Bugle 234 – Nuns, guns and nutters

Sounding a bit ill, John?

I am ill.

I'm definitely ill.

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 234 of the Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world, beginning Monday, the 13th of May, 2013, with me, Andy Zoltzmann, in London.

You really should come here someday, Buglers.

It's got restaurants and so much else besides.

Sensational places.

And in New York City, USA, it's the man who these days can just look at a thing, anything, and it spontaneously just starts satirizing itself.

It's the Manhattan Mirthmaker, the Westside Witticist, and definitively one of of the funnier Gentiles in New York.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

You're already talking up London there, Andy, by saying it's got restaurants.

Oh, yeah, mate.

I wouldn't believe it.

You weren't talking about the quality, just saying factually, there are places you can pay for food.

That's right.

I mean, what more do you want in a place?

Why wouldn't you come on holiday here?

Achievable goals.

That's what you've got to set.

I forgot to mention last week, but just so that Buglers know, the date that I'm going to be temporarily hosting the daily show has been set.

It's going to be from Monday, June the 10th.

And look, I'm just going to be honest with you, I'm going to need buglers to watch, mainly because it's entirely possible that no one else will.

Andy and I have separately and together taken a number of TV shows off the air over the years.

And I'm really going to be trying to make sure that I'll still have a job by the time Jon Stewart comes back.

So put June the 10th into your diary.

Tattoo it onto your testicles because it will be the beginning of a few of the strangest months in my life.

We're going to keep trying to do the bugle throughout the summer, although my contributions may, if it's possible, be even less thought through than they already are.

But it may end up, who knows, being a valuable audio document history of one man single-handedly destroying one of the most iconic programs on American TV.

It won't be easy, Andy, but I'm pretty sure it can be done.

I could have taken the Cosby Show off the air if they'd let me anywhere near that thing.

I'm sure I can do it now.

Well, I had a rare delve into the world of television last weekend that some buglers might have seen.

I did a little piece at the end of the World Snooker Championship coverage for the

BBC.

Now

as you've suggested John we uh we do uh we do tend to split opinion sometimes into uh us and everyone else.

Uh and uh it's fair to say that uh you know I might be an acquired taste and uh it turned out for quite a lot of snooker fans seven minutes was not quite enough time to acquire that taste as the uh instant response on Twitter showed.

No, I was quite pleased with the piece and a lot of the buglers who've commented on it on the Twitter and email seemed to have liked it as well.

But that was not the universally held opinion, John.

As comments such as, who's this

can testify?

And make it stop.

And this guy can f off.

So

there we go.

The glories

of the spittoon of democratic opinion that is Twitter.

Did you get any negative reviews, though?

This is Bugle 234, making it the most suitable bugle for preceding a love song.

234 can now be replaced with the next half hour or so of total jive we're about to lay down into the archives of humanity.

In fact, if any bugle is worth thinking of serenading an intended romantic partner with a song, we'd be very interested from a scientific point of view to find out whether playing this episode, instead of saying the words 2, 3, 4, before starting the song, makes your gesture more or less romantically effective.

And it can also now, this episode can now be used alongside Bugle 1 in our Use Your Bugles to Count in a Game of Hide and Seek.

So you now have one and now two, three, four.

And you're going to have to wait for Bugle 56789 for the rest of that little collection, I'm afraid.

That's scheduled to be in the year

3433, roughly, by which time, according to projections, podcasts will be the only remaining branch of showbiz left in the world.

So do keep your voluntary subscriptions coming in if you want the bugle to be in the forefront of that commercial gold mine.

I am in London,

the city where 73 years ago, this week, Big Winston Churchill was putting on his new Prime Minister's underpants after the ceremonial handover from his outgoing predecessor, Neville Chamberlain.

Chamberlain, to be fair to him, had had the Prime Ministerial undergarbs thoroughly laundered post his little Munich incident.

But he was a much skinnier man than Winston, a man of, who was, of course, a man of famously, defiantly considerable girth.

But due to the lack of fabric in the war and the hectic nature of his new job as Prime Minister, Churchill endured five years of over-tight underpants before deliberately throwing the 1945 election to the much more skinny Clement Attlee, pretending to be annoyed at the public for voting him out, and going commando for six years to get rid of the indentations around his waist.

Oh, it's been a long week.

I've been working on a radio show that's basically been keeping me up until 4 a.m.

every morning for three.

And I've been having people ask me who this is.

Honestly, Andy, it's quite a profound philosophical question that they're asking you there.

Yeah.

I mean, what is the answer?

I guess there is no right answer, it's just your journey to finding that answer as to what kind of you are.

On Sunday, the 12th of May, it will be exactly 193 years since the birth of Florence Nightingale.

Happy birthday.

Oh, yeah.

Still got it, lady.

Still got it.

Oh, yeah.

Dead now, of course.

Tragically snatched away from us at the age of just 90.

But I tell you, John, if I was 150 years older than I am, I would have been volunteering for the Crimean War and dangling my leg in the way of bullets.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry, I've been holding that in for a few years.

And to mark this historic occasion of Flowknoys 193rd, this week's section in the bin is a pre-nightingale medical treatment audio part work, part one.

Doctor, I've just been bitten by a worm.

Right.

I'll pop your trousers down.

Look at this pencil to distract yourself from the pain.

Ow!

Oh, that does smart.

Yes, I bet it does.

I let it rust up just to make sure.

There you go.

One leg off.

One leg leg on.

Do you want to take it home with you?

Oh, please.

Just one thing.

The worm actually put me on my arm.

Oh, right.

I'll get my axe.

Did you say you're goodbye to your wife yet?

Because I could always do this as a home visit tomorrow if you like.

Oh, thank you, Doctor.

That'll be terrific.

We've got people coming for dinner.

It would be an awful shame to miss it you to bleeding out on your couch.

Testify.

I'll tie you up for the evening.

Nip a whiskey.

No, thanks.

I'll take it like a man.

Yow.

That is going where it belongs in the bin.

Top story this week, Britain and Europe sitting in a tree, F-I-G-H-T-I-N-G.

And Britain had its local elections this week, which was obviously huge news around the globe.

Damascus, rebels and Assad loyalists both laid down their arms to huddle around radios, hoping to hear the exit polls from Gloucestershire.

Here in the US, Andy's, I'm sure you can imagine it was wall-to-wall coverage with the President being kept in constant touch with the results coming in from Dagenham South.

This time though, there was relatively big news coming out of the elections with UKIP, the UK Independence Party, making huge gains to the joy of Eurosceptics and the dismay and slight embarrassment of everyone else.

There is something about UKIP which taps into some of the worst sides of the British character, or the best sides of the British character, as some of the worst people in Britain would argue.

UKIP is a political party run by men who look like they were from a different time in British history.

Nigel Farage, is it Farage?

Farage, yes.

Farage.

He looks like he should be sitting on a porch in India with a rifle on his lap, wondering which endangered species he should go and shoot next.

Fetch me another cool glass of water, Rajiv.

I'm going to need to be hydrated when I shoot another tiger in its stupid tiger face.

He does have the kind of permanent half-grin, Nigel Farage, of someone who is constantly surprised that he is not being punched in the face by someone.

And I can tell that, John.

Justifiably surprised, aren't they?

Justifiable.

I know that look, John.

Because I was a real dick when I was younger.

And I'm slightly less of a dick now.

So it doesn't surface quite so often.

But I recognise that look when I see it.

Well, you can basically sum up UKIP's policies like this.

Britain is an island, and if too many forests stand on it at one time, it will sink.

Also, you shouldn't even be looking at her.

Or you will make Britain dirty with your eyes.

Also, why doesn't everyone treat us like it was 300 years ago?

Things were so much better back then.

For us, obviously, not necessarily for everyone else.

That's not the point.

The point is, Britannia rules the waves.

God save the Queen.

Oh, Pippa.

That's basically UKIP's policy positions in a single meandering sentence.

And the already muddy waters have been further muddied by the intervention of a couple of senior Conservatives, Nigel Lawson, one of Thatcher's chancellors, and Michael Portillo, both suggested that Britain should withdraw

from the EU.

I think withdraw from Europe as a continent.

In fact, maybe just

as I believe we suggested in a live show years ago, John, just withdraw from the planet Earth, maybe just rockets in all four corners of Britain and fire ourselves into into a slightly superior orbit so we can look down and say, oh, we are Britain.

Good day to you, fers.

Exactly.

Exactly.

It's just something about orbit which only gives you the kind of high ground, the intellectual high ground that we're claiming anyway, to feel physically aloof as well as intellectually aloof.

But yeah, you're right.

With the intervention of

Lawson, in particularly, the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher, and of course, father to Britain's favourite softcore pornographic chef, Nigella Lawson.

Oh, Nigella, you can make my souffle carefully rise any day.

Anyway, the invention of him and Portillo has made these more fringe anti-European views more mainstream.

And Lawson argues that

Britain would instantly save £8 billion in money that's spent in annual membership fees in Europe.

Money that could be spent on building a time machine to take Britain back to the 18th century when we were truly happy.

I will say though, an £8 billion membership fee does seem a little steep Andy.

Should we not all be getting some at least free gym memberships to the EU in Brussels for that?

Maybe some discount croissant or a free tote bag.

Something to make us feel like we're not being completely ripped off.

Nick Clegg, who the Liberal Democrat leader, Deputy Prime Minister, big Europe fan, massive Europe fan, but even he said we need to reform the European Union to make it more transparent.

Because currently the EU as an organisation is about as transparent as a brick in a stagnant pond with a hippo shitting on it.

And we'd...

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Whoa.

You don't say a sentence like that and then continue with another sentence.

That's like going out to a high-end gastronomic spectacular meal, Andy, and having the chef put in front of you saying, eat that in one bite and then drink this pint of milk.

No.

No, Andy.

We'll just let that.

Floats across the channel.

Let it digest.

That was a beautiful sentence.

Now, we in Britain, we tend to be pretty suspicious of anything that comes from across any of the seas surrounding our holy island, unless we have personally occupied, subjugated, stolen, or shot it.

And we've already taken the EU to our hearts, which I think is a bit of a shame, John, because I'm a real fan of the concept of Europe as a continent not slaughtering millions of its own people in avoidable wars every couple of generations.

Because

I've really enjoyed the fact that since you and I were born, John, you know, we haven't been expected to walk directly into machine gun fire emanating from people with whom we might reasonably think we have a shared history going back thousands of years.

I've enjoyed that.

It's opened up a lot of time my other hobbies in life, which include watching snooker and being called a c ⁇ .

But there is this scepticism,

particularly about things like that we view as kind of adolescent fripperies that you should grow out of, such as human rights and employment rights and things like that.

Things that you just put on the side along with

overly brightly coloured t-shirts.

And we want to be independent, John.

We want to let our own financial institutions bend us over our own British workbench and spank us with our own claw hammer until we beg for our own British form of mercy.

We don't want to drown in Europe's economic slurry.

We've got our own financial cesspit to force our own faces into.

So butt out, Brussels.

It's Britain's business.

Michael Portillo, another Conservative politician you mentioned who also, like Nigel Farage, looks like he'd be most comfortable hitting an Indian boy with a stick, also announced his support for Britain leaving the EU, saying the UK is unhappy in the EU.

We do not share its vision, partly because we are not visionary by temperament.

Oh, that's nice, Michael.

We're not visionaries or dreamers of a better tomorrow.

We're a stoic people who accept our lot in life and take pleasure in the simple joys of complaining about it all the time.

He went on to say, We're not so easily convinced that the EU is a necessary response to the horrors of the Second World War because our experience of that war was different.

Oh, I think I know where this is heading.

We did not endure revolution, dictatorship, or invasion.

Other countries may look to institutions at the European level because they doubt the durability of national institutions that perished in that conflict.

We do not because ours survived.

Well, that's great, Andy.

So he's throwing in an extra little f you over the Second World War for good measure, too.

Ours survived, and they are in a truly glorious state, as a quick perusal of any newspaper in Britain at the moment will tell you.

Now, I don't know, John, you've been out of this nation for, what, coming on, seven years now.

Coming up, coming up, Andy.

You know, I don't know if when you were here, you ever woke up and wondered what the fk could happen to this country.

Seems to be lurching right, withering spiritually, cracking under the strain of its own broken political discourse.

The government is currently selling off the legal system to a haulage firm and a supermarket.

Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.

What?

I think.

What?

It's a.

Now, Andy, I'm accustomed to you just telling spectacular lies, and I'm assuming that is one of them.

It's not, I mean, I don't have the full facts to handle.

Basically, Eddie Stobart, the prominent haulage firm,

is

taking over large parts of the criminal justice system.

I think we should go into this in more depth, maybe next week.

It's the kind of story that it's sort of been buried under

things like football managers resigning.

Well, to be fair, that was a pretty big story.

I mean, that was the biggest story that's hit these shores really, probably since the Romans invaded.

But it's...

I mean, everything's just being flogged off in this country.

Education is a political punchbag.

The poor are increasingly viewed as disappointing relics of a bygone era when we had some need for them.

And what do they actually do now?

The disabled, do they take sugar?

And if so, are they going to expect us to f ⁇ ing pay for it for them?

We have a political elite drawn from exactly the kind of schools I went to.

And let me tell you, John, people like me are the last kind of people you want in any position of responsibility.

We're a nation.

You've proven that, Andy.

You walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

We're a nation whose response to minor moral awkwardnesses like mass institutionalized sexual abuse has been to kick it under the carpet and then jump up and down on the carpet and the still it top stop twitching.

We should have enough skeletons in our national closet that it is probably time to start digging up our own patio as well just to check what we've buried underneath it.

So all in all, John, go Team GB, greatest nation in the world.

But on the plus side, the international cricket season begins next Thursday, so reality can go itself for a while.

Exactly.

These are only moments of clarity that you have to feel, Andy.

Sport will anesthetize you.

Relax.

Yeah.

I think I'm just a little bit overtired and irritable.

3D printing news now.

And 3D printing is supposedly, we're starting to hear, Andy, the future of manufacturing, as long as the thing that you want manufactured is plastic and less good than the non-plastic version of the thing that you could easily buy if you got off your ass and went to the shops.

Basically, the technology works by building up layer upon layer of material, typically plastic, to build solid objects.

The idea is that as printers become significantly cheaper, instead of going to the shops, consumers will instead just be able to download designs and print out the items they want for themselves at home.

So what is one of the first things that this landmark technology has been used for?

A gun, of course.

What else, Andy?

A firm in Texas, huge surprise over the state in question there, has successfully manufactured the first 3D printed gun.

And what a perfect time for this to happen, Andy, because the NRA had just held last weekend their 142nd annual convention, also in Texas.

142 in a row, Andy.

Muzzle tough, NRA.

I believe that 142 is the lead anniversary.

I think I'm right about that.

The company in question, Defense Distributed or Defense Distributed, as they would say here, has put

the blueprint online for manufacturing the gun and uh it's already been downloaded over a hundred thousand times an amount that they described as surprising but really

what is remotely surprising about that number andy i really didn't expect anyone to have any interest over a 3d printed functioning weapon i can't believe that that would intrigue people in any way what is fascinating about being able to forge a lethal plastic gun from a home printer a gun that would therefore not be able to be spotted with a metal detector that doesn't seem to have any one of the key ingredients for human interest.

What a shock!

What a shock!

Well, it's so often with any form of new technology that humanity's first reaction is to say, oh, wow,

that's awesome.

This could really revolutionize the way we live.

This could bring untold benefits to millions.

I wonder if you could kill someone with it.

It's true.

It's true.

It's always true.

That is humanity's thought process

at the point of any major development.

Basically, violence and sex.

It's basically how films work.

But it's also the same with technological breakthroughs.

That's why most missiles are shaped like penises.

They double up.

But

it also makes you think, John,

what would the founding fathers say?

about this because we know that they wanted Americans to shoot each other as often as possible.

But what would their view of 3D printers have been?

Because they never exactly go on about it that much, John.

They didn't crap on anything about the need to use 3D printers responsibly.

So I can assume what they really meant, a clear subtext of the fact that they didn't mention it, was see if you can use it to make a gun.

George Washington did not explicitly tell you Americans not to use 3D printers to create a little organ of devastation.

So we can only assume that is exactly what the Whig-Wearing Independence fan would have wanted all Americans to do.

And it does raise the question:

as the technology advances, will you be able to print an entire well-regulated militia?

Which is surely what Constitution fans will want to do.

It's the next step.

The right to print arms.

The company questioned Defense Distributed is headed by Cody Wilson, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Texas.

He describes himself.

A law student?

Yes.

Should he not be studying a bit harder?

Well...

Well, maybe, or not studying at all.

He's in that very tricky middle area at the moment.

He describes himself as a crypto anarchist and said his plans to make the design available were, and I quote, about liberty.

Oh, f you, Godie.

It's always about liberty when it comes to firearms in America, Andy.

It's getting so annoying.

It's just never about the liberty to not get shot by a maniac carrying a 3D printed plastic gun.

That is not a particular liberty that you have.

You do have the liberty to shoot him first, though.

That's the point.

Could he not have printed a nice little little puppy or something?

He'd unsuccessfully applied for a federal firearms license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which might as well be called the Bureau of Dangerous Combinations.

I think alcohol and firearms should really be separated off organisationally.

Second Amendment.

Second Amendment, Andy.

No, Second Amendment.

You're wrong about that.

Oh, sorry.

Second Amendment.

Sorry.

I'm a bit out of the way.

They never specifically said that you couldn't be drunk and on methramphetamines whilst firing a 3D plastic gun.

They never said that, Andy.

And if they'd meant it, they would have said it.

Stop putting words in their mouth.

Nuclear nun news now.

God, I love you.

I love alliteration.

You have my whole undivided attention now.

An 83-year-old nun successfully broke into a Tennessee depleted uranium storage facility, exposing...

Yes, yes, and the sentence isn't even over

exposing a massive security hole and was sentenced this week to up to 20 years in jail boom

we can keep talking buglers or you can just take that fact and enjoy it for the rest of the week until we speak to you again it's it's pretty amazing susan rice is the woman in question the 83 year old nun she cut through the perimeter fence with two of her

similarly aged buddies and then spray painted several surfaces and hung up protest banners as well as spraying human blood on several surfaces meant to symbolically remind people of the horrific spilling of blood by nuclear weapons.

The nun in question has apparently been arrested between 40 and 50 times committing acts of civil disobedience including once in Nevada after she physically blocked a truck at a nuclear test site.

I mean look for an 83 year old nun Andy

This woman don't f ⁇ around

Because after being sentenced to these 20 years in jail She told the jury her only regret was that she wished 70 years hadn't passed before she took direct action.

So she wishes she'd done this, Andy, at 13 years old.

I guess that's the only way this story could have been more incredible.

Because the only thing better than an 83-year-old nun breaking into a nuclear facility is a 13-year-old nun breaking into a nuclear facility before nuclear weapons were particularly widespread.

Well, I think, I mean, that's what you want your nuns to do, isn't it?

Yeah.

You want your nuns to step up and call some shit, Andy.

Step up to the plate and break into the power station.

Apparently, all three protesters spent about two hours inside the Oak Ridge facility, cutting through the fences in a facility known as the Fort Knox of Uranium.

And once there, as I mentioned, they painted slogans, they chipped off part of a wall with hammers and sprayed the exterior of the complex with baby bottles containing human blood.

Now, when a guard approached, they offered him food and started singing.

But I'm guessing, Andy, the guard wasn't that hungry after seeing those baby bottles of human blood.

That kind of thing can really ruin an appetite.

You know, I was quite peckish, but then I saw you squirting that baby bottle of human blood.

And, you know what, I think I'll pass.

I think I'll pass on that.

It's so hard to get it to exactly the right temperature as well.

it's uh that's the thing you just don't trust them to use it in the right way

Your emails now and this one comes from Felix Harcourt at the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Which you know sounds like my kind of project

Dear Andy brackets and John and Chris although we don't hold you responsible In last week's Bugle, you referred to Eleanor Roosevelt as quotes famously prudish we at the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project take umbrage at this.

In studying her political life and work, we found that she was often the life of the party.

Take for example this genuine quote from 1959 that we've recently uncovered: quotes, I know very little about rock and roll.

I've seen some of my own young people do it rather conservatively.

Clearly, we await your attraction.

That said,

your move, Andy.

That said, you were spot on about the bucket of lobsters from

so that's officially sanctioned.

That is officially sanctioned.

Franklin Roosevelt had a bucket of lobsters that went with him everywhere.

Everywhere.

Why, Andy?

I mean, did you know the reason for that?

Was that did he just like the snapping sounds?

Did he like this sense of power over those lobsters?

Well, like I said last week, they communed with him.

He got advice from them.

And

you know, the lobster is a notoriously wise creature.

If you want to follow the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers project, they have a Twitter feed at ER Papers.

So

for all your Eleanor Roosevelt needs

all your Eleanor Roosevelt needs.

Those needs were actually denied FDR at times, I believe.

Yeah.

Yes, by all accounts, she saw

conjugal bliss as

something of a chore.

Maybe you can discreet that as well, Felix.

Well, yeah, there is the Twitter feed.

What's the latest on the ER Papers Twitter feed?

They've got a quote from her from 1958.

Yeah.

It's very wise.

No person in the world is really far away nowadays.

Tourist first.

Well,

classic hippie thought from Ellen Levin.

She was off her tits on LSD at the time.

Disprove it.

Yeah.

Disprove it.

Do you know the first thing she did after FDR died?

Well, no,

she made a massive seafood chowder out of his lobsters.

It was one of the most bitter things anyone's ever done after a spouse's death.

I think the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project need to understand that this is what happens when they even jokingly agree with one of your facts.

You are fueling the flames of bullshit.

There's three of us in this relationship.

You, me, and a bucket of lobsters.

This one came in from Rich,

who writes

on the subject of merch.

Dear Andy and John, in order of last appearing on a snooker show,

I hear congratulations are in order for the complete and utter mullering of the normal monotone greyness of snooker audio.

When in fact it was video as well.

But the point stands.

I might as well not have been there.

In fact, when I turned on, I was reading something.

Then I heard a familiar voice.

I looked, and there you were in all your faux art Garfunkel glory.

Which then the bombshell hit me harder, even than the disappointment I felt when I first saw Star Wars Episode 1.

Now, that must have been, that's pretty hard.

You've made a big thing about the launch of your merchandise, and very nice it is, too.

But where is the Bugles official Andy Zaltzmann wig?

Oh, well,

ooh.

I mean, as we said, we've only, that's only the first tranche of merch that is not a terrible idea, Andy.

Available.

I mean, that's when you know you're getting really huge, when you're starting to monetize your own appearance that's right we could do uh we could do john oliver kind of glasses and uh yeah nose attachment kind of like we could do that like your classic grouch marketing yeah

that's true

I mean, that's, you know, as you know, the Bugle is all about the dollar, so we'll definitely bear this in mind next time we have a meeting of the Bugle Finance.

We could market them as John Oliver and Andy Zoltzman disguises for bank robberies.

I'd love someone to rob a bank dressed dressed as you guys.

Don't say that, Chris, because you know how easily goaded the buglers are.

And there are two people out there that will wear a fright wig and Grochamas glasses and they will rob a f ⁇ ing bank

just to get a response from us.

There'll be some story about some Havigo hero who foiled the burglary having said, who's this coming into my bank?

We have another email here from Tom Murphy who says, dear Andy, John and Chris, in the order of which ones I typed first.

I like that.

I'm a work study student at a college working towards my PhD in math.

Well spell math right to one day become a math instructor.

It's mathematics or maths.

In short I'm a green card taken away from saying stuff.

Actually yeah you know let me retract that Chris you have to edit that out.

That kind of thing can get me that can get you booted here.

I'll take it back.

I've made my choice.

It's math.

You're right.

In short, I'm a really f ⁇ ing smarty pants.

That said, I'm currently grading papers for a class designed to teach future teachers how to be teachers.

As I grade these atrociously written affronts to grammar, spelling, intelligence and common sense,

I hope you wrote that at the bottom of a page.

I find myself becoming hopeless and depressed, realizing that the people who wrote these travesties are going to be the ones teaching the next several generations.

The only thing that keeps me from ramming my head through the computer and electrocuting my brain is listening to the bugle, and that terrifies me.

Rightly so.

So, before I begin to question my sanity and start writing, are you kidding me?

You can't teach English if if you can't f ⁇ ing spell, you waste of oxygen and protoplasm.

Go get a job somewhere where your particular brand of stupid can't infect the rest of us on every paper I'm grading.

I'm going to take out my voluntary subscription to the bugle in the hopes that you'll be around a long time to help distract me from the depressing reality that is the American education system.

Yours sincerely, Ty.

P.S.

F you, Chris.

Nothing personal.

I just need to swear at someone and I can't get fired for doing it to you.

That is, look, in many ways, that also is what the bugle is all about, Andy.

We can provide a lightning rod for people's aggression and hostility.

Direct it from us if you can't direct it anywhere else.

And now,

you might notice we've bleeped out the bugler's name there, Andy.

Even though

he or she didn't say,

don't use him.

It just seemed like that was...

That was slightly too much from the heart.

And so there could be some consequences.

It's like a letter of resignation as much as an email.

So that's it for your emails this week.

Do keep them coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Don't forget to take out your voluntary subscription at thebuglepodcast.com where you can also find a link to the merch, the biggest, I think it's now the biggest selling fashion accessories of the decade so far.

I believe that is now officially confirmed.

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

Sport now, and well, as we mentioned earlier on, I mean, it was the biggest story in British history.

The resignation of the Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, at the age of 71, after

26 years

in charge of the prominent football club, Manchester United.

And it did, it shoved everything off the news,

including the announcement of the government's legislative programme for the next

year or so.

And

was it big news in America, John?

It wasn't.

It wasn't, Andy.

But, you know, it's big news for me personally because I cannot stand Manchester United,

even though they play some quite beautiful football at times.

And, you know, it's much easier to admit that Alex Ferguson is possibly the greatest manager who's ever lived.

after he's left.

So now my positive feelings for him are able to flower.

But

the media coverage was extraordinary.

I mean, there was a point when I thought they were going to suggest that his managership was going to get a full state funeral.

And he deserves it more.

And he was a divisive figure.

He's going to be made a lord, possibly.

A lot of people call him for that, for services to childish, elongated spats with state broadcasters.

Even suggestions that he could displace Prince Philip as the Queen's squeeze.

mean, that would be

good.

That would seem an appropriate acknowledgement of everything he's done for a sport in this country.

I mean, I do love sport, as I've made abundantly clear, but even so, I thought the coverage was more over the top than an exuberantly camp First World War soldier.

Boom.

Long week.

Long week.

Oh, you can still, you've still got that club in your bag when you're tired, though, Andy.

Yeah, it's the last thing to go.

It's like a bot, like a boxer's punch.

It's the contrived metaphor

And in the snooker

Ronnie O'Sullivan a big favourite of the Bugle sports section won the World Championship after taking a year's sabbatical from snooker the Beethoven of the bays on extraordinary

Probably the greatest sporting event to be held on British shores since the 1966 World Cup, I'd say, this year's World Snooker Championships.

Roughly.

And

it was uh he is a I know snooker's not that big in America John

but

I think you American buglers should should really pick up Ronnie O'Sullivan as a sporting icon when he's

he's like he's like a cross between Babe Ruth and Wayne Gretzky but without having to move very far

he he plays snooker so beautiful it makes you want to dig up your dead great-grandparents, slap them around the cheeks until they wake up, plonk them in front of the telly and say, watch this before you go back to dead.

And that really is the ultimate compliment, isn't it, Andy?

Yeah, I think we've sort of mentioned him sporadically over the five and a half years that we've been doing the bugle.

And

he threatens to retire almost as often as he wakes up in the morning.

But the thing is, John, he's only 37.

Now, that might seem quite old for a top-level sportsman.

But, you know, in Snook, all you have to do is sit down and they walk around the table waggling their stick.

And in his first season, John, when he was a prodigy at sort of 16 years old, 1992, he played against Fred Davis, who was 79 years old.

So I reckon he's got at least 40 years left in him.

And he also said that he had only come back to Snooker because he needed money to pay his kids' school fees.

So

if you're the head master of Ronnie's kids' school, keep bumping the fees up.

And it was a very impressive performance.

He was only behind for one frame in the whole tournament, tournament, and that was at early stages of the final.

And he just kept getting in front.

And then,

like a bereaved dog owner struggling to come to terms with the death of his favourite pet, he just wouldn't let go of the lead.

Did you hear that?

What was that?

Sorry, did that sound like an offcut from the piece that had people calling me a?

Oh, yes.

No, it did sound a bit like that.

So that's it for this week's Bugle.

Do get your emails coming in

for Bugle two, three, four.

That's it

i'll be your dream i'll be your wish i'll be your fantasy

i'll be your hope i'll be your love i'll be everything that you need how's that working out for you buglers there we go

that's it

it's been uh i think i think what we need to do john before next week's show is uh have a bit of a snooze yeah

yeah

i think snoozing might not do it for me i think i might need like a medically induced coma.

Has the last 10 minutes of this actually still been the show?

I'm not sure, actually.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'll keep it.

It's hard to know where the show ends and life begins in this place.

That sounds like it might have been a comment on Twitter at my snooker post.

Medically induced coma.

So that's it until next week's Bugle.

Attention, Norwegian buglers.

I'm doing some gigs in Norway at the end of the month.

And

I will post details on the

Bugle Twitter feed in,

I think, Bergen, Trondheim and Oslo from memory.

But anyway, I'll post details up

at the Showbiz event

of the millennium in Scandinavia.

That's very exciting, honey.

Maybe John Onorisa will come to him for you.

Well, he doesn't live there anymore, John.

He lives in England now.

You know, if that particular Viking was going to come and see what my action was, he'd have come in London.

goodbye buglers until next time farewell bye

a fearless crew 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.