

Still, no Pierre the Bear.

Then finally at a quarter to three, someone comes out and says, Pierre the Bear will not be doing the show today, but your kids can come and have their picture taken with him.

Now, who is this pseudo-caniformian shitbag and his maritime showbiz myth?

Pierre the Bear does not perform to audiences of six.

He is Pierre the Bear.

He deserves better than that.

You should be honoured just to be in his presence.

Well, John, this riled me, John.

This is the source of my grudge, because not only has Andy Zaltzmann performed to audiences of six, he has performed to audiences of less than six quite often.

And more to the point, when you are Pierre the Bear, or more appropriately, you are an entertainer on a ship and you've already gone to the trouble of putting on the fing bear costume,

why would you just not do the fing show anyway?

Do the show, Pierre the Bear.

Even if you're having a really bad bear day, possibly exacerbated by having been on a ferry for 18 hours with nothing even slightly resembling the woods, do the show.

It still annoys me more than two years on.

And having subsequently been on the same ferry trip and seen Pierre the Bear do the afternoon show and thought, yeah, we didn't miss much the first time around, it still winds me up, John, as a point of principle.

Nelson Mandela, by contrast, was jailed for 27 years by a regime of appalling moral degradation, stripped of his freedom, dehumanised, subjected to abuses of various kinds at the hands of an industrially racist state.

And he comes out and says, let's all learn to get along.

He would not have held a two-year grudge against Pierre the Bear if he'd been on that ferry, John.

Well, that is a pretty big if, admittedly.

He would have reached out to Pierre the Bear.

He'd have tried to understand why he didn't do the show, and tried to inspire the beleaguered and disillusioned bear to strive to better himself and to entertain his public.

He would have left the ferry a better place, as he has left the world a better place.

I'm not saying that the entertainment lounge on board the Portsmouth the Sandhundair ferry is my own personal Robin Islands, but I am saying that Nelson Mandela is a greater man than I.

I insist.

I insist on that.

Andy, you did the impossible.

You made me appreciate Mandela even more than I did previously.

Well, I'm going to put that in further context, John, because here's a man who can make you appreciate Mandela even more than that.

Because celebrities, of course, were quick to the airwaves and to Twitter to pay their respects

to Mandela

and none more so than the Iron Shake who took no took it took some time off from his personal beef with Smurf 2 as a movie

to say

Nelson Mandela Iron Shake class

my good friend he always loved me and I love him forever Nelson Mandela never a jabroni like Kamala Which I needed some translation.

Jabroni apparently means loser, and Kamala was one of his wrestling opponents.

Okay, why bring Kamala into this?

But still,

the point is a good one.

It's just, it's a shame he had to

use it to tear someone else down.

That's not the point.

The point is, the Iron Sheikh's heart is in the right place though.

That's right.

And

if he says Mandela is in the Iron Sheik class, who are we to disagree with him?

He did then follow it up by saying, Paris Hilton, you dumb bitch, you're worse than ultimate warrior, go f ⁇ yourself.

But, you know, it just shows that life moves on, John.

Life moves on.

I guess so.

So that's all we have time for in this week's Bugle.

Thanks very much for listening.

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

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Postal schedules permitting.

So thanks very much for listening and we'll be back with Bugle 253 next week.

Until then, goodbye.

Bye!

Hi Buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.