Bugle 237 – Istanbul’s hit

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, me Huglers, and welcome to issue 237 of the Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world for the week beginning Monday, the 10th of June, 2013 with me, Andy Zoltzmann, the

man,

and I'm in London, the

place.

My vocab has really taken a backwards

thingy this week.

And joining me from the city where penguins fear to tread, New York, it's

let me just check the roster.

Obama, Banky Moon, Mandela, Chomsky and Reese Witherspoon, Lenny Bruce, and I think his agent pulled him out.

Bieber and Albright.

No, not this week.

Amita Rearhart, what a show that's going to be June the 10th.

John Oliver.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Well, well, well, Andy.

I'm about to embark on the strangest week of my life.

Last night, Jon Stewart hosted his last daily show until September, which was a strangely emotional experience.

And I say strange, Andy, because, you know...

As you know, I don't usually consider myself blood related to emotion in any form.

And now from Monday, I start hosting in John's place.

And the last week, a couple of weeks really, has been a bit of a blur, to be honest.

I've had to do a lot of interviews.

Which is what you love, isn't it, John?

That's what you love.

He's not exactly in my comfort zone.

And he's not really in the same hemisphere as my comfort zone.

I've talked about myself more than I imagine anyone will need to hear for a lifetime.

A desperate attempt to try and get people to watch the Daily Show next week and over the summer, despite the fact that the reason to watch The Daily Show will already be on a plane to the Middle East.

So, buglers, listen, please do tune in, log on, or watch with your face pressed up to the best by window to share with me what is going to be a weird, weird week.

And by next week's bugle,

at least I'll have four shows in the bag.

Even I had to do an interview about you this week, John.

Did you?

Yeah.

The New York Post, believe it.

Oh, boy.

Oh, my.

God, how was that handy?

Are you aware of what the New York Post is?

I've no idea, no.

I assume it's the same as the New York Times, but more so.

It is that it's close.

It's close whilst being about as far away.

It was the New York Post, Andy, that published the wrong two kids as Boston bombers on the front page of their newspaper and then refused to apologise.

But apart from that.

Apart from that, all I know is that I just had to send them a couple of those topless shots we did years ago

for money.

Well, I did David Letterman's show on Tuesday, Andy, which was a big deal for me.

I've loved him for a long time.

And

he's a cantankerous man.

You can never be sure whether you're fun fighting or actually fighting.

And I was so off balance through the whole interview that he brought up Belgium out of nowhere at one point.

And I'm ashamed to say, Andy, I brought up chocolates and Jean-Claude Van Damme and not waffles.

Oh, man.

Not waffles?

Waffles are the only thing anyone thinks of when the word Belgium enters their mind.

And it probably speaks to how tired I've been of.

My brain synapses didn't make the single most logical connection between two things in the known world, Andy.

Belgium and waffles.

The Romeo and Juliet of countries and foodstuff.

I don't know what's wrong with me.

Well, you'd better smarten up by Monday, John, otherwise it's going to go very badly indeed.

No, sir.

I'm not going to be able to hear your voice in my head on Monday.

You better smarten up, or this is going to be awful.

Now, you were in Norway, Andy, which is, of course, as we all know, famous for Vikings and nothing else.

Yes.

How was that?

Oh, it was excellent.

Thanks, John.

Yeah, it was Vikings and Herring for Breakfast, which I can heartily recommend to all buglers.

Yeah, it was thanks very much to all the Norwegian buglers who came along, including Ben Smith, who designs the logo.

He's a New Zealander living in Oslo.

He came to one of the gigs I did there.

So I have a photo of me and

the world's logo designer of the year

2012, 2013, whichever year it was in.

2009.

And I'll put that up on the Twitter feed and I think we'll try and put it on the webpage

web page as well.

But yeah, thanks to all the

buglers who came to my Norway gigs.

But you've obviously I've had a less busy week since

I got back.

You've been doing kind of round of showbiz interviews and

going on David Letterman.

And for me this week, a tortoise did a massive shit on my garden path.

Honestly, Andy, there were times during my week when I would rather have been watching that tortoise shitting than listening to myself.

And next week, you might be, you know, might be shaping the future of democratic discourse in America.

I'll be taking my son to look for a squirrel in the woods at the top of the rope.

That's again, Andy.

There are going to be moments when I will want to change places with you.

Oh, but by the way, how were the stand-up show gigs?

Oh, they were good.

Yeah.

They were good.

I'd forgotten I'd done them, Andy.

And I did eight of them this last week.

Oh God.

Oh God.

I think I'm hallucinating a tortoise shitting on my face now.

Well I can arrange that, John.

It seems to have moved into our garden permanently.

So this is the week beginning Monday, the 10th of June, 2013.

Mini, it's 220 years since on the same day in 1793,

The Jacobins gained control of the French Committee of Public Safety following the arrest of the Girondin leaders in the French Revolution and installed a revolutionary dictatorship.

And on the same day,

um

the uh Natural Uh History Museum uh of France was founded and that must have been an awkward

awkward awkward opening day and an awkward thing for museum fans to have to decide, you know, what what do they go and do?

Do they

you know, there's a revolutionary dictatorship just taking power, but I do love dinosaur skeletons.

Tough

tough call.

On this date, in 323 BC, Alexander the Great popped his clogs.

Probably poisoned, possibly a trampolining accident, maybe electric trying to rewire a faulty toaster.

We may never know.

And on the subject of Vikings, John, 1,220 years ago,

this Saturday, the 8th of June, if you'd been hanging out in the Abbey on Lindisfarne Island in northern England, you would have had your morning paddle in the North Sea rudely interrupted by some big, blonde, beardy bastards in silly helmets.

The Vikings had come, John, a terrific raid on the Abbey,

commonly accepted as the beginning of the Viking invasion, the start of the Viking era.

And also they launched the great British tradition of getting hammered and smashing something to pieces at the weekend.

And it's very interesting being in Norway and contemplating the Viking influence on British history and the British gene pool.

Because, of course, you know,

as a nation, we're a mixture of the results of various invasions.

And the pillaging gene has come out strong,

proved very influential, not just in the scenes that we see every weekend in our town centers on Friday and Saturday nights, which historians claim are eerily accurate reconstructions of

Viking raids, right down to the smell of piss and vomit.

But also, the Viking urge to pillage, combined over the years with the Roman love of administration, the Saxons' Germanic will to expand, and the Normans' French insouciance to turn us into the cocky empire-building trinket-thieving machine that has left us with such wonderfully stocked museums.

So, thank you, Vikings.

1220 years ago.

And in 1949,

on this weekend, Orwell's, George Orwell's 1984 was published, his terrifying vision of the past.

Certainly keeps me up shitting myself about state intrusion into my life 29 years ago when I was nine.

Good one, George.

Of course, the book was named after his two highest breaks in snooker, 19 and 84.

He'd never got more than 19 in his 20 years of trying to perfect his snooker technique.

Then one day it just clicked for him in a match against his fellow terrifying future predictor Aldous Huxley.

Huxley for once played a loose break-off shot.

And Orwell, who'd never previously potted more than seven balls in a row, sank 11 reds, 8 blacks, 2 pinks and a blue before running out of position, and trying an ambitious double to left centre on a ready left on the cushion as an insurance policy.

Orwell slammed his key on the table, punched the air and went for a piss.

During the wares, he became convinced that he was being watched by secret cameras everywhere and started graffitiing the classic novel on the toilet wall.

Huxley, meanwhile, sat in his chair, affected to look unconcerned, took a couple of sips of water and started writing Brave New World.

Eventually Orwell returned and Huxley took the next six frames to wrap up an

84 frames to 19 victory.

And, oh, it's been a long week, John.

That tortoise has got to me.

Amongst Orwell's other famous works, of course, Animal Farm, his pitch for a children's cartoon, finally produced some 60 years later by the BBC as Big Barn Farm, complete with talking animals.

He wrote to Wigan Pier, a driver's guide to the A49 from Ross on Wye up to northwest of England, and Keep the Aspadistra Flying, a guide on how household plants can save you from wasting money on a real kite.

Was that the section in the bin or not?

I don't think it was.

Oh yeah, there is a section in the bin.

It's a DIY sound effects quiz.

Question one,

what am I drilling?

Is it A, a hole for a new shelf?

B, a hole for a new hook, C, a hole for a new hidden camera in the guest bedroom, or D, a hole for exploratory keyhole surgery in my friend's knee.

Well, it could be any of those four.

Question two, which of these hammer thwacks went wrong?

Ow!

Ow!

That was my thumb!

Ow!

Ow!

Ow!

That was my penis!

Ow!

Just one of those went wrong.

Question 3, grout or trout?

One of these is the sound of someone doing some grouting.

The other is the sound of a trout.

Which is which?

And finally, question four: paper capers.

I have wallpapered my living room.

Can you tell what mistake I have made?

Help!

Help!

Let me out!

I can't breathe!

Help!

Help!

If you get the answer to all those four questions right, you win the right to host week two of John's stint as the daily show hook.

That section in the bin.

We've had a lot of good luck messages actually from Buglers to you, John, for your

stint.

Some genuine ones, but also this one.

John, you've got the platform.

Hold on, let me let me just brace myself, Andy.

You've got the platform.

Now give the people what they want.

Always has the trick for me.

Love from Pope Francis.

Brackets the Pope.

And also, dear the Buglers, best of luck to John hosting the Direly Show.

That's from the International Association of Old-Fashioned Telephone Addicts.

That's great.

Look,

I'll take the well wishes where I can get them, Andy.

Yeah, why not?

Top story this week.

You're the best around.

Never ever got a bring you down.

You're the best around.

John, you really have to get all of this out of your system before Monday.

Do I?

Do I, though, Andy?

We'll see if I do or not.

We're at more or less the halfway point of the year and it's probably a good time to get some of the scores on the board for who is being the best country on the planet right now.

This is going to be a nervous moment for buglers all over the world, so I hope you've got your winner's speeches ready as well as your faked faces of happiness for when you lose.

And of course, who's the best is a hard thing to rank.

You really need to break that down into categories.

For most chaotic nation, you're spoiled for choice at the moment.

Syria makes a very strong case.

Somalia barely seems to be a functioning country at all.

But for the sheer spectacle of barbarism and hopelessness doing a bloodthirsty tango across the country, I think you probably have to give it to a sad.

For best climate for a massive protest, again, strong nominees, Andy, that's a tough category.

Basically, anywhere in Europe, you're seeing a lot of things getting justifiably smashed.

But for best protest newcomer, Turkey in particular, Andy, has put in a late run for contention as huge protests have been ripping across the country.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is sitting on a pretty combustible kebab of a country right now.

He has called these protests borderline illegal, which seems to be a way of inadvertently admitting that they are actually legal.

They're actually not on the border, they're behind the border, looking at illegal on the other side.

The protests were sparked over the proposed controversial development of a park where protesters have been congregating and it served as a lightning rod for encompassing fears that Prime Minister Erdogan is going to be imposing a conservative Islamic system of values on Turkey which is of course a secular country and I'll tell you what did not calm the situation down at all Andy and that was the tear gassing of a lady.

Basically there is a very famous lady in a red dress now, Seyda Sungur.

I am positive that is not how you pronounce her name.

An unassuming middle-aged academic at Istanbul's technical university she found herself at the front line of a line of riot police and a series of photos show her being tear gassed out of nowhere for no clear reason whatsoever the photos instantly went viral as they seemed to call into question the claim by Erdogan that the protesters were extremists living arm in arm with terrorists because this was clearly a nice lady who was arm in arm with her actual handbag.

It's so hard to tell in the heat of the moment, though.

But

that is the thing.

That is, you know, what could have been in that very small handbag?

Documents, documents of what?

In the city of Izmir, her picture has even been made into a giant billboard where sympathizers can put their head through a hole where her face should be and pose for photos.

Although, look, for that photo to work, Andy, the photographer really should make you say cheese and then tear gas the shit out of him.

Of course, making the whole issue more poignant, John, is the fact that the site of these, the protests in Istanbul, was Gezi Park, formerly the site of the Taksim Stadium, where Turkey played its first ever international football match in 1923 when, of course,

Zaki Riza Sporl popped up with a couple of crucial goals in a scintillating two-all draw with Romania.

Terrific match for the neutral that.

And there are now plans to replace the park with a replica of a big old barracks building, possibly with a shopping mall, a mosque, maybe a museum, this and that.

They seem to be riffing it as they go along.

And this has not gone down at all well, John, with the people who don't have a lot of parks in Istanbul as it is.

It seems basically, might possibly be the equivalent of turning the whole of Central Park into a golf driving range, maybe of transforming London's Hyde Park into a giant exclusive hairdressers.

I mean, it might be nothing like that, but

it might be a bit like that.

And the people of Istanbul have called Istan bullshit on it and say it's what began as a peaceful sit-in protest to stop the park being bullshit dozed.

The Turkish government, then, for reasons known only to themselves and people with extremely odd brains, then decided to plow in with riot police firing tear gas and burning protesters' tents down, then water cannons, pepper spray, more tear gas just to be on the safe side, including, as you say, the woman in the red dress, tear gassed at what can only be described as point-blank range.

It was absolutely amazing.

She was, it was so, it must have been about three feet.

Yeah, well, if they were, if if they really wanted to make her cry that much from that they could have just told her a really sad story they were that close that close or said your red dress looks stupid

It doesn't matter

so as a result of this not really heavy-handed but kind of morbidly obese handed reaction by the government what began as a small group of environmentalists standing up for the rights

for their rights and their lovely little park against the dead hand of commercially driven pseudo-progress has now transformed into hundreds of thousands of people across the whole country protesting against the government so they haven't really dealt with it in the most productive way possible and Erdogan gave a televised speech condemning the protesters vowing where they gather 20 I will get up and gather 200,000 people

that is where they gather 100,000 I'll bring together 1 million from my party which is kind of schoolboy psychology really isn't it I've got more friends than you and

it's it's certainly not helped Turkey in the chart of happiest nation in the world, which was produced a week or so ago.

And I'm afraid they've not made the top 10, John.

Really?

Yep.

They didn't make the top 10 happiest country.

No.

Even though half the country seems to be on fire.

Yeah.

Also just missed out.

And top

was Australia.

Australia.

You're right.

Australia has been ranked.

Yeah, Australia's been ranked the world's happiest nation among developed economies for the third year running.

And they can add that, Andy, to the title I awarded them earlier this year of most comfortably racist country in the world after

their inexplicably specific suspicion of Lebos.

I guess it shows I'm right, Andy.

They're happy.

They're perfectly content with their level of Lebanese bigotry.

Right.

But I mean, what...

Are you suggesting that Lebanese bigotry is the recipe for national happiness?

Because

it seems to be.

It seems to be.

I mean, you want that not to be the case but then you just look at the numbers andy the figures don't lie because if you look at the the three countries below them in the top ten sweden canada and norway yeah

they have moose and they have bears neither of which australia has so it can only be the lebanese bigotry that is really possible

yeah it just must be yeah

how did it feel to be in a top five happiness country andy could you feel the happiness and did that happiness go up or down after your gigs

Well,

you can.

It does seem quite a happy place.

I've got a few problems, but I think you can make top 10 while still having a lot of problems, judging by the fact that America is in sixth place.

Yes, yes, fair point, Andy.

Low punch, but well-delivered punch.

So yeah, Australia's the happiest.

Turkey seems to be the best place to throw a brick brick at the moment.

And in terms of the most

positively viewed nation in the world, there are some statistics available from the annual country rankings poll by the BBC World Service.

And it's a surprise winner because Germany,

yeah, that Germany is apparently the most positively viewed country in the world.

Too soon, Andy.

Too soon.

They cannot be number one after what they did, Andy.

There should be a hundred-year ban on them even being eligible for the number one spot to positively view.

Too soon.

There should be a hundred years, so that will take it up till twenty ninety-six until they can be forgiven for how Andy Muller reacted after his penalty sent England out in 1996.

It was so arrogant, wasn't it, Andy Muller?

Totally unacceptable.

It was a strut.

It was a cheat.

Psonic strut of the worst kind.

More than twenty-six thousand people were surveyed internationally for this poll.

They were asked to rate 16 countries and the European Union on what whether their influence in the world was mainly positive or mainly negative.

Germany came out top with a 59% rating

of positivity and Iran was apparently once again the most negatively viewed.

So there you go.

You know,

they've got somewhere to go, Andy.

They're a builder club, Iran.

Well, it's just so worrying.

They're very nice people.

I think they're getting judged by a very few unpleasant Iranians.

Yeah.

You just worry that, you know, as a franchise, they've just kind of come too far down the wrong road.

It's going to be very hard.

You know, they're like the Cubs, aren't they?

Yeah.

Apparently the UK saw a bigger increase in positive ratings than any other country with this and climbed to third place in the table, mainly in the wake of hosting the 2012 Olympics.

We've put on a good Olympics, Andy.

Yeah.

That's all it takes.

That's right.

And people clearly liked the nation we were pretending to be during those Olympics.

That's bumped our rating up.

It also does suggest that.

Really, the world should be considering giving Tehran an Olympics in the not too future.

Now, just in terms of reintegrating Iran into the international community, that is the way to get countries viewed positively.

Britain was viewed positively by 55%, negatively by 18%.

But these figures, of course, exclude a country's view of itself.

That is a good point.

That's a good point.

That negatives would go through the room.

Well, yeah, but so would the positive.

I think in Britain it's basically 100% positive and 100% negative at the same time.

But

I'm surprised by this,

how well America did in the happiest nation.

Obviously, Australia, the national slogan, no worries.

You expect them to

be near the top despite their fading cricket team.

But America, because if you'd followed the

election last year, You would have thought that America was about as happy, comfortable, and at one with itself as a nation as a pair of violence-hating, bolt-gunner-phobic actors wearing an extremely realistic pantomime cow outfit in a very crowded lorry full of cows that's just turned off the main road after seeing a to the abattoir sign.

And there was a story this week that suggests why America is so happy, and that was the story of the National Security Agency basically attaining access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, and other internet giants

according to a top-secret document that had been leaked.

And I can understand, I imagine this will be featuring in the daily show for you next week.

Maybe they've already hacked into your scripts and are kind of busy rewriting them.

They've probably made some changes to the prompter on the camera.

Well, it's just shows that America's happy with this, John.

It's happy to have a government taking time out.

to keep tabs on things for us.

You know, we all live busy lives.

I, for one, can barely remember which of my numerous sets of wives and children I'm supposed to be with in any given month, let alone what top secret meetings of the Jewish cabal that run showbiz I'm supposed to be attending to schedule my latest massive primetime TV hit.

Now, I'm sure many bugles have trouble organising their day-to-day lives.

That is where a comfortingly intrusive state snooping operation really comes to a nation's rescue.

And that's in Britain, we had the newspapers to do it for us.

Typically, the government outsourced it to a private company whose main imperative was profits.

It didn't go quite as well as it could have done.

But America, this is the recipe for American happiness, John.

Snooping on the people.

Sozzled Stalin news now!

And a newly released Foreign Office report of a 1942 Moscow visit between Winston Churchill and Stalin has had some awesome revelations in it.

It basically reveals that talks were

proving to be quite awkward until a late-night drinking session lasting until 3am loosened everything up.

The file states that the mood was, I quote, merry as a marriage bell, although Churchill was complaining of a slight headache by 1 am.

The letter adds, the two men really made contact and got on terms.

Yeah, I'm sure they were hanging off each other, Andy.

I bloody love you.

All these others, they mean nothing, but you you're my best friend.

We're gonna kick the shit out of Hitler's together, you and me.

I'm gonna call you about it tomorrow, and we're gonna fingers do it.

We're gonna we're gonna punch him in the ball face and then we're gonna go scuba diving together, just like we talked about.

That's definitely I'm definitely gonna remember the scuba trip idea right after I've just been a little bit sick of it in this corner.

I'll tell what we should do is split Europe down the middle with a big fing fence.

Totally do that.

That's it.

There's no way that's gonna blow up in a few decades.

We'll just do it.

We'll just do it.

We'll just fing do it.

And the further transcript has Stalin saying, I'll tell you what you should do, Winst.

Was that J-Dog?

replied Churchill.

Stalin, eliminate all your political opposition and brutally repress all forms of artistic expression.

Yeah, I should do that, Joseph.

I really fking should.

And you should grow a fking big moustache.

Yeah,

said Churchill.

I've always thought the old face could do with a little bit of hedging.

This is going to affect the way I look at every photo of Stalin and Churchill together forever now, Andy.

Because I'm just going to be picturing Churchill with his arms around Stalin, holding him up, saying, Hey, Stalin, you're finging nuts, but that is some amazing facial furniture you got.

You're okay with me, kid.

Sir Alexander Cardigan, who was permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, wrote up the report of the meeting

that this was found in this file, saying, conditions have been established in which messages exchanged between the two will mean twice as much or more than they did before.

So just because, Andy, they were Booze buddies, is he claiming that the Second World War could have been over years before if Churchill had just got into a drinking game with FDR?

Every time you say you're not coming into the war, you've got to take a shot.

Hey!

He also wrote, what Stalin made me drink seemed pretty savage.

Now, that could have been literally anything.

I'm not saying Joseph Stalin made homemade vodka out of poets.

I'm just saying he might have done, or at least had someone make it for him.

Yeah, I dread to think what kind of cocktails Stalin had come up with, Andy, but I'm guessing it's the last thing you order before you black out.

Well, I don't think he was on cocktails, John, because the documents also reveal that at the same meeting was Molotov.

So

I imagine

he was on the cocktails, yeah.

One of the bits of the transcript says, go easy on the Tabasco, please, Mollis.

They're still cleaning Sergei off the walls in the snooker room.

He was there.

Molotov was there with his trademark cocktail shaker.

But I think this is very much the future of diplomacy, John, because as we've already discussed in this show and repeatedly through the five globally happy years of the bugle,

there's a lot of problems in the world that have not been adequately resolved by normal communication.

So I think we need to resort to the bottle.

Because if Churchill and Stalin, one of the biggest goodies in history and Evil Genius magazines world number one ranked baddie for seven years in a row from 1945 until British singer Vera Lynn surprisingly usurped him in 1952 amidst allegations of vote rigging by a man she'd rejected at a party late in 1951.

Hey Vera, I agree we will meet again but I do know where and I do know when.

Room 237 in five minutes.

Ouch that hurt.

Oh and so did that.

But if Churchill and Stalin can learn to get along with a little bit of alcoholic lubrication then so could Israel and Palestine, North and South Korea, Turkey and itself, Australia and New Zealand even, or Bashir Alas out of the rest of humanity.

The world...

Would the world now, John, be in a better or worse state if all major political meetings since 1942, when this original one happened, had been carried out under similar conditions to the Stalin Churchill booze up, which ended up with them singing a karaoke version of Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses into an empty vodka bottle whilst agreeing to share Germany?

Would the world be better or worse?

It's got

better in, I'm clearly.

Yeah, gotta be.

I think maybe you could introduce that to the interview section of the daily show, John.

Yeah, if ever things are getting tough, just pull out a bottle of vodka.

Say, you drink half, I'll drink half, and then let's have an amazing three-minute interview.

And then tell me all about your book.

Yeah, it's a long book, isn't it?

And it's got a story in it.

Your emails now, and this one comes from Melissa in the Bronx,

which I believe is in your part of the world, John.

She writes, Putin on the pull.

Question mark.

Dear Andy, Chris, and John, did you hear the news?

Vladimir Putin, the steely-eyed stealer of hearts the world over, will soon be back on the markets.

He and his misses are getting divorced.

And this has got all

lady buglers, I'd imagine,

who have a bit of a penchant for

extremely domineering Russian leaders very much paying attention now.

I think given the proliferation Melissa writes of the bugle's popularity on internet dating sites in recent times, it may be time to turn that experience into an opportunity.

I think the bugle needs to start its own matchmaking operation for the sole purpose of finding Putin's new pudding.

It's as if the fates had spoken when a profile was created on Christian Mingle and other such sites.

Someone was merely getting you an inside look at what you'd need to know in order to assist the delicious dictator in finding a new lady love.

Maybe a sexy pun run from Andy, John's sultry rendition of Sexy and I Know It.

Whatever it takes is what must be done.

Do it for Vlad, do it for Mother Russia, but most of all, do it for love.

Touching email from Melissa.

So, well, I mean, if you if you do want to submit an application to become the new Mrs.

Putin do email it into us info at thebuglepodcast.com and put in the subject box

miss Mrs.

Vladimir Putin II

I have registered f dungeons.com as well should we not get in the waiting group

Wow there is an incredible sentence Chris that I guess I was just it wasn't that I didn't think it was going to come out of your mouth I guess I was just waiting till the perfect moment

This one comes in from Doug in Baton Rouge, who writes, so I just bought the Bugle Coffee Mug.

And let me tell you this, it'll better be f ⁇ ing funny.

If it just sits there containing coffee, not telling jokes, I'll expect a full refund.

Also, good luck to John hosting the daily show.

Don't fk it up.

We'll all be watching.

Thank you very much.

I'm looking forward to it, Andy.

It's like looking forward to a bungee jump.

I'm sure it's going to be great fun and an amazing experience.

I'm just not 100% sure that I should be doing it.

Did you see that video of the guy whose rope snapped and he fell into a pit of crocodiles, John?

Really?

And lived.

He did live.

Great.

So that's a happy video.

Yeah, it is.

Don't worry about the middle bit.

He's lived to make another movie.

Well, I mean, you can get, all of you can test out how funny the bugle mug is by clicking the merch link on thebuglepodcast.com.

Is it up there yet?

Yes.

Oh, good.

Right, that's a relief.

So,

yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, maybe you should try and get one on the daily show table, John.

Just like.

Oh, yeah, pull it out.

Yeah.

Pull it out.

Wait until we've got someone who shouldn't be photographed or something like that and just slip it out for a daily show bug.

So do get your emails and constructive criticism of John's performance next week coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

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

Spread the world, spread the word to

Syria and all other non-bugle worshiping countries.

And don't forget to take out your voluntary subscription at thebuglepodcast.com, or else we will hunt you down and hound you into the very bowels of hell.

So

that's about it for

this week.

Yep.

Best of luck, John.

Thanks, mate.

for exciting uh opportunity i said in my interview the new york post is going to seem like a you've come a long way since that gig uh at the space in docklands when we ended up standing in an empty room after a hundred percent walkout

in uh that

knowing the new york post andy they may have taken that you know that quote and slightly misquoted it into you say something to families true about muslims okay knowing the new york post they might have led with the uh don oliver dreams of a tortoise shitting on his face like

That's true.

You buried the lead post.

So

I've got some gigs to plug as well.

You might be able to see John on television, but you have to fucking move geographically to see me.

Political animal.

This Thursday the 13th at the Utterbelly in London.

I've got a solo show there on the 27th of June as well.

And another political animal on the 11th of July.

Plus, for cricket fans.

or people who hate cricket but love being at shows that they don't understand and actively dislike.

I'm hosting The Greatest Test, a series of Ashes-themed live podcast comic quiz show recordings conceived by the media guru, Chris, the producer.

That's me.

Yep, the brainchild of the child.

Good first show on Wednesday.

We've got you, Miles Jupp, Giles Corran, Kent Valentine, Amil Rajan.

That's cool.

That's great.

That's very good.

That's very strong.

I'm going to listen to that.

Yep.

So we will be talking shit about cricket

whilst John is bringing American democracy to its knees.

Bow down before me.

What's the

page where you can bookwen.com forward slash greatest test?

There we go.

So we're

both moving.

We're all moving into the hot seat in our different ways this week.

That's true.

That's nice to know.

Well, best of luck, John, and we will see you on the other side.

Yes.

In next week's Bugle.

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.