Bugle 212 – Wind of change

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 212 of the Bugle for the week beginning Monday, the 5th of November, 2012, the final bugle of of the Obama era.

Stroke the final bugle of the first of Barack Obama's five terms as president.

Stroke the final bugle of the beginning of the end of time.

Stroke the final bugle before new president Mitt Romney has John Oliver rounded up, impounded and executed as an enemy of the state.

Deletes, according to the verdict of history.

Either next week or to be on the safe side in 100 years' time.

That's really when you know for sure about history.

Although it is a fair bet to have Adolf Hitler down as a major tit.

i am andy zoltzmann and i'm in london where there has been a bit of light drizzle this week which was quite annoying because i was out without a coat and i got slightly damp and in stormgeddensville usa it's john the hurricane tamer oliver

hello andy hello buglers well well well andy it has been quite a few days here in new york it went from kite flying weather to kite losing weather pretty f ⁇ ing fast and pretty f ⁇ ing windily.

On Sunday night, Hurricane Sandy blew into town, blew through town, and in doing so, blew parts of town over all the way through the night and into Monday, and everyone here has been dealing with the f ⁇ ing mess ever since.

There's still no functioning subway and no power to lots of the city, but Paul and I...

We're not going to let that stop us doing the bugle, Andy.

If we had to power this studio by rigging up a generator to two bicycles, we would peddle our way to power like a drugged up Lance Armstrong, or to give him his accurate name, a regular Lance Armstrong.

Boom, Andy!

I'm just seeing the shit out of a weather front and a disgraced junkie cyclist.

It's going to take more than some fast-moving air to keep me down.

So, what's going to happen, Andy, is that in this bizarrely powered studio, considering we are slap bang in the middle of the blackout zone, we're going to take some of the scarce supply of electricity in New York over the next 40 minutes, and we're going to waste the living shit out of it.

Like we've wasted power 212 times previously.

It's what Benjamin Franklin would have wanted.

Well, you're a hero, John.

You're a hero and an inspiration.

That's a fact.

To everyone.

Have you got bar mitzvah since the storm or not?

They can't even bar mitzvah people, Andrew.

Really?

And that is when you know things are in trouble.

Because even though you know about the Jews and candlelight, you love it.

Yeah.

But when we had the great

storm of 87 in the south of England, the very next day I got Bar Mitsford.

So I was just wondering if

it was more to do with the storm or more to do with my date of birth and the Jewish calendar and me turning.

I think it was probably a bit of both, but more of the second and the first.

Yeah.

So you haven't accidentally got Bar Mitsford as far as you know.

Okay.

No.

Well, just keep an eye out for it.

You know, if any dodgy-looking rabbis just approach you in the street waving a book in your face, just, you know,

they just might be after something.

That's all I'm saying.

There have been kind of marauding bands of rabbis going around on cycles and just tackling people to the floor.

Maybe that's what's been happening.

I do think, maybe with hindsight, actually, that that storm of 87 could have been the Almighty Lord trying to stop me from getting bombets for

and debasing his entire existence.

Well, this is the Bugle for the Week beginning Monday, the 5th of November, meaning it is now 140 years to the day since Susan B.

Anthony voted in the 1872 US presidential election and was later arrested for the three crimes of voting whilst in possession of a womb, being democratic under the influence of estrogen, and entering a polling station carrying concealed breasts.

Anthony was banged to riots on all three and fined $100 and told to run along and be a good girl in the future and maybe concentrate on baking or knitting instead of selfishly trying to enfranchise half of the adult population.

Also, 407 years since Skeedo Fawkes tried to blow up parliaments and the king in London and that man needed to take a chill pill and he was given a chill pill in the form of being hung, drawn and quartered.

And we sacredly, arguably that is too chilled.

We sacredly commemorate the failed gunpowder plot and its attempt to destroy Parliament by annually putting on public shows of what democracy is all about.

Needlessly wasting public money, making things go bang and making people go ooo.

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

A review of Halloween 2012, which has rated 5.8 out of 10 on the International Festival rating scale.

Disappointing.

That's the worst Halloween for six years globally.

So where did it all go wrong for Halloween 2012?

Has trick-or-treating had its day?

Has it become tactically too predictable?

Kids turn up, mumble trick-or-treat, eat them a bit of chocolate whilst vibing them to f ride off for another year.

Neither side really prepared to gamble.

Very few homeowners take the trick play.

Probably a wise move in most urban areas these days, but it does make it a bit dull.

Very few trick-or-treaters, on the other hand, prepared to say, do not palm me off with your out-of-date chocolate Santa Clauses.

I did not invest £5.99 in a skeleton outfit for this.

Give me fing palma ham, or I'm torching your fing car.

It's Halloween, so it's technically legal.

And they've got a point.

It is what Jesus, of course, did on the first Halloween, according to the Gospel, according to St.

Nigel, when as a 15-year-old trying out a new miracle, he accidentally turned his friend Isaac's head into a pumpkin.

Top story this week, f you Chicago, you just lost the title of Windy City.

Yes, we are leading with Hurricane Sandy this week, partly because that blustery bastard very nearly meant that we couldn't do a bugle at all today.

Hurricane Sandy is of course a slightly strange name.

for a hurricane.

It brings to mind the character of Sandy in Greece, played by Olivia Newton-John.

And it only really would have been fitting if Olivia Newton-John had spent that entire movie flipping over cars, pissing on people's carpets and punching John Travolta in the face.

Have you not seen the DVD extras?

Well that's it.

Then it would have seemed eerily appropriate.

It has been a while since I've seen Greece but I think she only actually does two of them.

Point is the build-up to the hurricane striking was actually pretty impressive.

Most of the vulnerable areas were evacuated even here in the city and people hunkered down safely and responsibly.

I wasn't sure whether people would fully respond to the warnings.

And part of me was expecting to see crowds of New Yorkers standing on the beach on Long Island facing the ocean, grabbing their nuts and screaming, I got your hurricane response right here, buddy.

Get the f out of here!

And that didn't happen that much.

It did.

Well, not that I saw Andy, but I'm not going to say it didn't happen.

It probably did happen, but not in the numbers that I was expecting it to.

There was one magnificent moment of lunacy in the build-up, not only

just for the city of New York, but for the country of America.

I was watching the local news just before the hurricane hit as yet another reporter stood pointlessly close to New York Harbour, illustrating nothing other than their ability to be proximate to a body of water, when something truly wonderful happened.

Just over this reporter's right shoulder, suddenly entering the frame, A man on a jet ski started jumping waves and zooming around New York harbor.

That's right.

Andy, Amand was watching the news, witnessing countless reports predicting the coming of the most dangerous storm on record in New York and thought to himself, oh my god, that looks terrible.

This is truly an emergency.

You know what?

Reacting quickly is always critical in these situations.

So I'd better wax up my jet ski and get out there because I don't want to be the only New Yorker not jet skiing around the harbor when the hurricane strikes.

And I will say, Andy, credit to the cameraman at this point, because he did not hesitate to pan immediately away from the wet journalist he was inexplicably supposed to be filming.

And instead, he followed the jet skier all over the harbour as he attempted to jump off the highest wave he could find.

It wasn't clear exactly what the long-term aim of this escapade was.

But at one point, I was wondering whether he was actually going to try and jump off a wave and high-five the Statue of Liberty.

That seemed like the only logical end point to what he was doing.

I just don't know why you would jet ski around around New York Harbour as a hurricane blew in unless you were going to at least try to high-five the Statue of Liberty.

You're either all in or you're all out.

And I was watching this and I realised that although this storm may cause significant damage and suffering, fundamentally, everything was going to be okay.

Does that mean, John, is that...

Is that more American than hitting baseballs off a warship into a crowd of jet skis?

Not quite, Andy, but you know, you can't compare it with that.

That's like, you know, comparing a pecan pie with an apple pie.

They're both American, but one is a lot more American.

Because, I mean, it's a great show of defiance, isn't it?

That

America will not be, will not bow the knee to

weather.

They will not take a knee to a hurricane.

No, they won't.

And they will get on jet skis when the police, the Coast Guard, the mayor, and the President would all expressly advise against it.

That's not the point.

That's almost just egging on people to get on jet skis.

That's how they take that advice.

America also responded to Nature's Threat heroically through the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team who this weekend have unveiled the world's biggest ever t-shirt cannon.

Yes.

Which, I mean, to me, that timing can't be coincidence, John.

They just must have been waiting for a moment when America needed some reassurance about itself.

And they've unveiled the ultimate American combination of military firepower and free t-shirts.

100 t-shirts in 60 seconds, Andy.

Just think that through and then yearn for the day that you see it.

The only problem is now there's probably going to be an arms race across the NBA.

Teams desperately try and outdo each other.

Is that a bad thing, John?

And for all you...

Oh, it's a good thing.

For all of you pacifists out there, you know, would the technology for this 100 t-shirts in 60 seconds t-shirt cannon exist had the human race not spent so much of the last hundred years working out more and more mechanized way of slaughter ways of slaughtering each other?

I don't think so, John.

I think that is.

The Chicago Bulls are coming up with a t-shirt bazooka just as a deterrent.

They don't want to ever have to use it.

We're very much in recovery mode here at the moment in the city.

As I say, a lot of New York is still without power and downtown Manhattan is a very strange place to be.

It is creepily dark and creepily quiet, which is especially creepy because it's literally never either of those down there.

It's very hard to get around as the subway has been down all week and yesterday there were some emergency car restrictions after Wednesday saw the kind of gridlock traffic that you would only normally see in an REM video.

But did Michael Stipe suddenly jump out of a cab and start walking over the roofs of the cars and singing angelically?

Did he f Gandy?

Instead it was just a symphony of honking and swearing, which at least showed that the city was in some way getting back to normal.

So the rule yesterday was that no car would be allowed to drive into Manhattan unless it contained at least three people, which meant that people needed to find two other people to use the bridges or tunnels, which meant that they were going to have to offer lifts to their neighbours, which meant they were going to have to introduce themselves to their neighbours, something which many New Yorkers have been putting off for decades.

Either that or they were going to have to come up with another scheme, you know, get a couple of blow-up dolls, rent a couple of prostitutes to drive in, curb your enthusiasm style, or pick up hitchhikers, none of which seemed like a particularly attractive idea.

But I was surprised that people didn't see this as a huge opportunity and stand at the entrance to the bridge with a sign saying passenger for hire 20 to drive me across the bridge before jumping into the car driving across then walking back across the bridge and jumping into another car they could have made thousands andy

how did you get uh get to the recording did you get like a piggyback from one of the i walked i walked most

i walked i walked most of the way andy and then i did get the intern piggybacks which i'm entitled to andy because they're getting an experience of what it's like to work in television.

Which is emotionally carrying people around on piggyback.

There was actually a lot of talk, Andy, about why this has happened.

You know, was it climate change?

Was it an angry god smiting down New York for being a den of iniquity?

Was it the gays' fault?

You know, they often seem to get blamed for natural disasters by people who don't have any scientific pedigree but do have absolute confidence.

Well, I mean, there's a point, you know, that kind of chaos theory.

You know, the butterfly flapping its wing could cause, you know, an earthquake or whatever.

Similarly, you know, I mean, we all know that the gays, as a species, like to dance.

So, I mean, it's possible that vigorous gay dancing in New York did cause Hurricane Sandy.

I'm not a scientist, but I mean, we cannot rule that out, John.

It's not probable, but it is possible.

Andy, some people have argued that this hurricane has somehow been engineered by highly paid Obama campaign operatives to make him look good and give him a two-point boost in the polls.

The federal government has actually responded extremely well to this crisis.

And eight out of ten people have apparently given the president a good or an excellent rating for his

handling of the emergency.

Romney has the problem that during the primary debates he'd spoken out against FEMA, the federal emergency management agency, in one of his signature moments of shallow, mindless populism.

A statement he was sure to get away with, as long as a major hurricane did not slam into a major American city between then and the election, providing a violent illustration of the flaw in the argument for aggressively streamlined government.

As long as that didn't happen, he was going to be fine.

Both candidates suspended their campaigns this week, leading some to wonder whether the hurricane was in fact an act of God, who also had become so sick of the unremitting cynicism of this campaign that he decided to pull a micro-NOA to give himself a 48-hour break from the incessant political posturing.

I think it seems that America seems to have come together slightly more harmoniously than usual.

Maybe if nature could schedule in one major catastrophe a month, I think America as a nation would be much happier and more cohesive.

Well,

you're not alone in thinking that, because they both went out on the campaign trail again yesterday, and the president argued that, and as I quote, when disaster strikes, we see America at its best.

What?

By candlelight?

Look at George de Latour picture.

He then went on to say, all the petty differences that consume us in normal times all seem to melt away.

There are no Democrats or Republicans during a storm, just fellow Americans.

And is he trying to make people nostalgic for the time that they were being battered by 110 mile-an-hour winds?

Because that is how bad presidential campaigns are now.

It's almost preferable to have your house destroyed by floodwater than to endure one one more election cycle.

Well, I mean, it's been quite fascinating watching this.

He's had big raps, even from some pretty hardcore opponents, including prominently Chris Christie, the Republican, who's not been generally his biggest fan, I think it's fair to say, a rare display of bipartisan political manners, and particularly around a country that politically is generally more polarised than a bear that has been covered head to toe in meringues.

I don't know if that works comedically, but the image is a strong one.

It's meaningless.

It's meaningless, but it's strong.

But it does seem that America only learns to behave itself with itself when something terrible is happening to it, particularly if that terrible thing is happening in a predominantly white area.

That does seem to make things move more smoothly.

It really helps.

It really helps people care here, Andy.

And a Republican complimenting a Democratic president, I mean, politics being politics, people didn't think, oh, that's nice.

This is obviously a non-partisan issue.

That's a healthy sign of a grown-up democracy.

They instantly thought, what the f is this guy up to?

He is plotting something.

I think he's starting a campaign for his grandson to run for president in 2056.

And also, politics being politics, they are probably right.

Now, you might look at the hurricane and the devastation and tragedies that it's left in its wake and think, there is absolutely nothing positive about this.

But of course, you'd be wrong, because if you are, say, an investment author and therefore have had your soul surgically removed years ago, then you don't see a crisis, Andy.

You see a catastrophe.

We have another word for the bugle lexicon, ladies and gentlemen.

Author Larry Oxley gave tips this week on how to trade the so-called Frankenstorm to make money, saying it's almost hilarious.

But the beauty of extreme weather investing is that you don't necessarily have to be ahead of the event.

You can just play the opportunity as it unfolds.

You're right, Larry.

It is almost hilarious and you should point that out to the families of the 90 people who've died.

Their almost hilarious deaths will be made somehow less tragic with the news that you managed to personally profit from their deaths somehow.

And you're also right in a way Andy, you can play the opportunity as it unfolds.

You can technically do that.

But should you Larry?

Should that be the first thought in your diseased mind as a humanitarian crisis unfolds?

To see, let's say, a monsoon barreling towards Haiti and saying to yourself let's hope that thing picks up steam come on mass casualties Larry needs a new speedboat sorry did I say needs a new speedboat I meant to say Larry wants a new speedboat we said it's almost hilarious I guess you know you can see natural disasters as nature's extreme slapstick

but he's got a point John the problem with disasters like plane crashes is they happen so fast you just don't have a chance to play the markets on them that's why you know a hostage scenario is so much more preferable it's got time to unfold and you can really financially savour the unfolding human tragedy.

Now of course on your natural disasters, your earthquakes, your volcanoes, your tsunamis, they're a bit in between.

There's no advance warning but you can then work the markets based on the gradual revelation of the scale of devastation they've imparted.

Which is why weather events are so superb and famines even better.

Awesome trading opportunities.

For those do-gooders who want an end to global hunger, if we just learn to play the markets right, famine in Africa could solve all the Western world's financial market problems and then we can invest it back in africa to stop it happening again and also you can lay it all long term against an increase in anti-western resentment fueled terrorism so financially it is a win-win scenario john and then of course you've got things like whether the pharmaceutical sector will develop a cure for malaria that's a tough gamble that one probably safest to continue back in the coffin trade for now but start hedging it in a couple of years if comedy equals tragedy plus time, albeit not that much time these days on the internet, then tragedy plus time also equals book deal.

And tragedy plus time plus more time equals belated full government inquiry.

Then tragedy plus ethical vacuum equals investment opportunity.

Yeah, he explained his theory, saying that he pointing out that he likened extreme weather investing to an explosion, explaining that the latter needs a fuel source, oxygen and an ignition, and the former needs a weather event, a high concentration of commodities that can be affected and corresponding financial instrument.

Apparently, he made a lot of money during Hurricane Katrina and he said natural gas was a famous Hurricane Play when Katrina blasted the Gulf of Mexico.

Refineries were damaged in the storm, diminishing gas supplies, increasing prices and causing the stocks of companies like Chesapeake Energy and Southwest Gas to rise.

Well after saying all of that Larry

you may have another prediction opportunity here because you may want to invest in any companies that make bleeping machines because

I'm about to tell you, Larry, that you are a fisted cockblaster who deserves a category five f storm right up your weasely fing behind.

Money to be made, Andy.

Money to be made.

Money to be made.

But I mean, I guess you could respond to those who claim that this kind of investment and behaviour is ethically questionable.

I guess you can reply by saying, one, who won the fing Cold War?

Suck it up, commies.

And two,

all ethical questions, John, are multiple choice.

That is the nature of ethics.

Amidst all the difficulties, there have been some weird sights in New York all week.

The restaurants that have opened have been serving and cooking by candlelight.

Also, there's been a Mad Max-style crush to find any working outlet to charge your phone.

Uptown and downtown have been like North Korea and South Korea.

One is in almost complete darkness with people trying to slip across the border to the other one to use some of the mystical sweet electricity juice.

And the people on the other side are slightly jealous of the water slides.

That's true.

It works in so many ways.

As a consequence, one of the most surprisingly strange things to witness is that I've actually seen a lot of people using payphones in New York all week.

It's been like living in a 1980s Martin Scorsese movie.

Hey, tell Luigi to drop the package down at the South Street Seaport, or I'm going to introduce the Louisville slugger up his ears.

No.

Usually.

Another audit.

You just...

you just presume

usually you just that's Scorsese Smurf.

Summer 2013.

Usually you just presume that the people using payphones are either murderers or drug dealers or drug dealing murderers.

And it is so strange to overhear conversations when you walk past payphones in this city that don't involve ransom notes or arrangements for disposing of bodies.

The only thing approaching the ballsiness of hurricane jet skiing that I witnessed was the fact that on my block, about three hours before the hurricane was scheduled to hit, I was looking out of my window at the street and I saw a moving truck pull up.

I went outside, unable to believe what might actually be about to happen and out climbed three crazy Russian men who had somehow decided they were going to keep their appointment to do a full apartment move.

I don't know who was crazier, Andy, them or the people who were moving house, except I do know who was crazier, and it was the crazy f ⁇ ing Russian men.

I went downstairs and I said to them are you sure that this is a good idea?

To which they said yeah he's no problem for us he's a good day to move roads very clear and I said yeah you know why that they're clear.

There's a category one hurricane about 50 miles away and it's going to blow everything over.

At this point they'd already walked past me and were carrying entire chests of drawers out of the house on their shoulders.

Although I did want to say to the people who were moving out, great idea not cancelling your move today.

That's a beautiful wardrobe by the way, and it's going to look stunning in about 45 minutes when it's embedded in that shop window.

But

the best part of all of this was that the moving company was called, and I promise it's true, Wizard of Oz Moving.

That's right.

The Wizard of Oz Moving Company were going to try and move a house during a hurricane.

I was fully expecting to walk out afterwards and see a pair of brightly coloured witches' legs sticking out from under an apartment building with munchkins singing their way all around the block.

So how much do you think it will have affected the election on Tuesday, John?

Because it's looking pretty

close to cool, isn't it?

Probably not at all.

Yeah, I think it's going to be a squeaker this election, either way.

I don't think, I think it's going to take more than an

international crisis and a weather event to change the fact that

even a hurricane is not going to help undecided voters for some reason fing decide.

And also, I guess the nature of American politics is such that Obama could, of course, the election is looking tighter than some close-fitting waist-to-toe legwear that never buys its round, even when it's obviously its turn.

It's tougher to call than a dead hermit with no phone in a cave that's been fitted with a signal blocker and only gets one bar at the best of times anyway.

And it's closer than being pinned up against a wall at the end of a cul-de-sac by Mariano Rivera, wielding a copy of a French celebrity magazine with topless pictures of princesses in it, right in your face and telling you his last joke before saying, that's it from me, you've been a great crowd, I'm Mariano Rivera.

There you go, a little baseball joke in there for our non-American listeners.

Some of the hardest hit areas here were in Breezy Point, New York, or f ⁇ ing Breezy Point, as it's now going to be legally named.

and New Jersey where Atlantic City was absolutely battered with piers, boardwalks and roller coasters being crushed, dismantled, and dumped into the sea.

And I couldn't help thinking how confusing it would have been if someone in one of the windowless casinos on the boardwalk of Atlantic City had gone on a bender for a few days drinking and gambling, only to step outside for a breath of fresh air at one point, witness all of that and found themselves saying, oh shit, what the f just happened out here?

How long have I been in there?

Well, the east coast of America might have been hit hit by a literal storm, but we in Britain have been hit by a metaphorical storm of stories about pederastic, predatory, alleged showbiz stars that have been indulged for decades and a mega squabble about the BBC not broadcasting a documentary about it, which has all overshadowed the real, far more important story that we in Britain have somehow ended up with a social culture in which hundreds of people felt unable to report the abuse, let alone legally pursue its perpetrators until years after the events.

This in turn stands alongside institutionalised police cover-ups, mass corporate tax aversion funded in essence by cuts to disability benefits because A they can do it and B they're encouraged to do it, plus political expenses, scams writhe through Parliament, swathes of the media not merely plumbing the depths but installing in those depths a fully fitted moral bathroom with a walk-in rainfall chair and an automatic R-sensing B-Day, all suggesting that Britain has not only been taking a volcanic mudbath and a swamp of skewed morality with itself, but it's also been turning an institutional blind eye to all manner of people getting away with what they can get away with in whatever field they're trying to get away with it.

And whilst doing that, our institutional seeing eye has been winking knowingly at the people who are doing the getting away with stuff, saying, don't mind us, knock yourselves out.

Still, greatest country in the world, John.

The Prime Minister said so two weeks ago at his conference, and he knows more about Britain than I do.

And also, we did really well in the Olympic Paralympics, so it's no big deal.

What was the question?

Cappuccino, please.

And I don't want the milk froth by machine, it's the 21st century.

I want it organic, natural, as nature intended.

I want the cow heated up in a sauna.

I want it put on a rodeo simulator to froth it up, and then I want you to squeeze its whap straight into my mouth.

Cup, sorry, cup.

Go, Team GP.

Berlusconi news now and Andy, everyone knows that Silvio Berlusconi, ex-Prime Minister, fully qualified horn dog and inspiration for the tremendous horse name Silvio Berlusponi.

Everyone knows that he is a committed career criminal.

Everyone that is.

Everyone that is, except the Italian legal system.

Because he has managed his entire life to somehow walk away from an avalanche of legal cases like a world-class justice escapologist.

He's become a high court Houdini, Andy who never reveals his legal tricks, even though most audience members correctly assume that they involve some combination of mirrors and bribery.

And this makes it all the more incredible that Berlusconi was this week sentenced to a jail term for tax fraud, which is a bit like getting Al Capone on tax evasion.

It's not...

It's not that he's not guilty of it, it's just that he's guilty of so much more besides that.

Now, in this particular case, which is just one course in a tasting menu of criminal charges against Berluscone, he was accused of taking part of the money declared for the purchase of some US film rights and then skimming it off to create illegal slush funds, reducing tax liabilities for his media set group.

The court actually gave him a longer sentence than the three years and eight months that prosecutors had demanded.

However, it later reduced that sentence to just one year due to a 2006 amnesty law aimed at at reducing prison overcrowding.

Oh, who was involved in passing that law back then?

I wonder, Andy.

And was it designed to reduce one particular person from overcrowding any prisons?

But this is.

Well, it's not just him that would be overcrowding it, John.

It's the 20 teenage girls who'd be overcrowding it with it.

This is a real blow.

On some kind of medical prescription.

He's got to have them.

He's still got his human rights, John.

Think of his legal team, Andy.

They were on an improbable run of victories.

The kind of improbable run that the Harlem Globetrotters went on over the Washington Generals.

Almost as if one side was being paid to not try that hard.

And his legal team said that they'd successfully defended him for 13 years, during which time he's actually been convicted multiple times of illegal party financing, corruption, bribery, and false accounting.

Although in each case, he's either won on appeal or avoided a jail sentence.

In other cases, he's either been acquitted or time has run out on the trial under Italy's statute of limitations.

And in all that time he's actually very rarely bothered to turn up to court to defend himself.

He's either queried the legitimacy of the court proceedings or the motives of the jury or he's passed immunity laws.

But one of my favourite details from all these new developments with Berlusconi is that since he's been out of office and his self-constructive protection from prosecution has been revoked, he has graciously pledged that he would set Mondays aside for for court appearances.

Don't do the Italian justice system any favour, Silvio.

How generous of you to bless them with one day out of your hectic week banging your way around the world.

And that just goes to show how routine being accused of crimes has become for him now, Andy.

He commits to court appearances with the same regularity that people pledge to use their gym membership.

I'll go Mondays, definitely.

I will put them aside.

I know that I'll feel better about myself if I go.

He's also been banned from holding political office for five years and he has not taken that news very well at all.

He gave an interview to one of the TV channels he owns this week and said, this is a political, incredible and intolerable judgment.

It's actually just the last of those words.

And he went on to say, there will be consequences.

I feel obliged to stay in politics.

Yeah, no wonder he feels obliged, Andy.

It's the only thing that is keeping him out of prison.

He gets immunity if he's in office.

That should be his next campaign slogan: vote for Silvio, I don't want to go to jail.

If he somehow manages to wangle his way out of this jail term, there may be another on the horizon anyway, because his next few Mondays are also going to be taken up with a current trial in which he's charged for paying sex with an underage girl and trying to cover it up.

He is about to hate Mondays more than Garfield, Andy.

Feature section now and daredevils!

And Andy, you know, we've been training this for a few weeks and of course, you know, there was the Hurricane Jet skier this week.

There have been some sensational news involving Daredevils recently, or to give them their technical names, magnificent lunatics.

First, a few weeks ago, there was, of course, a space jump.

Felix Brown Gartner rode up in a balloon to the edge of space and then stepped off a platform 24 miles up in the air and hurtled back down to Earth.

Now, the one thing I think Felix really missed out on Andy was not saying anything just before he jumped because he saluted, but he really missed his Neil Armstrong moment.

He could have gone with, holy shit, this is high, or

actually forget it, can you bring me back down?

Or Baumgartner away?

Or I think the most appropriate, there is absolutely no point in this.

Well, I was very disappointed that he did just go, we

or even Geronimo, or even I can see my planet from here.

Baumgartner is an Austrian man, Andy, which I personally found slightly disappointing, because this really feels like something that an American should have done.

This is my adopted homeland, Andy.

And I really feel like if someone is going to do something this magnificently misguided, this heroically stupid, this discernibly inexplicable, this tremendously pointless, then it should be an American.

And also, nice try, Austria, but you're still most famous for Hitler.

Okay,

it's gonna take a lot more than riding a balloon to the edge of space and jumping down to make all of us forget that little f ⁇ er that you brought into the world

He made some slightly ludicrous claims about it all being very important scientific research and I guess you know we've learnt a lot about what you know what to do if you ever find yourself stuck floating in a balloon a hundred thousand feet in the air with high-tech equipment a pressurized body suit and an oxygen supply i mean we all know now what to do in that situation I just wish he hadn't even pretended it was for science, John.

As you say, he is a magnificently ludicrous man.

He should have called it as it was and said, I'm just doing this for the f ⁇ ing hell of it.

That is a far more noble, heroic pursuit, John.

Did Roald Amelson get his piggyback ride to the South Pole for science?

No.

He did it because A, the South Pole was there and B, he thought he might meet some hot chicks down there.

And C, He wanted to see the look on Captain Scott's face when he turned up a few weeks later to find the Norwegian flag urinated in the snow and a message saying, chilly down here, isn't it?

Did Neil Armstrong John leg it to the moon for science?

No, it was for Cold War politics.

That is a far more noble goal.

If Neil Armstrong hadn't built and flown that space rocket, we would all be speaking Soviet by now.

And he also did it to see the look on Buzz Aldrin's face when he elbowed him in the ribs and jumped out of the rocket first.

Apparently, throughout the stunt, Bab Gardner was in contact via an earpiece with Joe Kittinger, his 84-year-old American mentor and the previous holder of the highest altitude manned balloon flight.

And I'm guessing that Joe was a little less impressed because he jumped from 102,000 feet in 1960, essentially in his pajamas, Andy, standing on the platform, finishing his cigarette, flicking it into space, shouting down to his wife to have dinner on the table and then diving back down to earth.

Just before Baumgartner jumped, you could hear Michelle Control say, Guardian angels will take care of you.

Now, if i'd been up there andy that would have annoyed me my response would have been uh really because i was under the distinct impression that you would be taking care of me

you and science

i spoke to him on the phone today did you spoke to him on the telephone did you really yeah what was he uh did he call you or did you call him he called us he called me on another job i was doing i was trying to give him a girl's phone number but he wasn't having any of it is that true yeah

why did someone did someone you know say i want to go out with that yeah yeah

exactly she she she she wanted she wanted a date with him but he he was insisting he was a family man right well he's got to be worth a hot for a life insurance payout hasn't he yeah yeah

he said he said though he said his next he wants he's going to give up jumping out of space and become a helicopter pilot which

That's a bit dull, doesn't it?

I want to see if he can double up, John, and

fire himself up to ground level from 24 miles below the Earth's surface.

Now, that might not have the same visual impact as a downward jump from way above the earth as he clambers upwards through layers of rock, chiseling his way past fossilized dino donkeys, secret CIA laboratories, the special underground pod where Elvis, Bin Laden, JFK, and the Queen Mother all live together in the greatest reality sitcom ever.

But it would be a far more scientific benefit than jumping out of space because we're far more likely to need to live underground than a hunt 24 miles above the surface of the earth.

Felix Bamgard was not alone in his dedication to the ridiculous recently.

A Chinese tightrope walker, Adil Hushur,

set a new world record for walking across a 1400 meter long wire at 1,148 feet above the Daehan Canyon with absolutely no safety nets.

The Aizai Bridge is apparently the sixth highest and 12th longest suspension bridge in the world.

Well, you know, I'm about as 12th as impressed then, Andy.

Yeah.

Because you have to do it over the highest or the longest.

Otherwise, it just doesn't sound as impressive.

That's like saying, I climbed the 34th highest mountain in the world.

It's the Gurda Madata.

It's actually over 25,000 feet.

That's still objectively impressive, but 12th just sounds terrible.

Another aerial stunt man, Nick Wallander, has said that he's planning a tightrope walk at the Grand Canyon, but that he won't be wearing a safety harness like he used when he crossed the Niagara Falls.

And I know is this scientific research as well to find out whether walking across a canyon can cure malaria.

And I guess, you know, it's bound to be politicised, these things always are, these public stunts.

Maybe it'll be seen by some as a metaphor for the welfare state, how a safety harness only encourages people to fall off tightropes.

Better that they don't have that fallback and then live in fear of disaster, desperately trying to balance their lives in an almost impossible manner.

So I think he's letting himself become a political pawn.

When I saw him walking across the Niagara Falls with a harness earlier this year, all I could think was, ah, what a loser, can't I?

Getting swept to a certain death off a waterfall.

Want your mummy to hold your hand while you cross that little boy.

Scared of a little bit of water and gravity.

I hope I never have to share a post-stunch shower with you, Captain Nobles.

No date or exact location has been announced for his Grand Canyon walk, but apparently he's in negotiation with two American Indian tribes whose reservations border the Grand Canyon National Park.

And, you know, I'm sure that their ancestors years ago once sat looking at the Grand Canyon Andy saying, one day, some crazy white man is going to try and walk over that on a wire.

Why will he do that?

No reason.

To reach enlightenment?

No.

To feel more at one with nature?

Nope.

Just because it would be awesome?

Yes, because it would be awesome.

That's what I'm saying.

I can't wait until someone is stupid enough to do that.

And

I think you're right about that, John.

I think that makes both of our careers even more heroic.

Your emails now, and we have an email here from Jessica saying, dear gentlemen, who are no longer allowed in Scotland, your most recent blast of bullshit from across the pond gave the fair state of Ohio a good what-for concerning our cosmic voting power.

I'll tell you something.

Monsieurs, Zaltzmann and Oliver, as an Ohioan, I take my role as one of the the 16 million people who choose America as president very seriously.

We changed our state motto to we elect your president for a reason.

We've been the home of eight presidents.

Ignoring Virginia's eight commanders-in-chief, that state left the Union, which obviously negates all previous achievements.

That's a fair point.

Harding's death in office ended the glorious era of Ohio presidents, and we reluctantly relinquished our ironclad rights to raise presidents.

But in the 90s, unable to let go of our untold power, we organized a dark dark cabal that would allow us to elect the president through black magic using the mysterious Electoral College.

Shh, it's a secret.

She goes on to say, in between raising and electing presidents, we were also the birthplace of all the aviators and astronauts in the 20th century.

But someone decided they didn't want us electing the president of the moon too, so they hastily killed the space program, thus delaying our total domination of the solar system.

To sum up, Ohio runs this shit.

With little to no sincerity, Jessica Boggs.

I will say, Jessica, that I think Ohio runs this shit would be a fair thing to have as a state motto.

Because you can legally back that up.

But you'd have to put Ohio runs this shit and in brackets for no reason that anyone can explain to me.

This email came in from James Clark.

He writes, Dear John and Andy, I live in a 10-bedroom Georgian house in the countryside.

I tend to vote conservative.

I was at one of the six great English public schools.

I work in the city.

I also love the bugle.

I've enjoyed it since discovering it around Bugle 165.

I make that roughly 33.5 hours of free top-grade life-affirming bullshit so far.

Thanks very much, James.

I'm willing to let you know that I shall not be making a voluntary payment for forthcoming bugles.

Instead, I intend to continue to download and enjoy your efforts for free.

Oh, God.

Why am I telling you all this?

Simply because I'm paying you instead by confirming all your prejudices about wealthy, Tory, public school-educated bankers.

Well, mission accomplished.

I think we all know the warm inner glow of being told you're right is worth more than money.

It's certainly worth more than any amount of money I might otherwise have given you.

Yours faithfully, James Clark.

You are mistaking that

warm inner glow for a burning fire of anger.

So, well, thanks.

It's a thought that counts, though.

And at least he's still.

No, it isn't thought.

You're quite right.

Inbred golf plane.

Which, of course, should be the Berkshire County motto.

I think that the name of a dog that won crufts a couple of years ago.

So, well, either you can side with James or you can help keep this podcast going at thebuglepodcast.com.

And don't forget, you can see our SoundCloud page as well, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle.

I've got that tattooed on my soul now.

And do keep your emails coming in to info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Port now and Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France titles are to be reallocated.

The UCI announced that some of the titles will be given to the next highest-ranked cyclist, known for sure 100%,

to have been clean and free of drugs.

Thus, the 1999 tour has been awarded to then-seven-year-old Timmy Watkins, who used to do a paper hand on his BMX in Milton Keynes, whilst the 2001 tour has been jointly awarded as a gesture of peace and reconciliation to Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon, subject to blood tests tests coming back.

Armstrong, who would first arouse suspicions by making cycling up mountains at about 120 miles an hour, or whatever he did, look as easy as picking out a hedgehog in a display of watermelons, could also be forced by his former sponsors to re-ride all the routes of his seven tainted tours, wearing a pantomime goose outfit by way of apology.

Well, that's all for this week's bugle.

That brings us to the end of the first four years of Obama.

John, are they going to be another four years?

And if so, are they going to be the next four years or are they going to be in 2020?

I don't live in Ohio, Andy.

You're asking the wrong person.

Well, imagine that you were living in Ohio, John.

Yeah.

Well, that's

the only poll, Andy, that is important is what do people in Ohio think they're going to vote?

Or

how do you think you would vote if you lived in Ohio?

Those are the only acceptable polls.

Oh, isn't democracy great?

Tune in next week, where we will exclusively be the only world media outlets to reveal the results of the presidential election on Tuesday.

It's nearly over.

That's the most important thing.

Stay strong, Buglers.

It's nearly over.

And if you're in Ohio, Buglers, don't do anything stupid.

Yes, I think you know what that means.

Goodbye.

Bye.

See you on the other side.

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.