Bugle 229 – Cyprus ready to go Mad Max

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 229 of The Bugle with me, Andy Zoltzman, the five-time European misremembering champion.

Or was it 800 meter freestyle champion yeah no it was that live in london the host city in 1666 of the short-lived british bakery burning championships big win for the peterborough pyromaniacs in that only ever uh staging of that event um and joining me from a city that has had three great fires in its repertoire according to wikipedia uh 1776 1835 and 1845 uh that of course fire fans is new york it's the fire starter of funny the conflagrator of comedy, the pyro of Persiflage, the one-man inferno of irreverence who will burn his barbs on the barbecue of Badinage, the satirical scorcher himself, John, the flaming aubergine, and Oliver.

Andy, no one likes these linguistic pyrotechnics more than I do as an introduction, but at some point you're going to run out of words.

There is a finite time in which you can do this.

Yeah, but John, I'm 38 and I don't live a particularly healthy lifestyle, I reckon.

Yeah.

Good point.

That is what's covered you.

I'm

Andy, I had a photo.

I had to do a photo shoot yesterday for GQ magazine.

And

do you have to, John?

Nothing about that sentence should be surprising to anyone.

It's a natural match, Andy, because when you think of the name John Oliver, the first thing you think is probably menswear.

At one point, Andy.

Men's wear, John.

I think you just misread.

I think it was a horribly misbooked event.

At one point during the morning, there was a fitting where I was trying on a suit that cost the amount that you would usually spend on something you'd expect to be able to drive.

And the stylist looked up at me, looked up and down and said, hmm, that suit looks really good on your calves.

And

that's a big reach, Andy.

That's essentially like saying that suit doesn't look good on most of you.

Because if you're going all the way down to calves, you literally have nowhere else to go

john that's a very negative way of looking at it maybe uh yeah your fitter was just working upwards from your feet and that's as far as i could get with all being overwhelmed by the magnificence

no no because the thought process andy is does it look good on your chest no on your arms certainly not on any of your torso not that i can see how about thighs not good i'm afraid ankles it's not really on his ankles how is it on his calves it's fine that's it andy

i'm gonna be be a calf model for high-ends high-end menswear I'm gonna be the Linda Evangelista of the lower leg

it does sound like they might have just been trying to

talk you into showing a bit of top John don't you

well you don't need to talk Andy just just point

on the subject of those great New York fires the one in 1835 was described in a magazine called The Gentleman

and that magazine wrote: In the midst of this terrible visitation, it is consolatory to see the elastic energy of the people.

Instead of wasting their time in despondency over this frightful desolation, the whole population seems on alert to repair the mischief.

Mischief, John.

That is a quality 19th-century understatement for a massive fire.

Very burning down a large part of Manhattan.

And the 1845 fire began in a whale oil store in southern Manhattan.

Now,

do they still have those in New York now?

Do you get through a lot of them?

I'm sure they do.

It's a pretty weird city.

Where do you get your whale oil from, John, these days?

Well,

I mean, I don't...

I've never got any, but I definitely expect to be able to get it at any point during the 24 hours of a day, Andy.

That's what New York's all about.

If I want whale oil at 4.30 in the morning, I should be able to get it.

Did GQ not like give you something as a facial pack for your...

Do you know what?

I did I did rub structure I did rub whale oil on my calves.

Maybe that's why this secret look so good.

You could just keep your own bonsai whale in the bath and lipo sucked it every few days.

Good point.

This is Bugle 229 and ironically, it's 229 years since 1784 when the Treaty of Paris was ratified, ending the American War of Independence and formally acknowledging the United States to be a sovereign, independent

nation.

Betrayal.

One of the dudes in the US delegation the previous year that hammered out that deal was little Benji Franklin, banknote pinner, mullet pioneer, and general all-round whiz kid, who proved throughout his extraordinary life exactly what a human being can achieve when he doesn't watch tele or surf the internet.

He did an incredible range and amount of things.

And in that year, 1784,

he was the inventor of bifocal glasses.

Possibly because he spent so much time during the treaty negotiations with one eye on what he was reading and the other eye on the British delegation on the other side of the table to see whether or not they were giggling.

He also invented the flexible urinary catheter, Benjamin Franklin.

Possibly because when the English delegation saw what the Yanks were demanding,

one of them said, Mate, you're taking the piss.

And Franklin thought to himself, Hang on, there might be something in that.

Who knows?

Probably not.

He actually invented it about 30 years before then.

Anyway, but the point stands.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week.

It's an audio cookery tips supplement,

including how to tell when the oil in your pan is just right for deep frying.

Ah!

Ah!

Put the temper in now, love!

Ah!

How to peel an unusually large carrot.

And how to tell when you've put too much chili in your children's food.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week: Cyprus is fed.

I mean, it is fine.

Cyprus, Andy, is the sunny Mediterranean island of 1.1 million people where, for the last few decades, hard-working British people have gone on vacation to vomit in the streets.

It's one of the smallest members of the EU, a sleepy little place, but it might want to consider waking the f ⁇ up right now because it's currently in the middle of a financial nightmare.

The EU has seen some financial shitstorms over the last half a decade, but Cyprus may be about to unleash a fiscal tornado so huge that we may wake up having landed on a witch and dancing down the road with a talking lion a scarecrow and a weird squeaky guy with a metal face

this this all began last weekend when cyprus agreed a bailout deal with european authorities and the imf so far so tolerable next thing next thing you know cypriots are protesting in the streets and all the financial institutions are closed in fear of a full-scale it's a wonderful lifestyle run on the banks but without a friendly Jimmy Stewart to calm everyone the f down.

No, Stavros, you've got it all wrong.

Your money's not here.

It's in Constantina's house and Ibrahim's house and a hundred others.

I beg of you not to do this thing.

So how did this happen?

Cypriots are a warm friendly people as long as you don't mention Turkey in conversation with them.

And for people to nearly riot on that scale, you'd need to mention Turkey both extremely loudly and a lot.

Well, it's

kind of fascinating.

Another kind of chapter in the exciting sequences of European bailouts.

Of course, began with the Here Goes Nothing 2008 campaign, then the vomiting good money after bad tour of 2009, and the fingers crossed, it can't get that much worse, surely, of 2011.

The problem is Cyprus was apparently doing quite well for a bit, even after the financial shit tornado had kicked off in other parts of Europe, had good growth, low unemployment.

But by 2011, they'd reached the stage where Cyprus's banks' combined assets were worth eight times the annual national income.

Which sounds quite handy until you realise that those assets were almost entirely pretend,

largely made up of loans that they'd made to places like Greece, which had

no money to pay those loans back.

Greek debt, Andy, as we all know, is a spicier debt.

That is one messy money mousaka.

So, when the financial plate got smashed at the wedding between Greece and bankruptcy, Cyprus was left with a fraction of the pretend money that it was kidding itself that it actually had.

And a bailout was needed.

And the way the Cypriot government decided to go about these things was by essentially punishing the victims of the economic disaster

because they came up with this scheme to tax people's savings.

Now, I know around Europe recently, John, there's been a sense that people should, that the people responsible should be made to pay.

And maybe there was a bit of a language barrier issue, but the Cypriot government misinterpreted this as

it should be the people who have been responsible being made to pay.

And they tried to raid people's savings.

They're now having to come up with a plan B after the public called bullshit in a fairly major and vocal way on plan A.

So it's, I don't know, I'm not an economist, John, but as you said,

the little Mediterranean island has jumped aboard the bonkers bailout bandwagon calling at Athens, Dublin, Madrid, Lisbon and all stations to Fisk Oblivion Parkway.

But basically, the plan was all bank depositors with over $130,000 in their accounts would immediately get just under 10% of that confiscated.

And smaller accounts would get around a 6.75% confiscation.

It was to be called a one-off upfront stability levy.

Lovely Euphemism.

Yeah, isn't it great?

But the people of Cyprus seem to see it as a one-off gigantic f ⁇ k you.

So to be fair, the depositors would have got shares in the Cypriot banks in return.

But to be even fairer, those shares would be completely worthless if those banks then went under.

So to prevent a run on the banks, all Cypriot banks have been shut and are unlikely to open until next Tuesday to try and prevent mass withdrawals.

And all Cypriot bank managers are currently hiding inside the linings of their sofas.

There have been long lines forming at ATMs, but cash in them has been rapidly running out.

And Cyprus seems to have essentially reached a fork in the road, Andy.

Quickly renegotiate a solution which is satisfactory to no one.

or go full mad max.

Get some motorbikes, get some crazy outfits with spikes on the collar and just go f ⁇ ing crazy.

And I honestly think people there are 50-50 on which way to go at the moment.

Well, Chris has just broken some exciting news to me: that his parents live in Cyprus.

Yeah.

Oh, they do?

They do.

They're in England at the moment.

They're going back on Sunday.

And bit by bit, they're taking the towels and the clothes out of the bag and throwing dollars and sterling into the suitcase instead.

It'll only take a couple of bags to literally be able to save the country.

If the bailout goes through, and

it's like 10 billion Euros worth of bailout that basically one of your parents is going to be owned by Germany.

Yeah.

How does that make you feel?

I'd like to say that I'd be proud of them.

And I think

it's an important thing for my dad, I think, to just front up and accept that

he's now owned by Angela Merkel.

Yeah.

Well, Chris, he should feel Nick so good about that.

Such a beautiful language.

Schleck.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Cyprus's parliament rejected this whole proposition on Tuesday with zero votes in favour.

Zero.

It's not easy to get zero votes for anything, Andy.

Usually you'll get one person vote for something, even if it's just because they think it will be funny.

But zero votes.

That takes an almost impressive ability to piss literally everyone off.

So Why did the European Bank try to go in so hard on Cyprus all of a sudden?

Well, part of the reason seems to be the bank accounts themselves, because of the estimated 68 billion euros in total held in Cypriot bank accounts, about 40%

belongs to foreigners, and not just Chris's parents.

Most of them are thought to be Russians.

And at first, that seems a little bit weird.

Then, that seems a little bit suspicious.

And then after that, it only seems suspicious.

Because the widespread belief is that much of that money is at best dirty and at worst so laundered that it basically now qualifies as clothing.

Also, you know, if it's that dodgy that it has to be laundered through Cyprus, I mean, that is, I mean,

if they're too ashamed of it even to plow it into a football club, I mean, that really puts that in perspective.

A leaked report from the German Foreign Intelligence Service suggested that the main beneficiaries because of this from any Eurozone bailout of Cyprus would be Russian oligarchs, businessmen, and Mafiozai.

And

that is thought to be the key reason why savers with money in Cyprus have been put into this horrendous situation.

John, were they three different categories?

I think they're just three sides of the Russian personality.

But it's worth noting that of all the groups in the world that you want to avoid pissing off, Russian mobsters are right up there at number one.

And Russia itself has come out strongly against this plan.

President Vladimir Putin, a man who, shall we say, wears the cologne of the corruption in extremely heavy squirts,

he has

he's described the plan.

I'm glad you like that, Adley.

Very nice.

Very nice.

He described the plan as unfair, unprofessional and dangerous.

Although, to be fair, that's basically also a description of himself.

So much that it would function pretty well for him as a dating profile.

Man, unfair, unprofessional, and dangerous, seeks woman, late teens with an ability to keep her mouth shut for sexy business.

And it didn't stop there.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Russia may be forced to correct its relationship with Cyprus if the levy should go into effect.

And it's that kind of threat, Andy.

That kind of chilling Russian threat that will get a bill zero votes on the floor of a house.

Oh, this is such a beautiful island.

It would give me such pain to be forced to correct my relationship with this.

Your wife and family live here as well, no.

Oh, what a pity if I were forced to correct your house into a massive fire.

In the same way that Stalin corrected the membership lists of poetry societies.

Russia is now in a tricky position.

So it has a vested interest in Cyprus not collapsing in on itself and taking the full Mad Max scenario.

And it's not just the $40 billion in dodgy dodgy Russian money that's at stake, because Russia has also been using Cyprus apparently to funnel arms to Syria to help Bashar al-Assad go explosively medieval on his own people.

And as if this couldn't get any crazier, and this might be good news for you, Chris, news broke earlier in the week that the UK flew in a plane stacked with a million Euros in cash to Cyprus as a contingency measure for British personnel and their families if cash machines and debit cards should stop working in Cyprus.

They loaded a plane with a million Euros.

Oh, that should calm down everyone in Andy.

How could that go wrong?

There's a plane somewhere in the country with a million Euros in non-traceable notes.

But what you should absolutely not do is form a mob to find that plane and loot it.

I can't believe they made that public.

Like, hi everyone, here's a press release.

We've got the plane with a million quid on it.

There must be a decoy.

They must have been bringing a ship with 20 million in on the other side.

That might be

which just uh show john that uh you know around the world i think trust in the banking industry is at an all-time low in britain people are uh increasingly miffed particularly rbs a largely public owned bank still posting big losses and still paying big bonuses on the grounds that the losses aren't as big as they could be if we didn't pay such big bonuses and that's basically how it works Essentially, we are rewarding people for punching us in the face, but for doing so less hard than we're used to being punched in the face, and when the alternative is being smashed on on the head with an anvil.

And the whole situation in Cyprus, and we see the raids on, you know, just

low-level savings accounts, does continue to give the impression, not that we are just dust in the wind of history, but that we are custard powder in the explosive flatulence of economics.

When it goes wrong, we're the ones who get burnt and the whole thing stinks.

So all of this, even as we speak right now, apparently Cyprus is

hours away from a key vote on whether to go with whatever new package they're trying to negotiate or not.

But essentially, Cyprus is right now standing teetering on the edge of a fiscal cliff, about to take a budgetary bungee jump.

The Bank of Cyprus, the largest bank there, has said that the Cypriot economy is on the brink and desperately requires a liquidity lifeline, going on to say that the next move may prove its salvation or destruction.

And the European Central Bank has given the nation until Monday to raise the funds it needs to secure a bailout.

And if no Plan B can be found, they may cut off funding to the island's banks, which will likely trigger their collapse and possibly the country's exit from the Euro.

And that is when pandemonium will be unleashed.

And I am not talking about the popular new Japanese boy band featuring a bunch of kids dressed as pandas.

So where next for Cyprus?

Well, a new plan.

could include restructuring other Cypriot banks, maybe the use of pension funds, which would be like trying to put out a fire by throwing petrol at it,

or otherwise maybe accepting the offer of some help from Cyprus's wealthy Orthodox Church.

But perhaps the most audacious and again, slightly frightening offer of all came from Gazprom, the gigantic, and I mean

gigantic Russian gas company.

Because they have offered to bail out the entire country of Cyprus in one go on their own, which wouldn't be difficult.

Cyprus only needs around a 13 billion bailout.

and Gazprom makes around $160 billion a year.

So they could probably bail out Cyprus with the loose change they find in their Siberian tiger rugs.

And all Gazprom wants in return, Andy, for this national bailout is for Cyprus to give it the exploration rights to the potential gas deposits in the Mediterranean.

It's such a friendly offer.

That is all we require from you, Cyprus.

We would love nothing more than to help you out in your time of need.

And we require in return nothing more than your delicious gas.

Now, would you like to sign this contract, or shall I rip off your fingers, wrap them around this pen, and sign it for you?

I am fine with doing it either way.

That's got to be featuring in an animated movie at some point, that voice jump.

Russian mobster smurf, Andy, for Smurf 3.

Gotta make it more topical.

The point is:

Cyprus is fed.

Middle East news now, and President Obama has been in Israel and Palestine this week.

What a great way to relax and get away from political difficulties back home, Andy.

What better way than by traveling to the biggest political cluster f on the planet?

I'm sure he'll come back fully recharged, or at least saying, holy shit, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but it's actually great to be back.

His relationship with uh benjamin netanyahu has been strained famously strained over the last four years and uh he tried to lighten the mood immediately when he landed in israel cameras caught him making a light-hearted reference to netanyahu's warning of a red line uh with iran's nuclear program when they were visiting a military site apparently president obama asked a military official you know where do you want to start and the military official replied oh we're following the red line sir referring to a red line on the tarmac obama then replied oh the red line okay, and then smiled and gestured with his thumb towards Netanyahu and said, he's always talking to me about red lines.

It's funny, Andy, because Israel is desperate to launch a preemptive strike on Iran and we don't want that.

That's why it's funny, Andy.

And

it's even funnier because we've been surreptitiously killing all the Iranian nuclear scientists instead.

That's what makes it really hilarious, Andy.

oh

oh

that's just good stuff

bad man maybe had to be there i don't know

uh president obam wasn't actually the only one taking a different approach to diplomacy as king abdullah of jordan spent a recent interview essentially zinging every single leader in the middle east It was a really amazingly refreshing approach.

He said that Mohamed Morsi in Egypt has no depth.

He described Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey as an authoritarian who views democracy as, I quote, a bus ride, as in, once I get to my stop, I'm getting off.

When asked about Bashar al-Assad of Syria, he said he's so provincial that at a social dinner he once asked the monarchs of Jordan and Morocco to explain jet lag to him, saying he'd never heard of jet lag.

He even took on his own family, saying members of my own family don't get it.

Look at some of my brothers, they believe they're printers, but my cousins are more printers than my brothers, and their in-laws are like, oh my god,

I'm always having to stop members of my family from putting lights on their guard cars.

I arrest members of my family and take their cars away from them and cut off their fuel rations and make them stop at traffic lights.

And he then dismissed tribal leaders from the east bank of the Jordan River who've traditionally been his own family's base of support, calling them old dinosaurs.

Zing!

And they just got king-zinged!

Again, at least this is a new approach to diplomacy.

Insult comedy.

It's got to be worth the try.

Exactly.

Let's fly Don Rickles over the Middle East hanging off a helicopter in a special harness with a microphone in one hand and a loudspeaker the other, zinging the shit out of the leader of every country he passes.

Hey, Morsi, if a thought ever crossed your mind, it must have been a long and harrowing journey.

Boom!

Hey, Netanyahu, you're more stubbornly rigid than a dead donkey.

Good ding!

Hey, Lebanese President Suleiman, look at your face.

Was anyone else hurt in that accident?

Aloha!

Hey, happy Kazai!

I'll never forget the first time we met, but I'm sure as hell going to keep trying.

Kablally!

It's got to be worth it, Andy.

Yeah.

Some charming Ricklesiggers.

And Bernascone's pretty much tried that in Europe, certainly with

Angela Merkel.

He went a little hard.

That was less Rickles and more Lisa Lampanelli.

To call a major world leader an unfable lard ass.

Look,

that is going heavy.

That's edgy stuff.

Let's start with Rickles before we move on to that stuff.

British media news now, and finally, a deal has been struck between the three main political parties on how to regulate the press in the aftermath of the Leveson inquiry into the phone hacking schemozzle.

And finally, John, it was

an almost unique example of cross-party cooperation to provide a balanced solution suitable for all the varying snouts in the political dung heap.

At last, the bickering squawk of British politics had moderated to a harmoniously unified toot.

It all seemed reassuringly mature of our much maligned political system.

And then as soon as they'd reached this cordial agreement, they all started claiming credit for it, saying it was my idea, it was definitely not your idea, it was definitely my idea.

And then they even started arguing over exactly what it was they'd agreed to anyway.

It was British democracy at its shit best.

And people immediately started discussing the implications of the deal that had been struck.

Will it, as the New York Times suggested, chill free speech in Britain, as well as threatening smaller publishers, bloggers, and the like, which I guess, John, could include podcasts.

Under the new regulations, would we on the bugle, Britain's one remaining properly sharpened sword of truth, be able to claim that

had got together with

and they had jointly

whilst

and

the horse were

in and whilst

a prominent member of the clergy

only 14

and

into his

with her

i mean will we still be able to make those claims oh shit even if they're true i mean i guess we'll just have to put it out there john and see whether or not it gets censored before it gets correct if they ever start bleeping that stuff andy the bugle is finished so does it truly overturn 300 years of press freedom in britain as some people have suggested or does it just slightly nudge it some uh some sections of the media are concerned that the new agreement will significantly significantly curtail their ability to behave like total,

which could have serious implications for their circulation.

As Leverson himself said, a free press is one of the true safeguards of democracy.

And that is undeniably true, but the problem is the way the press has been behaving in this country, a free press is also one of the biggest threats to democracy as well.

And some people said this was a sad day for press freedom.

Well, I think the sad day for press freedom was when the press took their freedom, chained up to a radiator in a secret sex dungeon wearing a gimp mask, and told that freedom to call it Mistress Spankhammer.

The problem is that the press, given the power and responsibility to regulate itself, has applied that power and responsibility very much in the same way that a child self-regulates with a tambourine, i.e., somewhere between completely incompetently and not at all, and to the significant detriment of everyone around it.

They've self-regulated in the same way that a 19th-century British person used to self-regulate when left alone in a jungle clearing with A, a massive gun, B, a sleeping tiger, and C, the knowledge that back home there was a big empty space next to the fire that was just crying out for a new rug.

But fundamentally, the greatest problem is that if you want someone to regulate the press, the two groups you least want to do it are A, the press, and B, politicians.

And they are the only two groups with the power to actually do it, or at least to pretend that they're actually doing it.

Two of the least trusted social groups in the country looking after one of its most precious possessions.

What could possibly go wrong?

Many of the major newspapers involved said they needed time to study the details of this before commenting fully.

And that's unlike them, Andy, because that's the kind of attention to detail and commitment to rigorous journalism that I thought they'd long since been immune to.

And

you know what?

Maybe they've really changed from this, Andy.

Maybe

we got them wrong, and maybe

they've really learned some powerful lessons.

And they've just hold on, what's that clicking sound on my phone?

I'm getting!

They're hacking me, andy they're hacking me again

budget news now and uh well george osborne uh announced to the nation his uh his latest shoving the pennies around the empty pint pots uh for the nation and in the biggest move of the budgets this time

Beer,

the price of beer has come down by one pence per pint.

Wow.

And it is quite possible that this single measure could save the entire national economy.

The reduction in the beer price starts from this Sunday.

And George Osborne said, I expect it to be passed on in full to customers.

One P.

Bear in mind, that is the smallest amount of money we now have in this country since the half P was ditched about 30 years ago.

He's been full, John.

He's full.

He's personally bought every British citizen half a thimble full of beer.

Cheers.

I've done a math on this, John.

Oh, yeah.

So over the course of a year,

you could save £48.58.

Wow.

If you drink 15 pints of beer a day.

But there is a flip side to this, because if you drink 50 bottles of wine in a week, you're going to be £243 243 pounds worse off and if you drink three bottles of whiskey a night you're 461 quid worse off over the course of a year so just to balance the savings

that this is about what i'm losing on my wine and whiskey i'm gonna have to drink 218 pints of beer a day i'm not a doctor but that's that sounds risky john Thanks for crunching those numbers, Sandy.

That's really illuminating.

At hackney prices, it basically means that you can drink 400 pints for the price of 399.

Oh, that is.

I expect to see that sign going outside the front of every pub.

And the various tinkering around with the tax brackets, dropping the top-level rate of tax for the poor, super wealthy who've been struggling so grievously in recent times.

And again, they have this budget calculation on the BBC website, and I put it in.

And apparently, this budget is quite good news for me.

It's actually going to make me £4.9 million a year better off.

I mean, I did slightly over-exaggerate my earnings, but, you know, £100 million a year, I reckon that's not that far off, is it?

Well, I was already putting in, I was imagining what your earnings are, John, after Smurf 2 hits the screens.

It's going to be huge, Andy.

It's Trumpian level.

This is reportedly going to be great news for the struggling brewing industry in Britain after apparently 10,000 pubs have closed in the last decade in Britain.

And the real ale drinkers group, Camera, welcomed the news with a statement saying it was brilliant and momentous and

great

and just fantastic.

And it's just meant so much to us.

We really feel special.

It's nice to feel that way because no one has reached out to us like that in a long time.

And

we were just going to go to the toilet to be just a very little bit sick for a second.

And we'll be right back.

And who's round is it next?

More emails now, and this one comes from Ben and in fact many, many others via email and tweet who have picked up on something that a bugle favourite of recent weeks has tweeted.

Who writes, I was just cruising through the Iron Shakes latest tweets and discovered a dig at the Smurfs.

He wrote.

Wait, what?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, John, you're taking on the big guns here now, mate.

You put yourself out there, you're going to be going to be shot at.

Family guy, iron shake class, but Smurf's no good motherfucker lowlife.

Smurf's no good motherfucker low life.

Yeah.

That sounds like a one-star review to me John.

Yeah, he's just such he's a linguistic maverick that guy.

He will not obey the laws of language or punctuation.

I think he's deflecting away from the meats of his

You know, we don't know Andy because you haven't seen it yet.

You haven't seen the first one.

All right, neither have I.

But the point is, neither of us are qualified to comment on that.

John, if I did not comment on things I do not know about, this would be an extremely short podcast.

When is the second one coming out?

Or is it out already?

Has it been gone?

I think it's out this summer, Andy.

Summer 2013 is going to be huge.

Smurfs 2, it's called.

In fact, Matilda, my daughter, asked the other day, she said, what's a Smurf?

Oh,

well, summer 2013.

She's about to find out, Andy.

Well, she's about to find out if you fling us a decent load of merch for it, John.

On the subject of merch, the bugle merch,

it's been given the all-clear.

I'm just waiting for confirmation as to when it's actually going to be on sale.

But

hopefully within the next week, two weeks.

I think I've been saying that for four or five years.

Just say next decade, and then you're covered.

Then we won't lie to people.

The point is, all you buglers are not going to have to go shirtless for much longer.

Smurf 2, summer 2013, Bugle merch, summer 2014.

We have another email here from Matthew Wilson, which is basically a photo.

And the caption of the photo is, he's the monsieur of mirth, the ayatollah of rock and roller, the pope with the straight dope, Zoltor I.

All praise him.

Zoltor Imitesque Unus.

Amen.

Basically, it is a spectacular...

photo of Andy as the new pope with me and a slightly creepy cardinal behind him

walking through the streets of the Vatican and it's uh you're gonna tweet it out aren't you Andy?

Yeah, we'll put it up on it's very

it's very fun.

It looks

plausible

pretty well actually.

You look good.

You look like a Pope Andy.

And it looks like I've shed a few pounds as well.

That is amazing to say for a Jewish man.

That's how it all began, isn't it?

Yeah, I wasn't sure.

I was really hoping they would go back to basics and have a kind of, you know, late 20s, early 30s Jewish man with a rippling six-pack.

So we'll put that out.

Chris will put it on the website and Facebook.

Yeah.

Yes, I will.

I'm a bit out of the loop with Facebook.

Yep.

I'm pleased you know it exists.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll pop it on Twitter when I'm get the chance.

Do keep your emails coming in.

So info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Don't forget you can check out our SoundCloud page.

Soundcloud.com slash the hyphen bugle.

And if if you have not yet volunto subscribed to the bugle to keep uh keep the bugle going for all eternity please do so at thebuglepodcast.com or we will hunt you down and kill you

well that's about it for this week's uh bugle and in fact for the next two weeks we're going to be off uh for easter and for john to go to australia yeah i've just i have to go to australia for a few days to shoot a piece that's a f of a long way to go, Andy, for a few days.

But still, I'm doing it.

And I must actually put out an apology to our Australian listeners because there's been total mayhem in Australia with their government

coups.

And more importantly, from an English perspective, with their cricket team

when they dropped four players for basically failing to give in their written homework to the coach.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's been a spectacular time for Australia as as a nation, but we haven't had time to cover it, and now we've got two weeks off.

But I think we'll rectify that

in the next full bugle in hopefully three weeks' time.

So, maybe you can rectify it while you're there, John.

Well, also, the people of Australia need to understand that a bloodless coup is not an interesting coup.

Yes, they've had a spectacular amount of coups, but we really have to see some blood in the streets for it to make the news.

You just, you gotta give people something visual.

We're off next week for Easter, uh the anniversary of the uh certified donkey fan jesus christ being literally banged to rights uh successful prosecution yeah took a real hammering um the former carpenter and homebrew enthusiast but what a year for easter to happen john uh 2013 um because we of course reported exclusively on the uh coronation of the new pope and this week We had a new Archbishop of Canterbury inaugurated as well.

And you can't help thinking, John, Easter's, that's a big deal for the Christian Canada.

They are going to both want to stamp their mark on things.

And I think there's a big possibility of a huge Easter showdown.

Brand new Pope, brand new Canterbury.

They're going to have it out once and for all.

Is it pretend blood?

Is it real blood?

The world will find out.

Welby versus Bergoglio.

Refereed by the MD and owner of their rival franchises.

Almighty God.

Can Bergoglio give Welby a proper Catholicing?

Or Angly can Welby put his Roman rival on the ecclesiastic canvas?

Or Angly can't he?

Either way, it's Easter.

Someone is gonna get cross.

Tune in next time.

And have the happiest of all possible Easter.

Do you wish people happy Easter or not?

It's sad Easter, isn't it?

Is it sad?

Sad then happy, I guess.

You wish Jews happy Easter.

Jews happy then sad.

I guess.

Cost us a lot of market share.

Bad memories.

Bad memories.

But guilty.

Definitely guilty.

Under the laws of the day, I guess.

That's right.

Don't judge him by today's standards.

Thanks for listening, buglers we'll be back with uh we'll have we'll have supplementary episodes in the next couple of weeks yeah hopefully by the time we next do a full bugle the merch will be there and you will be parading around with your bugle mugs on your heads drinking coffee out of your bugle baseball caps and

sleeping in your bugle t-shirts

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.