Bugle 231 – The Queen should play poker

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello,

buglers.

I can't believe she's gone.

And welcome to issue, I still can't believe it.

Issue 231 of The Bugle for the week beginning Monday the 22nd of april 2013 with me andy zoltzmann and live in the renowned city of london england where there are absolutely loads of people and even more molecules and i think that's that makes you think and in new york city

uh it's the man who walks into rooms in a pair of underpants but walks out of rooms in a suit of armor enough said it's john oliver hello andy hello buglers uh okay andy before we start there is probably something i need to address most non-aussie buglers will probably not be aware that I inadvertently caused a minor shitstorm to blow across Australia last week.

In this opening bit to last week's bugle I described Australia as, and I quote myself, the most comfortably racist place I've ever been and someone, I don't know who Andy, seemed to think it would be a good idea to transcribe what I said outside the context of this podcast and unleash it upon Australian journalism, where it seemed essentially to be reported as Daily Show Reporter calls Australia the most racist country country in the world.

And all manner of internet hell seemed to break loose.

It was a truly deeply demoralising experience to watch it all blow up.

It made me hate the internet, modern journalism, and myself, not necessarily in that order.

And first, let me be clear.

I was not saying that Australia is the most racist place I've ever been.

Not by a long shot.

I was just pointing out that it was the most comfortable in that racism.

To be fair, that's almost a compliment.

Sure, it's still technically an insult, but it's a complimentary insult, if that helps.

So when you say a long shot, I think

the long shots were one of the reasons why Australia doesn't have quite the diversity of race that other countries have.

You do not want to be a part of this, Andrew.

Sorry.

Don't get sucked in, believe me.

So I'm from a minority, John.

I'm fine.

I can say what I like.

My people have suffered so much, so much.

I hope whoever passed this around got what they wanted, Andy.

If what they wanted was hysteria and my slight melancholy.

Because if so, they should be deeply pleased with the results.

Also, it's just, it's not a good idea.

I think you'll agree with this.

If the bugle is going to become an official public statement to the world, we're in trouble because we're going to cause weekly international incidents and we're probably not going to be able to do it anymore.

And finally,

some of the comments that got through to me,

you could argue, did not help the case that Australia was trying to make back at all.

One guy said, we're not racist.

We've just got similar problems with Lebos that you have in the UK with Pakistanis and West Indians.

I mean, you're not helping your argument with that level of logic.

Now, for what it's worth, Australia.

The pieces I was shooting for the show are nothing to do with racism anyway.

They're all about gun control.

But frankly, now I'm wondering whether one of them should have been about it.

Anyway, I will say, Andy, in conclusion, I will say that

the week I had in Australia, outside of that, is still one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life.

And I actually meant to mention that last week, there was this one point during the shooting, during our shoot, that a farmer I was interviewing after we'd finished the interview asked me if I wanted to help him herd his sheep back in.

And I said, oh yeah,

I'd love to do that.

So as the crew were packing up the equipment, I went out with him into the field and as the sun was setting, I helped herd these sheep back into a pen.

And it was about as calm and as happy as I felt in months.

And I was even looking up at the orange sky and feeling the clean air in my lungs and thinking,

I could do this.

I could be a sheep farmer.

I'd be happy.

I'd be relaxed.

I'd be interacting with sheep.

I could do this.

And once we were done, I went over to the farmer who was this really nice, rugged, craggy-faced, unbelievably friendly man.

And I said, did I do well, Jack?

Did I do okay with the sheep?

And I've never before felt such a deep desire to get approval from a man I barely know.

And he looked at me with his kind eyes peering out from underneath his hat and he said, you were less good than a dog.

And

that's just not the answer I was looking for.

Andy, that's not the answer anyone looks for in anything.

No one wants to be told they're less good than a dog in any activity that doesn't involve eating food out of a bowl or shitting in the street.

It's just not a resounding compliment.

Certainly at least the most you'd wanted approval from a man you barely know since your days auditioning for the National Youth Theatre, I imagine.

So but you also said last week and I d this didn't come across in the the bits of the coverage that I read that

you you thought Australia was a wonderful country and you had a great time there.

But you also did describe it as comfortably racist, which I did do that.

I did all of those things.

And I stand by all of them.

them

suggesting i don't know that you are comfortably racist and you'd like to live there

let's not follow that through to the end of it

that's not the that's not that was not the point i was making all right it's a different point

so this is uh bugle 231

um the uh first week of the beginning of the footnotes to british history um and as always a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week a home cosmetic surgery section including how to fill in those wrinkles on your face with a relatively harmless domestic grout, why two golf balls in your cheeks is just as good as collagen implants, and how to bonsai your facial features to ameliorate the ravages of age.

We teach you how to pollard those expanding appendages such as the nose and ears with a free micro chainsaw to help minimize the lacerations and a complimentary sponge-coated headband to soak up the blood loss.

Plus, in another section of the bin, the latest in our tantric sex guides.

More suggested tantrums to help you and your partner

to achieve erotic nirvana.

This week we help you throw a total wobbly about who last had the car keys, who was supposed to play the electricity bill, and the ethics of having your favourite dog put down over its refusal to wag its tail during the national anthem.

Those sections in the bin this week.

Top story this week.

Britain, a nation in enforced mourning.

And now I must admit, Andy, that the funeral of Margaret Thatcher this week did not get much attention here in America at all, mainly due to the fact that they were a little preoccupied with absorbing the latest example of terrorist twattery that brought horror to the streets of Boston, followed by the arrest of an Elvis impersonator who apparently sent Rice into the president.

So they've had a lot on their crazy plate here and it's rather distracted them from the death rights of an 87-year-old stateswoman.

Otherwise, Andy, I have no doubt that the US media would have dived headfirst into the overblown coverage like a lactose intolerant lady into a soy milk swimming pool.

But I'm guessing that in England, Andy, it was wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral with more hysteria than when a pigeon lands on the tennis courts at Wimbledon.

Did you watch the funeral or did you stuff straw into a box, poke some air holes in it and fully hibernate the 90 minutes away?

Well, I was trying to deal with my own personal devastation, clearly, John.

No, I did watch the funeral and

I did some live Twitter commentary on it, which is really the only way to get through these state occasions.

But as you say, there was wall-to-wall coverage, literally wall-to-wall in town squares, in places like Edinburgh and Leeds, where they were showing the funeral on a big screen, and there was no one between the big screen and the wall on the other side of that town square.

Great photographs

of just like one person staring up at this screen.

So I'd rather see the weather forecast.

Yeah, could you put it on Sky Sports?

But yeah, so it was, I was,

you know, as we suggested last week, it was a very divisive funeral.

Very much put the F you into funeral.

But at least now, you know, we know the speculation is over.

There was no resurrection.

There was no opening of the fiery bowels of hell to welcome in their newest inmate.

There was no, even most disappointingly, no classic prank of Thatcher bursting out of the coffin saying, got here.

She had the living shit funeralled out of her and Britain has seldom felt odder.

It did leave me with an extremely queasy feeling about the British state and the nature and purpose of British democracy.

It seemed,

was this one of the greatest acts of history controlling state propaganda in this country since the Bayer Tapestry showed William the Conqueror personally scoring an overhead kick past King Harold from 45 yards in the last minute of the Battle of Hastings.

It's felt that way.

It felt that way.

Now, for what I've gathered, Andy, the atmosphere was a little different from the blowout funerals that Britain has staged in the past.

You think you're Princess Diana's, you're Queen Mother's.

Now, for Margaret Thatcher, it seemed to be less goodbye England's rose and more farewell England's and more for Phallas titanium.

That's what's one for all you botany fans out there.

It meant, Andy, what I'm trying to say is her career was spectacular, but occasionally had a horrific smell about it.

Again.

Again, one more for you botany fans.

It's a flower joke.

Isn't the internet great, John?

I mean, without it, we're nothing.

I mean nothing.

Nothing.

There is nothing in my head than facts that go in, stay there for a second and then go out again.

I'm nothing.

So why was she again there was a lot of discussion over her legacy and why she was quite so divisive after all.

You know, she did did uh some things that a lot of people thought were great for this nation and maybe some of them were but the problem is john she threw a lot of babies out with the bath water and not only did she do that but before she did that she boiled the babies down for stock and then poured the stock down the drain in front of some starving northerners so was um there's plans now to build a thatcher museum uh which uh what margaret thatcher museum in the the style of uh like a presidential library presidential library oh that's let's not start doing that um Yeah, some would argue there are already plenty of Thatcher museums.

The high street in the northern town of Stockton-on-Tees, for example.

Temple to urban decay and the failures and heartlessness of the Thatcher years.

Also, the city of London.

That's very much the opposite side of both sides of the Stockton-on-Tees museum.

So I don't know if there's actually

need for this.

I had a special simulation run, John.

on what would have happened to Britain if Thatcher had never actually existed.

And I went to two, because I wanted to get some balance.

I went to two different

political organisations, the right-wing Thatcherite think tank, the Clawhammer of Practicality Institute, and the left-wing pressure group, Marxist Mark and the Fundbunk.

And one of these...

That needed more work.

One of these simulations.

No, no, no, Andy.

Without Thatcher.

Even masterpiece painters, Andy, need to know when to stop, and you've stopped at the right time.

It was finished.

Without Thatcher, apparently Britain today would be a cultural, industrial and ethical wasteland haunted by the post-imperial ghosts of the nation it could have been.

And the other showed that without Thatcher Britain would have been a thriving financial centre with higher standards of living than it ever had before, consumer choice and unprecedented commercial freedoms and opportunities.

Oh no, sorry, no, that's sorry, those are the wrong reports.

Those are both just reports on what has actually happened after Thatcher

from different parts of the nation.

There had been real concerns about protests during the funeral procession, but these luckily were limited to a few people shouting, booing, and then others lining the streets only to turn their backs.

And that seems to be a quintessentially English insult, Andy.

Standing outside for hours in the cold and rain, only to then snub the procession with the devastating gesture of poor manners.

There was also one.

My favourite protester was just a guy standing by the roof.

And similarly, he must have waited there for hours.

And he just held up a placard about a foot across and a foot high with the word boo written on it

that was it that was it yeah

that was it but i like the fact that by by turning your back essentially what you're saying to the former prime minister is good day to you margaret i said good day

But there was, I guess, you know, in some ways, just there's two sides to every coin, John.

It just depends which way you look at it.

Some people might say

there was a massive protest, and it was all a protest against the fact that she died.

And I'd have liked to see the police react in the same way they've reacted with other protests and start kettling the crowd inside St Paul's Cathedral and firing water cannons at Henry Kissinger just to see if just to see if he dissolves.

Thousands of people lined the street of London, along with 2,300, as you mentioned, inside St Paul's Cathedral, including Prime Minister David Cameron and even the Queen and the fact that the big Q-tip herself was there was a big deal and yet all the cutaway shots of her face showed her wearing the same expression that she always has Andy.

That featureless empty scowl somewhere between boredom and contempt.

She has the same detached facial projection of nothing at every event she goes to, Andy, whether it's watching a funeral or her grandson's wedding or herself jumping out of a helicopter during the Olympics opening ceremony.

Her face is the same during everything, Andy.

Absolutely everything.

In fact, she would be a world-class poker player, the Queen.

I think that's the way we should fund the royal family in the future.

Once a year, the taxpayer doesn't just give her money, we lend her money to go to Vegas for a week and hit the poker rooms.

And I guarantee within a few days, she'll come back having quadrupled it.

She had a very similar face to the one that she had during much of the Olympic opening ceremony.

And for me, I think, you know, Britain have shown what it can do with a big ceremony.

And to me, this was too traditional.

I should have embraced the new modernity that the Olympics open.

I'd have liked to see Margaret Thatcher escorted to St.

Paul's Cathedral by James Bond in a helicopter before having her coffin dropped from 2,000 feet through the famous.

That's so good.

We know people like it, so why don't you do it?

It doesn't make any sense.

Now, one of the great things about funerals is that you sometimes get to find out little snippets about someone's life that you weren't aware of and apparently Margaret Thatcher found the queen a little too left-wing for her which means one of two things.

Either the queen is a lot more liberal than anyone knew or Margaret Thatcher was even more right-wing than physics thought was even possible.

The relationship between Thatcher and the queen was heavily spawned by people with one pundit saying both women shared a love of people being punctual.

And

if that is your go-to comparison for common ground, I think you might as well just say both women really didn't like one another.

There were some efforts made to keep the funeral as unpolitical as possible, but it didn't really succeed in a lot of ways.

Just the mere fact of having it as essentially a state funeral was a great political gesture.

And increasing suspicions, John, that David Cameron is fully delusional, such as the grief that has struck him and his party.

Last week we just talked about how he said Margaret Thatcher saved this nation and during the funeral, there's a lovely moment.

I was watching it on the BBC News channel with their little news ticker underneath and as the coffin was wheeled into St Paul's Cathedral on its magic cart, the little news flash came up on the little ticker saying unemployment up by 70,000 and you thought that's that is what she would have wanted on that day of all days.

David Cameron on national radio that morning, having pledged not to make the funeral a political occasion, said, we are all Thatcherite now.

And he might as well have just put a balaclava on, leapt on top of the coffin and said, I'm hijacking this funeral.

Take me to the next election or else.

It was a spectacular send-off.

And the Dean of St.

Paul's, the Reverend David Ison, said that Thatcher played a large part in planning the funeral herself over the last six years and that it would be relatively humble in line with her wishes.

And I think it was relatively humble, Andy, in comparison to a rapper or Donald Trump or an ancient Egyptian king.

But otherwise, I think it had a little more pizzazz than he is giving it credit for.

When you have a full military procession, a flag draped coffin, and in the front pew of your service sits the f ⁇ ing queen, I think.

If you claim it's relatively humble, you're stretching the term relative to breaking point.

Well, that's a classic British understatement, John.

That's what we do

these occasions.

If there's one...

You could accuse this funeral of being many things, you know, politically divisive,

you know, unnecessary on its scale.

What you could not accuse it of, John, was being, as you suggested, insufficiently military.

You would have thought from the amounts of armour on display and the amount of uniforms that Margaret Thatcher had personally head-butted Napoleon and Hitler to death simultaneously.

And there's a lot of the commentators saying, well, this is

been some protests around the country, but this this is a very somber occasion.

And I think this really shows what this is all about.

Well, of course, it was a somber occasion, John.

If you took a trampoline in goldfish and put 2,000 soldiers in shiny uniforms around it, walking slowly and got a priest in the kind of robes that suggest his organisation is probably trying to hide something, it would give it gravitas.

If you chucked 10 million quid and 700 soldiers in ludicrously inappropriate garb at one of the tasteless but understandable death parties that were going on at the same time in shattered former mining towns in the north, you'd have had something similarly serious.

And I think the BBC coverage of it would have been well worth watching.

And a respectful silence falls across the town square now, a silence reflecting the absence of hope that descended on this place when the mines were closed down, some would argue, prematurely and replaced not with new industries, but with absolutely nothing.

And just as, of course, Lady Thatcher would have wanted, and did want,

and did.

And that silence now is punctuated by the distant sound of a single London City trailer snorting cocaine off a prostitute's back.

Respectful applause there, both for Nigel Polk, the trader, and 23-year-old Olga, both in their different ways, products of the Thatcher years.

And, well, here comes the effigy now borne on the gun carriage by six horses of the North Snutterbridge 3rd Royal Dragoon, followed by a platoon of the long-term unimportant, as defined by the Conservative historian Charles Moore this week.

And in front of them carrying a ceremonial match for lighting the effigy is 56-year-old Gavin Huish, who's been unemployed now for 28 years.

That's exactly half his life, which from the looks of him, after the physical and mental health problems he's suffered over the years, is going to be about as much as he can hope to get.

And the crowd now bowing their heads in silent disrespect.

Spoiled only by a handful of dissenting voices.

Protesters rather silent this occasion.

I think I can see one millionaire there holding up a black card saying, I raked it in in the 1980s.

I don't know what your problem is for a much minority of you on this occasion of solemnity and dignified reflection.

And

I think one of the pro-thaty protesters just threw a credit card at a horse.

No one wants to see that.

We approach the pyre built from kindling from the royal forests in the Sandringham Estate, of course, with one single piece of coal that

has been kept on display in the nearby British Museum of Willful Industrial Decline.

This ceremony really is laden with history and meaning, and the harshness ends.

A single tear falls down Mr.

Hewish's cheek, even though he only actually met Mrs.

Thatcher once.

Could be grief, could be joy.

And yes, the effigy is now lit, and polite applause breaks out.

And that really shows for what this woman meant to these people and this nation.

Farewell.

That's beautiful, Andy.

God, we do do pomp and service.

We do that.

That's what we do in this country.

And another thing that we do well in this country is leer at any quite effective young woman who is shown

on your telly.

Now, it was quite extraordinary.

Margaret Thatcher's granddaughter, Amanda Thatcher, who is a 19-year-old Texan,

essentially, she came over.

for the fruitless and no one had already seen her in this country before.

And as you can expect from the kind of press that Britain has, and and I don't know if you're not aware of this, go on the Daily Mail website and look for the beautiful juxtaposition of articles complaining about the left-wing bias in British politics and media and women without makeup or in bikinis.

And the reaction to Amanda Thatcher being was

just extraordinary, John.

I don't know if you picked this up in the state.

I'm afraid I did.

It's almost the only thing that did make it over here.

19-year-old Amanda Thatcher knew Pippa Middleton.

It was absolutely, I just don't know how comfortable I am with that at all, Andy.

It's borderline okay for a nation to lust after a 28-year-old bridesmaid at her sister's wedding.

It is a significantly greyer area to do the same over a 19-year-old girl mourning at her grandmother's funeral.

That is really creepy, Andy.

Really creepy.

Particularly when most of the press that were doing this lusting were the ones who'd been saying how important it was to mark this occasion with the depth of seriousness that it deserved.

And again, the reaction was sort of along the lines of, well, what a great honour and occasion this is for a woman who represented everything great about this country.

Margaret Thatcher, of course, the greatest prime minister in the history of the world.

And there's her granddaughter, Amanda Thatcher, who's...

Oh, I...

Oh, I would put it in that.

Oh, would you look at...

Oh, do you think she'd let me call her Margaret?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Britain is saved.

Britain is saved.

I'll tell you, those things aren't the only thing at half-mast now.

Oh,

actually, they are again.

Oh, in a heartbeat.

I would, and the nation would.

Oh, do you think she could bleach her hair and comb it upwards?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's all coming back.

It's all.

It's all control yourself.

And Coffin now passes into the cathedral.

Oh, yeah.

At the moment for this country to reflect on the greatness of its most glorious.

Oh no, a single protester has a Down with Thatcher t-shirt on.

That is completely inappropriate.

Oh, Amanda.

Oh, Amanda.

Yeah.

It's

much of the much of the praise

was clearly...

They knew it was inappropriate.

So they had to try and focus it around her reading.

the lesson that she read.

And you didn't really have to read too deeply between the lines to see what was really going on.

They would say that she read beautifully and confidently and arrestingly and athletically and sumptuously and troublingly and oh Amanda, naughty Amanda.

Oh no.

One newspaper in the UK even described her as the star of the funeral.

Do funerals get to have stars, Andy?

Is that appropriate?

And if they do have stars, aren't they supposed to be the people in the finging coffin?

Well, it must have been very awkward for the family this occasion, particularly for a man of Thatcher, who's never been in the public eye and has substitutes for grandmother's funeral.

And has found what really ought to be a private family occasion turned into a festival of state propaganda.

I mean it's not the first time this has happened.

The Nuremberg rallies actually started as a memorial service for Hitler's pet hamster Nigel.

Now let me say I'm not equating Mrs.

Thatcher with Hitler's hamster.

Let me make that very clear.

Other than they both helped curb the excesses of totalitarian regimes.

Thatcher helped bring the cold water around and Nigel really kept Hitler's more extreme views under wraps until his sad passing in the mid-1930s.

It must be so weird for Amanda Thatcher, though.

You know, she's she's at college here in Texas, and I just cannot imagine how she's going to articulate what happened to her college friends.

Oh, Amanda, oh, welcome back.

How did it go?

It was

weird.

It was very weird.

I'm going to stay off the internet for a while.

I was not expecting that.

I'm glad I live here.

It was interesting also seeing the Conservative Party embracing this

kind of public toxicity of the Thatcher brand once again, of just kind of realising that maybe that will be enough to see them through to an election.

I guess, as the old saying goes, one man's poison is another man's piñata.

I mean, I don't know what that means, but I like the way it sounds, Andy.

So that's much more important.

That was Wittgenstein, wasn't it?

Was that Wittgenstein?

It sounds like him.

He loved Apinada.

Oh, look,

didn't he?

Of course he did.

Of course he did.

He's not an idiot.

After the funeral, I was getting a bus through the city and I saw like a bunch of fresh-faced, young, conservative types.

They're all about 19, 20 years old.

They really stuck out like a sore thumb.

So I pulled my camera phone out to take a photo.

And just after I took it, I looked both to the left and the right of me on the bus, and two other people were doing the same

it was incredible

but

there were a lot of highlights

George Osborne the chancellor who shed that single tear there was there was a moment when I thought he was just gonna hurl himself into the coffin screaming no take me take me

And but yeah, 10 million quid, John.

Not spectacular enough for me for 10 million quid.

I'd have wanted at least a bit of Hunter S.

Thompson style firework across the sky.

At least we could have had a repeat of part of the Olympic opening ceremony, but with the factories magically disappearing into the ground to symbolise everything that Thatcherism stood for.

US re-ups its season tickets to the gun show.

And say what you like about Thatcher, Andy, at least she got things done, even if in many cases you'd rather she'd been significantly less effective.

In the US, the gun debate has been going on for years, but particularly intensely since the tragedy at Sandy Hook, where innocent children were gunned down in a horrific mass shooting.

And in the immediate aftermath, politicians lined up to say something must be done and never again.

Only for the gun legislation to get gunned down this week in a hail of self-serving cowardice bullets.

And I've spent the last few weeks putting together a few pieces on gun control.

The first of which I think went out yesterday.

So I've been looking at almost nothing else other than gun control over the last 21 days or so.

And I've got to say, this is possibly the single most pathetic piece of politics I've ever seen.

And I've seen some pretty dispiriting things in my time on this earth.

Essentially, America has once again successfully protected itself from any government attempt to protect it.

It's

pathetic.

A lot of um American politicians make excuses over their abject failure to stand up to gun lobbyists in the interest of the greater good, saying that taking on gun lobbies is political suicide.

But here's the thing, Andy, a lot of things seem like suicide, like you know, eating a Japanese bluefish, doing a bungee jump or you know choking yourself or masturbating, but once you do them they turn out to be a real thrill not to mention profoundly worthwhile.

That the Senate had previously announced that they would officially consider the possibility of thinking about voting on heavily watered down gun regulation and then like any fine butcher set about cutting the most desirable parts right off the bone.

Semi-automatic gun regulation and magazine sizes were the first to go weeks ago followed by on Wednesday background checks which was the most low-hangy of low-hanging fruits which had 86%

of support from the American public which is pretty amazing seeing as it's probably the only single issue 86% of Americans can possibly agree agree on, and which therefore, obviously, was subsequently voted down after being blocked by most Senate Republicans and some Democrats.

Background checks failed by being voted for in favour, 54 to 46, but just falling short of the 60 vote majority necessary.

So it managed to fail while the majority of the country and the majority of the Senate votes were in favour of it, which is the cluster f to end all cluster f Sandy.

Isn't democracy fun?

fun?

Oh my God.

No one is suggesting banning guns in America.

That is never going to happen.

The Second Amendment is always going to protect people's rights to have some kind of gun.

The only suggestion is whether it's necessary to have a f ⁇ ing military grade assault rifle.

Which see, and so much of the reporting around the world has been, oh, Americans are crazy.

Please understand, most Americans...

understand and want some kind of gun control and yet imagine how more frustrated they are by the fact that it's clear they're not going to get it as they were voting as they were voting for these background checks and as they were going down in flames one by one these senators folded like origami arseholes even

even democratic senators uh mark begich of alaska max borkers of montana heidi heitkamp of north dakota and mark pryor of arkansas voted against the measure coincidentally andy begich borkers and pryor are all seeking re-election next year.

I'm sure that is not remotely connected to their self-serving vote.

And the best reaction of all of this came immediately after the vote in the Senate when Patricia Manch, who's a survivor of the 2011 Arizona shooting that killed six people and severely injured Gabby Giffords, shouted, shame on you.

from the Senate gallery.

And, you know, there was a little bit of a murmuring of discontent at this outburst.

And should there have been, Andy, because I think that was pretty heroically restrained.

Shame on you.

She would have been well within her rights to scream out, you fingwits have fed up the easiest finging thing you could possibly fing do, you cowardly fing bunch of complete fingers.

I literally think that description of them, Andy, would hold up in court.

Other news now, and well, an international study has come out, John, that has very important implications for both you and me.

It has revealed that people who enjoy successful entertainment careers tend to die younger.

Researchers found that film, music and stage performers died at an average age of 77.2 years.

compared

to an average lifespan of 78.5 for ordinary creative workers.

Now, John,

you know, our careers have taken fairly divergent paths in the last six and a half years.

Andy, there'll be a course correction.

I think we both know that.

But

I'm getting an extra 1.3 years on you.

Oh, shit, you're two and a half years younger than me.

Oh, bollocks.

Oh,

balls.

Ah!

Vanity Smurf wins again.

And it's your birthday next week, isn't it, John?

It is.

Yeah.

Well, happy birthday.

I can't remember what day, but it's happy birthday.

And

to mark the occasion, we've got an awesome party for you here.

We've got

a band, we've got cakes, food, all your favourite foods.

I know you love beer.

And

it's just waiting outside the studio.

Oh, I really haven't thought this through, have I?

Oh, dear.

Never mind.

Oh, it's the thought that counts.

It's a lovely gesture.

Here's the thought, Andy.

It's a lovely gesture.

Yeah, so

that's really great.

Well, I hope you enjoy your special day.

Apparently, the merch is going to be live next Friday, the 26th.

Don't believe you.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's very hard to believe.

I don't know why it's taken so long.

I mean, a lot of the reason why it's taken so long is because we took a long time about it, but now, I don't know what's happening now.

I don't think we can take full responsibility.

It's going to be awesome though.

Retail event of the millennium.

Your emails now, and thanks for all the emails you sent in.

Quite a lot of you have alerted us to the

story of John offending an entire continent

with a few offhand comments.

Thanks for that.

And most of you seem most Australians seem to think, seem seem to take it as a compliment.

So yeah.

Fair enough.

And a lot of you

on our Thatcher coverage seems that everyone thought it was either too soft on Thatcher or too hard on Thatcher.

So that is, I mean, that is the ultimate testament to the woman.

She was a natural polarizer, John.

We have time for a quick email here from Nick Best, who says, dear John, Andy, and F.U.

Chris, a lot of people outside Iceland are vaguely aware that Icelanders all descend from a small group of Viking colonists.

Brackets, I already knew that, close brackets.

What I didn't realise is the effect this has on their dating scene.

And he encloses a link to a news story about a new app available which prevents Icelanders from sleeping with their relatives.

Nick continues, am I sleeping with or dating my cousin?

An Icelander might ask.

The answer is, of course you are, but how close exactly are you related?

He says, my favourite bit is the review of the app saying, if I had had this app last year, I probably wouldn't have gone home with my cousin.

Saying, probably.

So I'm sure similar apps will be released in West Virginia, Tasmania, and whatever part of the UK you like to insinuate incest about.

Cornwall question mark, the Channel Islands question mark, both answer.

Regards, Nick in Bloomington, Indiana.

Well, there you go.

That's a very useful app, Andy.

And as we were just talking about with Chris before we recorded this,

that is an app you want to look at before a date, not 20 years into a marriage.

It's also an app that

could have been very useful for royal families in Europe through most of European history.

Just to make sure they weren't too distantly related.

They had to make sure they were at least first cousins.

Thanks for all your emails on all those various subjects.

And this one from someone disgusted that there was a story about Vladimir Putin getting attacked by a topless female protester, and we have not covered it.

So that's fair.

That's a fair criticism.

That is a fair criticism.

And this email said:

I know that Margaret Thatcher has only died three times, once as Caligula, once as Marilyn Monroe, and most recently as the Sudanese NBA star Manuti Bol.

I have it on solid French authority that the Iron Lady possessed, quotes, the thighs of Manuti Bol,

in addition to his uncanny shot-blocking ability.

God, he was good.

He was good at shot-blocking, aren't he?

Expressing that, so acknowledging that, but in disgust that Putin was attacked by a topless Russian woman in capital letters letters and responded by giving her two thumbs up, and we did not cover it, so I can only apologize.

Yeah, it's fair.

That is fair.

Criticism well issued.

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

To send us emails, info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Check out our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle.

Don't forget, if you have not, if you have already forgotten, stop forgetting to take out your voluntary subscription to keep the bugle alive and

able to insult

large swathes of the world's land, prominent land masses.

And we'll be back next week.

In the meantime, happy birthday, John.

May all your dreams come true.

Maybe Australia will send you a card.

Please don't.

Please don't.

I don't want to know what's inside it.

Bye.

Bye.

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.