Bugle Q&A – Andy Zaltor Zaltzman

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to Bugle 229 sub-episode B.

Our second week off.

John is in Australia Australia sorting out some stuff for them over there.

So no full bugle this week, but we have this sub bugle, which is an exclusive, world exclusive Q ⁇ A with me, Andy Zoltzmann, and Chris, the producer, who we're currently in our respective houses using the magic of the internet.

And Chris has been fielding questions on Facebook and I've been taking your questions on Twitter.

So hopefully we'll resolve all those burning issues that have really been getting getting at your bugly hearts.

So Chris, what has been sent in to you on Facebook?

Well Andy, I like this one from Sean Ellis for a start.

For some years, having only heard you on the radio, I firmly believed that you and John were the same person and John was just a character you had invented for the daily show.

Can you confirm that this is or isn't true?

If true, how long do you spend in makeup?

And I guess I would like to add add to that: if true, why are we doing this episode here now?

Well, the reason we're doing this episode here now is to maintain the illusion.

Ah!

Clearly.

So, I mean, yeah, it is true, basically.

Yeah, I mean, that's it's what it's not that John is me.

I have a twin who looks exactly like me, but my look just wasn't saleable.

So, we

every day he gets into makeup as

John, and he has a special chip implanted in his head.

I communicate directly with him on a real-time basis.

Are you qualified to put chips in people's heads?

Well, not entirely.

I mean, the scarring is largely not visible under the wig.

So, basically, yeah, that is true.

Bang to rights.

Absolutely bang to rights.

Now, this one came in on Twitter from Deed Elvis.

Who writes, and saying he submitted this question to John before,

whose roof would you paint a massive penis on, and why?

Oh my god, someone's asked that on Facebook as well.

You'd never believe that.

Oh, it could very well be the same person, I guess, using multi-format questioning techniques.

Well, I don't know, it's a good question.

That I mean, the obvious candidate is

probably the Pope,

because

you know, I guess, you know,

the Catholic Church cannot be extricated from the penis.

The two have been linked really ever since the very beginning of Catholicism.

The penis, of course, has helped produce a lot of Catholics, more than some people would consider ideal.

Not all Catholic penises have been used

quite as much self-control as they might have been.

But also, the penis is, of course, a symbol of fertility and of God-given life.

So, I think, really, it would express all aspects of Catholicism historically and in the 21st century.

And also

most

domed churches

are pretty much three-quarters of the way there anyway.

So

I think

I'd go for that.

You know, you look at Buckingham Palace as well, that's really

crying out for a penis on the roof, if only for the aerial shots of when the Queen has to flee in a helicopter when the revolution kicks off at some point

when people realise that the Olympics and the Jubilee aren't coming back.

There's quite a lot of questions coming in on the North Korean crisis, which, you know, clearly could make this the last ever bugle if Kim Jong-un really

puts his bums where his increasingly erratic mouth is.

Chris, what's your eye?

I mean, are you concerned up there in North London of the prospect of North Korean missile wiping out the entire city?

No, no,

I'm not confident that he could reach North London, to be fair.

South London, different case.

Yeah, I mean, that's obviously where you'd you'd go to.

I believe that's the limit.

He's basically got enough petrol in the tank to sort of reach Bermondsey.

But us just north of the river, we're just fine.

So good luck with it and all.

This question came in on Twitter from Dr.

Evil, who writes the real Dr.

Evil.

I believe, I don't know if he's, I think he's a surgeon, actually, isn't he?

Mr.

Evil.

Anyway, you're on a crashing plane, and there is only one other parachute.

Do you give yours up, or who do you choose between Chris and John?

Well, to be honest, if I've got a spare parachute, I'm keeping it.

The other two can fend for themselves.

I've got kids to look after, I can't risk only having one parachute, no matter if that does lead to the certain death of the other members of the Bugle team.

It's funny, I could use John.

Yep.

I could just grab one arm and a foot and see if he makes a makeshift parachute.

Well, that's why he's in Hollywood.

He'd probably have a stunt man suddenly turn up and do it for him.

Lots of stunts in the Smurfs.

Andy, very simple question from Eric Stavvitsky.

Sorry, Stavnitsky.

What's your middle name?

My middle name?

I have no middle name.

Oh, no.

Yeah,

I'm just

Zaltor, the merciless.

Is that what you would choose it to be if you had to appoint one?

What, Zaltor?

Yeah, I think.

Yeah.

Andrew Zaltor Zaltzka.

I have no middle name.

Oddly, my brother and sister both have a middle name.

Oh, no.

But uh but I don't.

My dad has no middle name, but he has the first name Zachariah, so he frankly doesn't need one.

No.

Whereas, you know, kind of fairly limp, middle of the road first name like Andrew, I think I could have done with a with a working middle name.

And Zultor Fitz, I think.

Yeah.

Andy, I've got one from Michael Rogers.

Would you rather fight a horse-sized horse or a hundred duck-sized ducks?

Well, uh

that's a tough one, actually.

I don't know.

I mean, you think, I don't know if ducks work as a team.

I mean, I think the duck could be easily threatened by just waving some pancakes and some plum sauce at them.

I think they'd probably make a hasty retreat.

The horse, if the horse is coming out, you want to just put on your French chef's outfit and just see it run for the hills.

So I think really you wouldn't want to take either of them on physically.

I think you're asking for trouble.

It's a psychological battle with these creatures, and you have to use the threats of the kitchen to overcome them.

You're assuming these animals talk English, though, Andy.

Well, yeah, I mean, you'd expect most horses would have learnt basic French as a means of self-preservation.

But

yeah, I don't know.

Alternatively, I think if you are fighting a horse, and we saw that with the famous suffragette,

Emily Davison, who attempted to fight a horse and was killed by it at

the Derby.

She really lost that one.

Yeah, I mean, so the problem is she she tried to rugby tackle the horse, and you've got to go low on a horse when you're rugby tackling a horse, right around the ankles.

She went too high, and the horse, of course, handed her off, and the rest, sadly, is history.

But all turned out fine in the end.

Women can now vote, so probably worth it.

This question

comes from Sticky2000, who writes, where's my finging merch?

And well, the answer, as anyone who follows the Bugle Twitter feed feed will know, it is extremely imminent now.

I realize I've been saying that it's been imminent for about a year and a half now, but it's now more imminent than it's ever been.

And I'll put up a picture of the samples that we've been sent that will be on sale, hopefully, within

a week or so,

and definitely within two weeks.

And if they're not available within two weeks, then they will be available shortly after that.

That's as far as I'm prepared to go.

But the merch is just incredibly imminent.

It's almost unfeasibly imminent, and the weight hopefully will make the realisation all the more delectable.

Are you going to model it, Andy?

Am I going to model it?

Well, when I get it, I will.

I'm not the model in the picture.

That was not me.

I want to see you in bugle hot pants, bugle vest, sipping from a bugle mug.

Well, I can do the bugle vest and mug.

The hot pants will be in tranche two of the merchandise.

But do tell when they're coming.

Well,

with me on one cheek and John on the other, I think that's what most buglers would like.

Andy, world peace or world cricket?

Well, I don't see the two as

really separable in any way, philosophically.

I mean, could you have peace without cricket?

Nope.

And

I mean, it's very hard to see how

the world can aim for peace without embracing the Test match game.

When you look at the Middle East, no Test playing nations in the Middle East.

It's been in a state of almost constant war

for, you know, what, about 6,000 years since God started getting jippy with it.

And

in fact,

the Second World War only happened because the Germans refused to embrace cricket.

The famous England cricketer C.B.

Fry went to Germany to try to persuade the Nazis to adopt cricket.

They refused and started a war.

So it just goes to show if the Germans had just had some sense

and more basic decency than they showed through the 1930s and 40s, then the war would never have happened.

And cricket would have given them that, Chris.

I don't think there's any doubt of that.

To back your point up as well, the only Middle Eastern country with one-day international status is the UAE, also the most prosperous Middle Eastern country.

That's right, cricket just brings big bucks,

as the people of Bangladesh would no doubt testify.

Now,

this question

from Chad Chadwowski.

In the Bugle's official logo, why does John look like a nerdy Frankenstein?

And I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult.

It could quite feasibly be both.

Well, the fact is, he is a nerdy Frankenstein when he's not appearing on the silver screen or any other kind of screen or on an audio screen on the bugle.

He basically is inventing,

basically reanimating corpses.

So

that's just his shtick.

That's just how he winds down.

You know, it's a very pressurized job being on television all the time.

And so he needs that.

And, you know, let's not judge him.

And some of the corpses he has reanimated

have been very successful, and some of them are even playing for the New York Yankees this year.

Comes from N.

McJanet.

Is it true that Chris is the real comic brain behind the bugle?

Even several years before I was involved in the bugle, I used to write all the jokes.

Tom would get in touch and say, Look, I've got these two guys, and they just don't know what they're doing.

They just talk like they're from the other side of the Atlantic.

Can you do anything to help?

And of course, having never met Tom at the time, I said yes.

And the rest is history.

Yep.

So there you go.

That's

he's yeah, Chris just sits in a special booth stroking a cat and uh cranking out the puns.

Duncan Finley's got a question

related to a fairly recent show.

Did Mike and Cindy ever get their f dungeon built?

Well, I don't know if you're listening, Mike and Cindy.

Email us in.

You'd assume so.

I mean, once you've started, why would you not finish building it?

Who has a half-finished f dungeon?

Well, that's right.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Maybe Basher Al-Assad might not have got around to finishing his latest dungeon.

We just don't know.

I mean, it's been a tough time for the lad.

So, yeah, I mean, what you?

I mean, besides, what use?

You know, a half-finished dungeon, you know, that's still you can use as a wine cellar, but a half-finished f dungeon.

I mean, what is the point?

Nandy Selson, possibly on a related topic, writes, if you became Pope, what would your first edict be?

Well, I guess I mean, I might outlaw sex dungeons from

such a conservative.

Can I ask you a question about puns, Andy?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

What comes first?

Like,

the theme or a pun, and then you build a theme around it?

Look, there's no rules to these things.

You have to take the inspiration where it comes.

You know, sometimes a pun will just materialise out of thinner, perfectly formed.

Okay, so the dog one, that came out of the Lou Reed story, didn't it?

Yeah.

So what came first?

You decided to cover the Lou Reed story or you thought of a dog pun and tied it in?

Well, I think the story came first in that one, but

you know, and that's just the way art works.

You know, there's no rules to it, you can't force it, it just materializes from the ether.

And, you know, puns are art.

Most great works of art have some kind of pun in.

Yeah.

Some

visual pun.

Michelangelo's work full of puns.

Yeah.

Mostly to do with with naked Willies, but you know,

that's just the way the human brain works a couple of sports-based uh

questions came in on twitter this uh came from tes964 ozalt or the nearly hairless which is the greatest the bible the quran or wisdom

well no question i mean uh well i mean wisdon clearly is the superior book on innumerable levels for a start there's a new edition every year and i think both the bible and the quran could have done with a little bit of updating might have

just modernised a little bit.

Wisdom is prepared to embrace that.

And Wisdom has probably started fewer wars than

either of those.

So I'd definitely go.

And it looks like a lovely yellow cover.

It also allows its heroes to be photographed on the front cover.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, you know, that's maybe a step too far, too soon.

Okay.

And this came in from the colour bitter.

I noticed there was no mention of Wales thrashing England in the six nations in the bugle.

Does it hurt?

Does Does it hurt?

Oh, well, I mean, it was

just robbed.

England were robbed,

particularly the great Harlequins players in the England team.

Robbed.

I mean, yes, it was 30 points to 3 to Wales, but if England had scored 28 more points than they did, they'd have won.

And that just shows the slender threads that sporting achievements dangle upon.

So

it wasn't really a thrashing.

It was Wales lost other than the fact that they did not concede 28 more points or score 28 points fewer.

So, yep, that's just the way it goes.

If I was Welsh, I'd have been really disappointed with that result.

William Frederick has written in, and maybe you could offer some coaching in response to this, Andy.

Do you think it's punishable to perhaps punctuate the possibilities between North and South Korea?

I think that would be pun.

Pun S.

You, Chris.

Well, it's it's very hard to know how to respond to uh something like that other than

I guess see I've brought that upon myself in many ways but um

you know just so civilization has its ups and downs.

Um uh and this finally came on on Twitter from Adam Shipley thirty six.

Are you using the Bugle subscriptions to buy a Badonka donk tank as mentioned in Bugle one hundred and fifty six?

Well, not yet Adam Shipley but if more of you do subscribe, we will buy that badonka donk and we will drive it through the streets of simultaneously London and New York, the two recording homes of the bugle as a publicity stunt.

And I think that would probably get us quite a lot of publicity, albeit probably terminal publicity.

So keep those voluntary subscriptions coming in, Buglers, at thebuglepodcast.com.

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

And keep your emails coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com and we'll be back next week a slightly later record than usual I think we're recording on Sunday next week so we'll be up a bit later but with a full bugle 230 until then from me andy Zaltzman and from me Andy Zaltzman PP John Oliver and from Chris

in the holy borough of Hackney it's goodbye

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.