Bugle 241 – Motown breaks down

That coffee is an assault.

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 241 of the Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world for the week beginning Monday, the 22nd of July 2013, with me, Andy Zoltzman, and back from our two weeks off.

What's happening in the cricket, Chris?

And ready to focus

exclusively on the bugle.

Was that Watson out before?

Because there's some seriously heavy shit going down and frankly needs satirizing in this world.

What the hell was Besto doing yesterday with that shot?

And there are so many big problems in the world, like, you know, Syria and money and shit like that.

And we really have a duty as comedians to hold up a mirror to the world.

I mean, seriously, hitting a full toss straight back to the bowler right near the end of play.

Geez, honestly, how's that kind of bathing going to solve the Middle East crisis?

And joining me from New York City, ex the exemplary host in the temporary post, the outstanding standing, the Gerald Ford of comedy, John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Bugless Bluegas.

You might remember four years ago, if you were listening back that long, the ashes were on.

Andy is distracted at this time.

It's not even fair to say he's distracted because that would imply that he has any attention on what he's doing right now, rather rather than 100% focused on the cricket.

We are back after a couple of weeks away.

It was lovely to see you and your family, Andy, have a little fish and chips before getting on the plane.

Such a great choice for a digestive meal before

an international flight.

Less said about that the better.

Sit you down hard.

But

I've been back as a substitute host, as you say, for the daily show all week, where so far I've succeeded, surprisingly, in not taking the show off air, air, but only just because on Monday, I don't know if any buglers are watching the daily show.

After the first two segments of the show were finished, we were just getting ready to do the interview segment with Aaron Sorkin, and there was this weird, loud, guttural sound that started coming out of the speakers, like a Skrillex gig in a functioning abattoir.

And

this is one for all you dubstep fans out there.

A little out of the loop with Skrillex's recent.

He's a DJ whose music sounds like this, Andy.

It sounds closer to that than really makes sense.

It sounds like a hippo giving birth.

It's basically that.

You know, if you've ever seen a hippo giving birth, you just inherently start dancing to it anyway.

And if you haven't, you have not lived.

Go and see those hippos.

And then all the monitors in the studio went black, all the cameras went down, half the studio went went dark, and all the edit base and control room lost power.

And I thought, this makes sense.

I don't know why I'm surprised.

I have broken the daily show.

I can't complain.

If anything, this happened a lot later than I thought it would.

So we had to do the interview with Aaron Sorkin on a pair of handheld cameras and then run the tapes, physically run the tapes over to the Colbert studio and frantically edit the show down in time to put it on air that night.

And just in time, I might add.

There were only a few minutes to spare.

And the whole crew were incredible in keeping calm in the face of what seemed to be electrical armakeddon especially because in the midst of the mayhem and i'll really admire this andy i know you will too they still managed to find time to talk shit to me

there were literally panic studio engineers running around saying i've got to say john this has a never happened before in the history of the show and i've been here 15 years you've been hosting for what a few weeks now funny that i mean i'm not pointing the finger of blame it's just i am pointing my finger at you

it's not what you want to hear andy that's what you you know, when there are noises coming out of equipment that seems to suggest the studio is about to explode.

And then there was one other

fantastic moment this week.

On Tuesday, I met my first dame, Andy.

I've never met a dame before.

Have you met a dame?

I've no idea, actually.

Well, you'd know if you'd met a dame.

You'd know.

My dame was Dame Helen Mirren.

She was a guest on the show.

And I had to end the previous act of the show, before the interview, dressed in an adult nappy or a diaper as they call them

here in the US.

You had to or chose to, John.

I mean that's I don't get somatic on you.

I chose to

I won't even try to explain why I was dressed like that but it turns out that the lack of dignity it takes to put one of those on actually pales in comparison to the lack of dignity it takes to take one off.

You have to release both sides and then pull the whole thing forward through your legs.

And as I did that, Andy, holding the nappy in front of me with my trousers around my ankles, I looked up and I saw Dame Helen Mirren staring back at me with a smile on her face that said, you look f ⁇ ing stupid right now.

And I pretended to be the queen.

It was definitely not how I envisaged my first encounter with a dame going down, Andy.

No, well, first of many, John.

I was interviewed this week

for a place in the England cricket team.

Congratulations.

How did it go?

Well, it went all right.

Chris, you were there.

It was

dinner with the chairman of the England cricket selectors, Jeff Miller.

So this was the closest that you're probably ever going to get to get selection.

You sat there in front of the selectors and the selector asked Andy, Andy, what do you bowl?

To which Andy's response was, mind your own business.

I've forgotten that, but

how do you forget that, Andy?

You just bank on the fact that he would respect that kind of threat.

That's interesting.

That's interesting.

Yeah, you res

they're looking for cricketers with strong minds and not afraid to express their own opinions.

And uh, oh, so anyway, so he interviewed me for uh for a position on the England cricket team.

And uh, yeah, I'm not sure.

I mean, I haven't had the call yet, but uh,

I think I made an impression.

I think it might be coming with that conversational SmackDown, Andy.

So, this is Bugle 241, very special Bugle 241.

We have a special 241 offer.

If you take a voluntary subscription out today, you can listen to this and all future bugles twice for no extra payment.

That's got to be pretty tempting, so double your enjoyment if it works out like that, or actually probably slightly reduce your enjoyment of the show by clicking the link at thebuglepodcast.com to keep this invaluable news source free editorially and free for those who cannot afford it or are too tight-fitted to pay, or more likely too disorganized, or just can't be asked, or simply hate the show and want no part in its continuing existence.

We're recording on the 19th of July.

That is 460 years to the day, John, since in 1553 England's literal team queen, Lady Jane Grey, had her nine-day reign as queen terminated.

She was only about 16 years old.

What a nightmare for a teenager.

I bet she threw a proper teenage strop, even more so when she was beheaded a few months later.

Well I don't want to have my head chopped off and you can't make me.

I'm going to my room.

Oh sorry, you can make me.

Oh, my room is in the Tower of London, right where I'm going to be executed.

Right, we have a situation.

And also,

425 years ago, another historic moment in British history, 1588, the Spanish Armada was viewed in the channel off Lizard Point in Cornwall.

Oh, yeah.

And legend has it that England's naval warfare Ace Sir Francis Drake was bowling at the time.

And he was informed about the incoming Spanish fleet and responded, hey that can wait.

We've got time to go bowling and still beat the Spanish.

Stop distracting me.

I haven't even programmed my name into the computer yet.

Oi, who type me in as Admiral Noble, you little bastards.

Top story this week.

The heat is on.

The heat is on.

The heat is on.

Now somebody please turn the fing heat off.

Feel, feel, feel, feel my heat

um

if uh if you live if you if don't don't finish that thought andy if you if you live in the us or the uk you are feeling pretty

you hot right now because

it is hot here andy it's it's hot here in america and i know that the uk empathizes with that because by all accounts it's too f ⁇ ing hot there too

absolutely john yeah i mean it's we're struggling with a heat wave the like of which has has never been experienced by humanity anywhere before.

Just day upon day week upon week of burning sunshine record temperatures we're talking

high 20s John low 30s Celsius even it's making the Sahara look like a partially refrigerated cake counter in a bakery store it's making the Australian Outback look like Skegnest Beach in early April it's making the Atacama Desert look like South America's answer to a soggy Christmas dog walk Britain is so toasty at the moment that if you dropped it from space it would inevitably land people side down.

That is the thing.

If you saw any reporting of the heat wave in the UK at the moment, and then you looked at the number that prompted that reporting and you live anywhere else in the world, you might think, what is wrong with these people?

But you know, look, it's difficult to explain.

It's not, yes, it's not technically as hot as elsewhere in Britain, but Britain is significantly less well-equipped to deal with high temperatures, both physically and, more importantly, emotionally.

And for a start, people don't really have air conditioning in their homes

in Britain.

Apparently, a report in 2008 found out that just 0.5% of houses in the UK has any kind of air conditioning.

Whereas here, Andy, in the land of the free, the land of the incredibly cold inside when it's incredibly hot outside, nearly 100 million homes have it.

And it's possible, apparently, it's possible that air conditioning accounts for as much as 15% of total American energy consumption.

And that is 15%, Andy.

That's a 50% portion of a pretty f ⁇ ing huge burrito.

Because that's the ultimate demonstration of freedom, Andy.

Being on a 100-degree day, inside, able to wear a coat.

That is a profound and powerful f you to nature.

Oh, sure.

You've been beating down pretty hard, Mr.

Sun.

It's dangerously hot outside, you say.

So why then am I shivering in here?

It'll be exciting to see my breath when I tell you to go f yourself.

That's what we fought two world wars and at least two Cold Wars for.

The right to air-conditioned America.

I mean, in Britain, we've been really struggling.

John, I haven't seen this many people looking burnt in public since Queen Mary was barbecuing Protestants in the 1550s.

And man,

that's two 1550s jokes in one show.

Yeah.

That's

setting the bar pretty high.

Deep cut, Andy.

Yeah.

And it's the biggest heat wave here since 1976 when of course uh you don't need me to tell you famously the Queen Mother melted whilst watching a horse race at Royal Ascot.

Had to be taken to a special laboratory in the basement of Windsor Castle and poured into a cast of herself that they'd taken during the war.

Back on duty a week later after re-solidifying

and lived for another 26 years.

I keep waking up and it was so hot.

It's very hard to sleep.

My kids are

really struggling to get to sleep.

Maybe because I'm standing in the corner of their room dressed like a ghost.

But anyway, probably

more to do with the heat.

But I keep waking up in the middle of the night, sweating like a guilty feeling pig, being cross-examined about whether or not it's kosher.

Too hot sometimes even to think about a sport.

That puts it in perspective.

So hot, John, that I keep thinking I'm Florence Nightingale.

And it's becoming now so reminiscent of 1796 that I

keep expecting Mousy Tongue to die again or the Bay City rollers Money Honey to shoot back to the top of the Canadian pop shots.

Well, you are jumping around the sensories today, aren't you, Andy?

Thank you, Wood.

And the heat short-circuited your brain somehow.

I will say, though, Andy, one of the things about the kind of actual heat that we're experiencing here in New York is that it's not just about the feel, it's about the funk.

There is a powerful, thick perfume to this city at the moment.

This place is a feast for the senses at the best of times, but when it's over 100 degrees outside, it becomes the kind of heat that you can not only smell, you can taste.

If you could bottle the smell in New York at the moment, Andy, then your factory would be instantly shut down for health and safety violations.

That is the kind of wall of scent you are walking into.

It's like walking into soup here, Andy.

It's a heady scent.

Especially around where the Daily Show studio is in Manhattan.

Because if you've not been there, and I'm guessing most of you haven't, we are between a subway sandwich shop and the stable where they keep the central park horses so there is a pungent combination bouquet in the air of subway sandwiches and warmed up horse shit which which is combined

yeah combined andy it smells like a sandwich or to put it another way a subway sandwich boom

boom

boom

It's caused all kinds of political eruptions over here, John the Heat, because Labour MP Ben Bradshaw committed the heinous political crime of wearing cycling shorts to a political event.

Is that true?

Yes.

Would that make him cooler?

And

cycling shorts are a little...

That's another...

That's a tight short.

Unless that's a breathable fabric, he's looking at

creating a kind of one-man sauna inside his shirts.

Thank you.

Yep.

Yeah, definitely one-man, two-egged sauna.

And

it was David Miliband's farewell party before he jets off joining you in New York, I think.

I don't know if you're at all worried about that, John.

You're clearly loading him up.

He's heading up the International Rescue Charity, taking over from its previous head, Jeff Tracy, who many people viewed as little more than a puppet.

And that's a joke for all you Thunderbird fans out there.

Wow.

I just don't know what has happened with your references, Andy.

Oh, I know.

They've stayed exactly the same.

There's actually no change here.

Some people viewed Ben Bradshaw's shorts as perhaps the greatest acts of political disgrace in Britain since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament.

And oddly,

he was wearing a smart shirt.

So presumably,

he must have had a pair of trousers with him.

that he elected not to put on unless he'd been cycling to this party wearing his trousers as a kind of Superman cape and they'd blown blown off because he had the shirt to go with the trousers John right he wasn't wearing a cycling top and this this is I mean this basically rocks the

British political foundation

to its to its knees basically

It's into all kinds of discussions over whether our fashion sense disappears as a nation when the weather gets hot.

All of a sudden, things like shorts, sandals, togas, speedos, medieval suits of armour come out.

Now, I'm not one to pass judgment on people's fashion choices, as you well know, John.

Me and fashion are like the Pope and condoms.

We've seldom met, and when we have, the conversation has been one-sided and awkward.

And

I'm in no position to give anyone any fashion tips, as my collection of 18th-century wigs will testify.

They will come back.

Everything comes back.

And shorts really all depend on the person.

It's all relative.

Roger Federer in shorts, no problem.

The enormous Community Secretary, Eric Pickles, MP and Shorts, Aesthetic Minefield.

The Archbishop of Canterbury in Schwartz, Constitutional Minefield, the Ayatollah in shorts, war.

And the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, committed an even greater heat-related clothing faux pas.

He took off his shoes in his office.

Oh, come on, Nick.

Come on, Nick.

This was reported in the newspapers.

Newspapers.

News.

Let's control the first syllable of that.

Newspapers.

But it did make me think, John, if Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, 2IC of Britain, if he is going to take off his shoes in the office, I mean, you just think, f ⁇ ing hell, we might have let the f ⁇ ing Nazis win the war.

I mean, come on, Clegg, be British.

Swelter your nuts off in a suit, tie, and a proper pair of shoes.

We built a f ⁇ ing empire in unnecessarily hot countries just so we could prove that there was no climate that we were not prepared to wear an oxygen

reducing net garment in.

Do you know how intimidating that must have been in the war?

The German soldiers sitting there thinking, f ⁇ ing hell, these guys wear tweed jackets and a cravat and the f ⁇ ing suit on.

They must be tough as a dinosaur's ball bag.

We haven't got a hope.

And besides, also, you need to keep the level of British formality under any circumstances.

I mean, the Germans would have been blitzing the crap out of British cities.

And we'd have been there wearing full morning suits saying, Oh, we're terribly sorry to have rather damaged your bombs with our buildings.

That was awfully rude of us, I'm sure.

I'll tell you what, give us a few years, we'll replace them for you.

No, don't mind, we'll just drop them off on our way over.

Absolutely no problem.

You take your formal clothes off, John.

You lose that British psychological edge.

Did Churchill swan around in Bermuda shorts?

Yes, but not in public.

Did Thatcher wear a bikini in cabinet?

Yes, but that was just to show who was boss and to keep Cecil Parkinson distracted.

The point is, John, we're British.

We do not take our ties, trousers, and shoes off at any time.

Not when we're working, not when we're at political functions, not when we're bathing, and above all, not when we're breeding.

That is what made this nation what it is.

I feel a little bit sick after that.

Yeah.

Thatcher in a bikini.

Yes.

Not a leasing one.

Yeah.

I guess we've all got embarrassing and inappropriate summer clothes.

My worst was when I turned up to a Captain Scott-themed summer party dressed as Raoul Amundsen.

I got a very frosty reception, appropriately enough.

Detroit news now, Motown may become no town.

And

Detroit, that is a...

That's a very glib way to rhyme away the troubles of a dying city.

Detroit has become the largest U.S.

city ever in history of all time to file for bankruptcy, declaring debts of at least 10 billion pounds,

probably around 18 billion dollars.

It's not looking good for Detroit, Andy.

Oh, I see that.

I mean, sounds bad.

They're never more dangerous than, you know, when they're backed into a corner, but this corner may be a little too pointy and narrow to get out of.

The city of Detroit wants, you know, of course, a symbol of US industrial power.

This was the, you know, they were the kings of the car industry.

Is seeking protection from creditors who include public sector workers and their pension funds.

Oh, good, Andy.

Good to see that the vulnerable are not going to be the ones to suffer here yet again.

Detroit has faced decades of problems linked to the decline of its industry.

Although, it's not really a decline so much as it is a bungee jump of industry.

It's Detroit's industry bungee jumping off a cliff while also having to make cutbacks on the use of bungee cords due to the the economy.

So basically just jumping off a cliff.

Detroit's industry has over the last decade jumped off a very big cliff and had the water removed at the bottom of it.

It's dead.

That's what I'm trying to say.

I'll see you trying to say that.

And I believe you have said that now.

Yeah.

Detroit's, as you say, the renowned

city, 18.5 billion bucks in the bad.

It is in economic parlance up shit creek without a paddle or a life jacket or a boat and with a disappointingly heightened sense of smell.

And as you you say, John, the questions do arise: how did Motown become Lestown?

I've done a little variation on it.

Sorry, different, but maybe my more British perspective on it.

Who put the Detritus into Detroit, US?

Who put the Lu's into Blues and the Uh realization into D and Dirstrealisation?

And it's very ironic that the city of Henry Ford cannot afford to buy a real hen.

Okay.

Right, I'm done.

Okay.

Okay.

I mean, the point is...

It's literally sold its soul.

The market worth of a Vandela has plummeted to its lowest level since the early 1970s.

Okay, okay.

Are we really done now?

Or is there, I potentially, are you James Browning this one and saying, I can't go on.

I can go on.

Detroit is an amazing city.

Or was.

It really is an incredible place.

And they're now left with a series of options.

I guess one, fake their own death leave a note somewhere saying sorry just couldn't go on don't worry it's nobody's fault apart from institutionalized corruption ridiculous mismanagement and an industry this will really be stuffed and mounted to the White House's wall goodbye cruel world and then

try and collect the insurance money somehow after disappearing.

Option two gambling.

You know, they're around $18 billion in debt so they just need to get an $18 billion loan, go to a casino and put it all on red.

If they win, they're back in the game.

If they lose, they can always go back to option one and fake their own death.

Or three,

like so many people in desperate situations, Andy, they could turn to a life of crime to try and rebuild their city's infrastructure.

Start low level, you know, steal a few buses from various other cities just to get their public transport moving again.

Maybe a few trams from San Francisco to throw in there as well.

Then steal a few monuments, then a few buildings.

You've probably got to steal some people to go in those buildings as well, just gradually so that no one notices.

Then go big and start stealing some huge stuff.

Golden gate bridge st louis arch the liberty bell and yankee stadium andy then detroit is back

but we say crime is an option but i mean this is actually one of the problems in uh under nine percent of criminal cases are solved in detroit part because they have a 58 uh 58 minute police response time compared with 11 minutes as the uh national average um 78 000 abandoned buildings that that seems a lot yes uh over Over 100,000 creditors, and I'm guessing not all of them are the pay-me-back when you can love maternal kind of creditor.

And one-third of ambulances are out of service, which I think is the silver lining to this

financial black cloud.

Because, I mean, fair enough.

Why bother living longer if you've got a chance not to in these circumstances?

I mean, you're going to ring up the ambulance service and say, yeah, I've just skewed myself on a railing.

Fell out the window whilst taking a run-up to kick my TV to pieces.

I know I shouldn't watch the local news anymore.

I know that now.

Yeah, I'm probably going to bleed out in 15 to 20.

Nah, don't bother.

I've seen the figures.

There's nothing for me here.

And one less pension to pay.

I'll take one for the team.

But to me, as an outsider, you look at the stats: 40% of streetlights not working.

78,000 buildings unoccupied.

The lights aren't on and no one's home.

It sounds like the city equivalent of the Duke of Edinburgh.

And it

still has some lingering race issues as well.

Bugle feature section now.

Pseudonyms and publishing sensation here in Britain this week.

J.K.

Rowling, the woman behind the Harry Potter books and general world-dominating media franchise.

A woman who's generally found that the pen might not be mightier than the sword, but it is certainly more lucrative than the sword.

She secretly wrote a crime novel under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, had it published, and it had sold around about 1500 copies.

Before her secret was leaked by a law firm, oddly, and the book has now accidentally shot to the top of the bestseller lists.

And it seems an appropriate moment.

Was that law firm representing her publishers, Andy?

I've no idea.

She did seem genuinely annoyed by it.

Yeah, I'm sure she was, but I'm guessing their publishers may be a little loose with their tongue around town.

It'd be really nice if this sold a thousand times the amount that it is.

And the rest.

Overnight.

I'm sure they're absolutely devastating and are giving all the money to a charity for abandoned authors.

But this is a great tradition throughout literary history of famous writers using pseudonyms to publish things secretly.

James Joyce,

you're a big fan of the JJ, aren't you, John?

A

massive Joyce fan.

Did you study Joyce at university or not?

Well, I definitely looked at a lot of the books

at them.

Yeah.

Some of the back covers.

As I looked along a line of books.

Some of the back covers are excellent.

I know that.

Anyway, James Joyce, the famously obtuse Irish wordsmith, author of such incomprehensible classics as Ulysses and the hauntingly ahead of its time Judy Finnegan's Wake, also wrote the classic six-book series of girls' boarding school novels Mallory Towers.

Anyone who's ever tried to read them backwards will testify.

He wrote them under the pseudonym Enid Blyton, which was already used by the prominent children's novelist Enid Blyton, who everyone assumed the books were by.

Later, Judy Bloom's teen girl novels were, of course, written by none other than President Dwight Eisenhower, and in accordance with the great man's will, were published posthumously.

He said that

writing fiction from the point of view of a teenage girl really, he found it very relaxing during the heightened situation of the 1950s global political situation.

American publishing sensation Edgar Allan Poe released a three-volume treatise on the history of the commemorative figurine entitled A History of the Commemorative Figurine in three volumes volumes, under the pen name The Slaughtering Claw of Death, whilst the controversial fatwa-winning novelist Salman Rushdie is rumoured to have authored a number of celebrity autobiographies, including Stephen Gerrard's My Liverpool Story and pop singer Cheryl Cole's Cheryl My Story, plus the surprisingly controversial critique of the National Health Service, The Satanic Nurses.

And Eric Carl, the author-illustrator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar,

is also rumoured rumoured to have been the literary parodist Ethel Nazi behind such genre-lampooning erotic classics as The Penis of Monte Cristo, Wang of the Derbervilles, and 1984.

William, it all started with Shakespeare, of course, famously the pseudonym under which most turn of the 16th, 17th century playwrights published their works.

Shakespeare, of course, used by, amongst others, your John Webster's, your Francis Bacon's, your Chrissy Marlowe's and your Eddie De Veres, not to mention other candidates like Queen Elizabeth I,

now widely accredited as the author of Shakespeare's little-known play, The True Story of the Awesome Ginger Queen, Francis Drake, the aforementioned Francis Drake,

now viewed as the probable writer of Shakespeare's work, Frankie Two Hats and the Armada Gardas, and Drake's fellow explorer Walter Raleigh, credited with bringing potatoes, tobacco and children's bicycles back to Britain from the Americas.

And people

saw his hand in some of the blatant product placement in Shakespeare's work as evidence that Raleigh was the author, including such famous quotes as, Is this a potato I see before me?

And 8-2 Brute, I ate three, can't beat a spud.

And

have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest, lend less than thou owest, with the smooth taste of Raleigh's high-tar lungbuster cigarettes.

And of course, back to the subject of J.K.

Rowling, as revealed, way back in Bugle issue 3, the leadstring of the British acid jazz band Jamiroquoi actually had a hit single in which he impersonated an angry bear entitled Get Out of My Bins and released the song under the name JK Growling.

Oh boy.

But if you're going to be too busy to do more than one or two stories, then I'm going to have to pat it out with some shit.

You didn't think of that when you took the job, did you, John?

I know.

Let's not be aware of that.

Think of the consequences.

Before I could re-engage in the bugle, this could be a rough month, people.

Your emails now.

We have an email from here from Anne in Wisconsin who says, Dear Chris, Andy, and John, because Chris is so rarely listed first.

I just listened to Friday's episode of the bugle, and the only response I have is that it sounds like the revolution number nine of bugle episodes.

It's either genius or something you can't even listen to because it's so unintelligible.

I listened to it backwards, and it told me that Andy died in a car crash three years ago and the man we think is Andy is actually named Henry Borden and ex-cricketer which is why he tries so hard to make us care about cricket.

This also explains why the bugle logo needed to be an illustration and not a picture with Andy's back to the camera or walking barefoot.

I'm going to go back to previous bugle episodes to listen to all of them backwards to see if I can find out more clues.

And now

I haven't heard it yet,

Chris.

The episode you put out last week, but it sounds fing weird.

It's certainly uh it's it's split opinion it's uh slathered some whipped cream on it and it's popped the cherry on top it was about time the audience got the truth

i mean we got a lot of a lot of probably more emails about this subject than any other topic in the the history of the universe um this email came in from steve subject whatever the f it was he released on the 12th of july dear chris andy and john in order of whom i choose to blame for the item mentioned in the subject line i have or possibly had a friend this is a good friend one i value quite highly.

This friend trusted my judgment enough to ask for a few podcast recommendations.

I mentioned a small handful of, as I referred to them at the time, quality bits of sound, including, of course, the bugle.

This possibly now former friend grabbed the most recent thing of the time, the fing thing mentioned in the subject line, and gave it a listen.

This friend will no longer speak to me.

Fix this, damn your eyes.

Fix it.

Sincerely, with an otherwise appropriate level of respect, Steve.

That's what you've done, Chris.

That's going on my CV, that.

That's what you've done.

John's broken the daily show and you've broken the bugle.

Sorry.

So,

we also put out a best in advance of the magic royal baby, which is due literally any second now.

We put out a did also put out a best of

the royal family, best of Wills and Kate's bugle compilation.

And I'll probably see a lot of buglers watching the birth live on the big screen in Hyde Park.

Huge screens, live relay from the birthing footage.

And I believe Steve Redgrave has been booked in as the midwife or could be David Beckham or it could be a representative sample of London youth.

We don't yet know.

Is there a lot of excitement about the

imminent birth in America, John?

And maybe

we could, I mean,

it would be in a lovely gesture if...

having had the baby they just sent it to this to Detroit to spread its magic.

That is a nice idea.

If she really cared about Detroit, and I don't think she does, at least she has no real need to, then she'd give birth there, put the city back on the map.

So GK Remells coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Do check out our webpage, thebuglepodcast.com, where you can buy merch and also take out your volunteer subscription.

And don't forget to look at our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com slash the hyphen bugle.

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Now, John, I mean, the ashes have been...

You left Britain from your brief stay here on the morning that the ashes.

Yeah, just before the first ball.

And you missed one of the greatest test matches

there's ever been.

I imagine it probably got wall-to-wall coverage in the

American media.

Well, thankfully, the pilot was doing ball-for-ball commentary, Andy.

I mean, I know a lot of our American listeners find it hard to relate to cricket.

As I wrote my cricket blog this week, I said a good test match is often compared to a gripping novel.

But the difference is that

you can flip to the end of a novel and find out what happens, which you can't do in a test match.

I mean, a novel, you can skip to the end to discover whether or not Elizabeth Bennett and Mr.

Darcy finally snap and gun down the interfering Mrs.

Bennett and the rest of the Bennett family in the hail of bullets before escaping on a motorbike and fleeing to to Mexico.

You can find out whether or not the lion and the witch end up getting it all in the wardrobe.

Whether Willie Wonker ever gets it deserved legal comeuppance for breaching all manner of employment and health and safety regulations.

Whether the Gruffalo is finally shot by poachers and its body parts sold as decorative ashtrays.

Or what happens to caterpillars with serious eating disorders.

You can flip to the end of a book, but not of a test match, John, and that's what makes it so engrossing.

And with public attention comes commercial opportunity.

and um

the bookmaker paddy power uh put up a an advert they projected an advert onto the uh outfield at the oval cricket ground with a picture of england captain alastair cook and the caption captain cook civilizing aussies since 1770

which um was not the most historically sensitive comment to make no it's not really there's a number of things wrong with it and when captain cook landed in australia on his first global visit in 1770 didn't really start civilizing the aussies there.

He stole some of their spears and helped himself to a bunch of flowers, but didn't really do a lot else and then basically f ⁇ ed off around the world.

And

before he claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain without telling the people who already lived there, and I'm not sure that they necessarily thought of themselves at the time as Aussies.

The subsequent British people who followed Captain Cook to what became known as Australia had a bit of a tendency to civilise these Aussies in the way that you might try to civilise a clay pigeon or in the way that Theodore Roosevelt tried to civilise African wildlife.

And then they assimilated those proto-Aussies who were around in 1770 into Australian society by, amongst other things, giving them smallpox, that traditional European police to meet who have some death present, also by stealing their land, stealing their children, devastating their communities and way of life, and if all else failed, shooting them a bit more.

But still, don't worry, it's just a harmless joke.

All is fair in advertising, just a bit, a little bit of banter about a long past genocide.

As long as it encourages people to indulge in that most civilised of British activities, online gambling, then fair enough.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle 241.

We'll be back with Bugle 242 next week, at which point there will be no cricket going on during the middle of a match.

We've just seen an Australian player get out testicles before wickets in an exciting, exciting new development for cricket, the nut shot.

That's

I mean, that's a very

exciting development in cricket.

I know the wang shot in baseball has been quite an effective

kind of bunce technique for some while, hasn't it?

So, what are we about next week, John?

Enjoy your next show.

Have you got any big-name guests coming up on the daily show this week?

Louis C.K.

on Monday.

Oh, right, nice.

That should be very interesting.

And the Egyptian national football coach on Thursday.

An American man.

He's in a very, very interesting position, Andy, in both the footballing and, I guess, at the moment, more political sense.

Because

I mean, does he, because I know Mohamed Morsi reckons that the Egyptian national team should play a kind of traditional 4-4-2.

Yeah.

But, you know, some of the more secular

people in Egypt think they should go with a wingbacks formation.

So I don't know how

he's going to square that circle.

They'll never be peace, Andy.

Until then, buglers, goodbye.

Bye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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

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