Bugle 211 – Electoral Labour

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Hello buglers and welcome to issue 211 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world for the week beginning Monday the 29th of October 2012 with me Andy Zoltzmann live in London Northern Hemisphere and also in the Northern Hemisphere albeit in the wrong bits in the land of unremitting democracy the hotly disputed greatest nation in the world it's the sledgehammer of retribution himself the man hotly tips to be the next but one James Bond after surprise casting Bill Cosby it's John Oliver hello Andy hello buglers step aside Cosby let me have my role

Andy on Sunday night I helped out on a televised benefit to raise money for autism charities called Night of Too Many Stars on Comedy Central.

Now to do that I took part in one of those so-called celebrity phone banks where you see people answering phones and thanking people for their donation.

And thus Andy I embarked upon one of the strangest two hours of my life because the problem is when people get through to a so-called celebrity phone bank, there is understandably a couple of expectations there.

One is that there is a functioning phone bank and two is that there are celebrities on it.

And to a certain extent, that was true to be fair only there was Tom Hanks Julianne Moore

Paul Rudd Jerry Seinfeld Jimmy Kimmel Al Pacino unfortunately for any potential donors there was also me the fly in the champagne if you will now you're probably gonna get a nice mouthful of champagne but you may also be about to swallow a fly and it was complete pot luck there was no way of knowing who you're gonna get through to which meant that it was like playing phone russian roulette you were probably gonna be fine and get someone that you'd heard of But there was also a chance, albeit a reassuringly small chance, you were going to take a John Oliver bullet to the head.

And

unfortunately, that happened to some people on Sunday night.

And it turns out, Andy, that there is no way for even the most well-meaning humans to disguise the tangible disappointment in their voice when instead of Oscar winner Tom Hanks picking up the phone, it's some British guy that they've literally never heard of.

I spent part of the evening thanking people for their donations, part of the evening explaining who I was, and most of the evening explaining why I couldn't put Tom Hanks on the phone.

I literally had multiple versions of this conversation, Andy.

Is there any way I could speak to Tom Hanks?

I'm afraid not, but thank you so much for your donation this evening.

It's going to a fantastic cause.

But you're sitting right in front of him.

No, I'm not.

Yes, you are.

I can see you on television right now.

Would you like me to wave at you?

No, I'd like you to give the f ⁇ ing phone to Tom Hanks, please.

I will say, incredibly, I spoke to around five different buglers on the phone throughout the night.

So I wanted to say hello to all of them now, to thank them for donating, and just to remind them, I cannot put them on the phone with Tom Hanks.

I can't do it.

Did you ask him if he can come on the bugle?

I didn't.

I just assumed he was going to ask and it never happened.

Right.

What about Pacino?

Well, Pacino, I've got, he's lined up.

Yeah.

Well, what was he?

Did you get to like play a game of pull with him?

No, I didn't say a word to Al Pacino.

All right.

That's probably safest yeah i think so he can kill a man with his just with his little finger that's what he had on a piece of paper that he was handing around

i by the contrast have had an office built in my garden and spend now most of my time sitting on my own in it so

shows how our two lives have diverged john swings aroundabouts andy just two ends of the same seesaw

this is bugle 211 to 111 of course the number of flamingos rejected as too ugly by the lead singer of the 1960s rockers, Manfred Mann, before he found one that inspired him sufficiently to sing the hit song Pretty Flamingo.

And this is the week beginning 29th of October.

And, John, there's a lot of very significant musical instruments anniversaries this week.

It's 157 years since the invention of the harmonica.

Invented, of course, by old bugle favourite Florence Hot Sauce Nightingale as a medical aid to show whether or not soldiers in the Crimean War were still breathing.

Just put one in their mouths, and as long as they were still alive, they sort of played a little bit of slow country.

74 years since Percy Fender developed the eclectic guitar, and 223 years since the invention of the oboe, when a man in a reptile park in Hanover, Germany started giving mouth to mouth and CPR to a snake he thought had had a heart attack.

The snake recovered, started making pained whining noises, and this time by this time the crowd had gathered and the man got a bit carried away and found that he could make the snake make different noises depending on how hard he squeezed it and whether or not its bodily orifices were covered or open.

Snakes notoriously have up to 17 annuli spread up the length of their body.

The increasingly irate snake did then die of a heart attack in his fury at being so used, and rigor mortis set in.

And the oboe took its now traditional shape dead straight and with its tongue out.

Eclectic guitar.

Yeah.

Eclectic guitar.

Yeah, that was the precursor of the

electric guitar.

It was much more diverse.

As always, a section of the pugilist is going straight to the pin this week.

A new Bond film section.

A new Bond film coming out Skyfall.

It's entitled...

The film is a departure from the usual all-action Bond films.

Spoiler alert here is Bond spend most of the film doing admin ahead of filing his annual tax return.

He does an online grocery shop, watches some YouTube videos of a dog falling into an icy pond and an old woman swearing at traffic, and then gets a takeaway pizza on the way home.

He watches a Europa League football match with a couple of beers and his next-door neighbour Eric, who's a massive Borussia Munch and Gladback fan, but whose telly is broken after his cat knocked over a vase of petunias on it.

Before, Bond plays solitaire for an hour, checks his emails, and goes to bed and dreams about killing baddies.

Director Brenda Tarantino said the film shows a side of Bond that usually isn't visible, the man behind the heroism, the ordinary guy who has to hide his true feelings behind the mask at work.

We're all different at home than we are at work, said Tarantino, and none more so than spies.

apart from maybe professional boxers.

I sincerely hope apart from professional boxers and soldiers who specialise in firing anti-aircraft missiles, there are some jobs you should not take your work home with you from.

Anyway, Bond is just the same as them.

We also review previously unreleased Bond films, including Hutchie and the Carrots, in which Bond's pet rabbit Hutchius escapes from his cage, steals some carrots from vegetable rack, causing Bond to suspect that his house has been infiltrated by Soviet-era spies and slaughter everyone in his block of flats before escaping in a pedal-powered submarine.

And there's been a lot of controversy, John, over the amount of product placement in this new Bond film.

Bond's been seen drinking lager, which a lot of hardcore fans are very disgusted about, using Andrek's toilet roll, which some people thought was a little too graphic.

And also, because he's getting on a bit now, Bond's, and if they are going to do a storyline about how he's a more mature man, I think they could have done it without having quite such a commercially explicit incontinence problem involved, which rather undercuts his suave uber male seductiveness.

If he's lying in bed with a super hot Bond girl saying, I just sleep so much more confidently now.

Look, Daniel Craig's done a more earthy bond, Andy.

This is just a natural extension of that.

Timothy Dalton would just wet himself.

Top story this week, America is in electoral labor and is about to shit out another president.

Push, America!

Push!

Andy, a presidential election in America is a marathon.

It goes on for a ridiculously long time, there's a lot of shouting of support, and we're now approaching the point towards the end where the body is threatening to shut down completely, there's a lot of questioning of why the country has put itself through this, and everyone is about to lose control of their bowels and exhaustion.

That's basically the mood here, Andy, and it's going to take more than an isotonic sports drink to replenish the souls that have been destroyed by the tone of this campaign.

The election is just one and a half weeks away, and America will either vote to re-elect President Obama or elect a President Romney, which doesn't sound quite right and that's largely because it wouldn't be.

If the President is re-elected people will be significantly less excited than they were the first time around having had their expectations forcibly lowered after the last four years and if they elect Romney people will rightly immediately be concerned about which version of him is going to turn up at the White House.

They met in the final presidential debate on Monday to argue about foreign policy or more accurately to agree about foreign policy because there's actually relatively little that they disagree on there.

Normally a Republican candidate would go after a Democrat for being weak on foreign policy but that's a hard case to make against this particular president not just because of that whole surprise death party he threw for bin Laden but also because of his habit of droning the shit out of people.

The debate was 90 minutes essentially of them desperately trying to appear that they had less common ground than they did while exchanging the kind of zingers that would have you booed off at the stage at the Wichita Yuck Hut.

That sounds like he's saying that from a bit of personal experience, John.

Come on, Wichita.

That's a solid piece of wordplay.

I listened on the radio, John,

whilst I was writing my weekly cricket blog, which is a curious way to listen.

to a presidential debate.

I don't think many people around the world listen to American presidential debates whilst sunk to the brain in 1970s international cricket stats.

So from memory to summarise the debates, Romney thinks that West Indian legend Viv Richards was an extremely good batsman and he's got a point John and for once with Romney the numbers do actually back him up whilst Obama is going out on a limb a bit and suggests that Australian fast bowler Jeff Thompson was slightly overrated and it's just hard to see how that that's going to play with undecided voters in Ohio.

Interestingly, some Americans have already voted as early voting becomes more and more popular here.

One of those people was President Obama himself, who voted in Chicago yesterday in an attempt to persuade more people to do the same.

Largely because 13 days from the election, a new national poll has given Romney a lead of 50 to 47 among likely voters.

Now, it's a poll, Andy, so as such, it's at least 60% bullshit.

But even so, that sound you might be able to hear is the sound of my balls crawling up into my stomach at the prospect of Willards Romney in the White House, one of the smallest houses he's ever lived in.

It's estimated that 7.2 million people have already cast early ballots and that about 35% of the electorate may have already voted by polling day.

The projections are that Colorado may have 85% of votes cast prior to election day with Florida close to two-thirds and Ohio maybe around 40%.

And they, as everyone is only too painfully aware here, are basically the only state that matters.

as you say millions have already voted and John that is a I mean that's that's a risky thing to do isn't it they must be now desperately avoiding the television in case they suddenly look at Mitt Romney and think you know what I might have voted for Obama but I have got it wrong I want that man on my television every day for the next four years just to make me understand the possibilities of the hairdressing industry and because I want to be reminded that we have a tax system that essentially means I subsidize his horse Can I have my vote back?

As you say, 35% of people have voted early, John.

In some states, in fact, the results have been known since about 1830.

So

it's a very hard system to understand.

And listening on the radio, as I said, it does make it kind of slightly more interesting.

I mean, to me, that third debate took place in a Swedish sauna, with both candidates wearing nothing but a towel.

And I think it's much easier to take them seriously if you can picture, you know,

the fact that they're both kind of awkwardly skirting around Mitt Romney's tattoo of the Ghostbusters logo and Obama twitching his pecs whenever he talked about Pakistan.

You'd think that most states would have an interest in running a full fair election here in the US where no one is denied the right to vote.

But in an amazing move, the Texas Attorney General has threatened to arrest international monitors who were planning on observing this election to watch for fairness at the polls, calling their mission legally irrelevant in the United States.

The group, the UN-affiliated OSCE or the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, is sending 44 observers to voting stations across America at the request of various groups such as the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union after concerns that some states are attempting to disenfranchise minority voters by attempting to introduce controversial and completely unnecessary voter ID laws that have been largely blocked by federal courts after ruling that they were motivated by racial discrimination.

Essentially, the Texas Attorney General has thrown a 10-gallon shit fit at

at the idea of international observers being in his state, despite the fact that the US regularly sends poll watchers to elections in foreign countries.

He denounced the OSCE as an interfering foreign body, despite the fact that America is actually a founding member of it.

And that body was invited to observe both the 2004 and the 2008 elections by none other than President George W.

Bush, the cartoon Texan himself.

Oh, yeah.

Were they not there in 2000?

It's yeah, it's just, it's unbelievable.

Clearly,

their memories don't go back 12 years or do, and they're quite happy with the memory contained therein.

In fact, a Florida congressman who's currently running for Senate, Connie Mack, also dived into this debate like a confused scuba diver diving into a sewer.

And he said that the very idea that the United Nations, the world body dedicated to diminishing America's role in the world, I'm not sure that's in their charter, but it must be there.

If you read it backwards in a West Country accent, the very idea they would be allowed, if not encouraged, to install foreigners sympathetic to the likes of Castro, Chavez, Ahmadinejad and Putin to oversee our elections is nothing short of disgusting.

He then paused for breath, took another shot of crazy juice, slammed the empty glass on his head and continued, The United Nations should be kicked off American soil once and for all, and the American people should demand that the UN be stopped from monitoring American elections.

The only ones who should ever oversee American elections are Americans.

He then took one more shot of crazy juice before screaming, did I get on TV for saying this?

Are you proud of me now, mommy?

Are you proud of me?

I'm on TV saying words.

Why aren't you proud of me?

But I guess, I mean, he's got a point, John, because, you know, if there is,

if they do find anything controversial in this election, they could install Fidel Castro as an interim president.

And

that is within the UN remit.

That's within the massive UN power that we've seen being wielded over the last century.

I mean, they basically control the entire world.

I mean, that's almost a fact, as its peaceful progress towards global utopia can prove.

Of course, there are a lot of niche voter groups that could prove absolutely critical.

John, the Walmart moms

have had a lot of press coverage.

Moms, for any British listeners, are the same as mothers, but with bigger hair.

A group of 20 moms found encamped in the frozen sperm island of Des Moines, Walmart.

They gave the third debate to Obama narrowly.

Also, amongst other crucial voter groups, water pistol wielding dog owners, mostly men who own dogs but still like to play around.

Penguin curious bachelors.

They could be absolutely crucial, John.

Young professional men who enjoy nature documentaries and would like to know more about penguins but struggle to find the time due to the press-rised 21st century jobs market.

So

any suggestions by the candidates in the last couple of weeks that they're going to put on more penguin-based documentaries,

that could swing one of these key states.

There's power drill grandads, the over 65 males who own domestic power drills.

They form a crucial constituency in some parts of the mid-southeast region.

They could be swayed by electoral prejudice to reduce taxes on screws, wall plugs and other DIY accessories.

That's how democracy works, John.

And if you don't like it, why don't you f ⁇ off back to 1960s, Hungary, where you came from?

And also another absolutely critical voter group, the certifiable lunatics.

Now, in any close election, the certifiable lunatic vote can prove absolutely crucial, as of course, 2000 amply proved.

And it's not that America has proportionally more certifiable lunatic category voters than other countries.

It's just that it's a bigger country and they're more concentrated in the critical swing areas.

And many of them are in influential positions, such as the Supreme Court or Congress or the Senate, or even as candidates.

So, I mean, it's and there are more of them in America proportionally than in other countries.

So, I mean, it all comes down to these things, John.

If you're not in one of those groups, you must feel kind of disenfranchised.

The rest of the world clearly has a vested interest in the outcome of the election in November.

And, you know, this is one area in which this race is not even remotely close.

Because a BBC World Service opinion poll, again, it's a poll, so 60% bullshit, has found massively higher overseas approval ratings for Obama than Romney.

An average 50% favoured Mr.

Obama, with 9%

for Romney.

Their survey was of 21,797 people in 21 countries.

France was the most strongly pro-Obama, 72%

in favour of him, a fact that will in no way help the president and may fact be used against him.

Do you want to piss off the French?

Vote Mitt Romney on November the 6th.

That's a powerful message, Andy.

In fact, of all 21 countries, only Pakistan's respondents said that they would prefer to see Romney win.

And I think that might have a lot less to do with actually supporting Romney and more to do with the fact that Obama has been droning the living shit out of them over the last four years.

I think Pakistan are essentially saying, I think we'd rather roll the dice with someone who hasn't dropped a near cartoon amount of explosives on us.

I mean, sure, Romney may not be perfect.

His tax policy seems vague at best and cruel at worst.

But I think he's really strong in the area of never having dropped ludicrous amount of bombs on us.

So if that makes me a Romney supporter, then I guess get me a Romney yard sign that I can stick into the rubble that used to be my house.

But I think given that the influence that America wields around the world, John, do you not think it's...

I mean, it would be much fairer if we had to vote.

You know, there should, I mean, there should...

You think, I mean, why can Ohio

govern what happens in Pakistan?

That's basically what's happening.

I think

that's absolutely true, Andy, but I think most Americans also want to know why can Ohio determine who governs America.

I mean, it's also a smaller problem as well as a bigger one.

Yeah, I mean, if the UN can impose Fidel Castro on America, I guess maybe it's just

the other side of that seesaw, isn't it?

That Ohio can impose Mitt Romney on Pakistan.

Yes.

Afghanistan update now and in Britain the Commons International Development Committee Committee released a report arguing that the UK might have to recognise that creating a viable state in Afghanistan is not achievable.

Yes, Andy, no shit.

And that hasn't just been true for the last 10 years.

It's been true for over 2,000 years.

But when was that report written?

They just discovered it in the House of Commons vaults from 1753.

You really might want to ask Alexander the Great about the achievability of creating a viable state in Afghanistan because he'll tell you to never remind him about that fing place ever again before throwing a Gordian knot coffee cup at you.

The committee advised that the UK should reconsider its ambition of building Afghan government institutions in favour of more traditional aid targets, adding that there should be more done to combat violence against women through support for women's shelters and legal services and that ensuring education for women and girls should be a major focus, adding in conclusion that in this committee's view Afghanistan is, was, and ever shall be a donkey fk of the highest water.

British economy news now, and it's over, John.

The economy is over.

No, not the economy.

The economic downturn is over.

We have had a single economic quarter of 1% growth, John, which means that I think

we are now the wealthiest nation in the world.

There have been some rather cynical claims that it's only the effect of the Olympics that has caused us to bounce out of the second dip of our hitherto double-dip recession.

Well, I mean, it's very much as I suspected at the time, and I'm sure you did as well.

The Olympics basically saved this nation, John.

And we need more.

Any half-decent government with its finger on the pulse of Britain, instead of on the pulse of its own soul, wondering why there is nothing coming, would legislate that we have to have at least one quarterly Olympics in Britain for the next 15 years to help us out of recession.

That is what this country wants.

It's what this country needs.

But more importantly, it is what this country wants.

And it's very hard to know.

Andy, the only person who would not be happy with that, considering her face during the Olympics, was the fing Queen.

But everyone else, I think, would see that as a good thing.

Well, she might take the opportunity to just pop her clogshead.

She looks like she's just waiting for the right moment.

Yeah, that might be the time.

It is very hard to know the overall picture of the global economy.

You do slightly get the feeling that governments the world over are not so much controlling this rabid rhinoceros of a financial crisis as trying to paint some pretty nail polish on its toes to make it feel better about itself.

And also,

they have absolutely no idea what's going to happen.

Of course, the government have claimed credit for this, and politicians always claim credit when things go well, whether or not they're still in power.

In fact, I spoke to Stanley Baldwin via Ouija boards this morning over breakfast, and he was insisting that his rearmament programme from the mid-1930s was instrumental in this week's better-than-expected economic figures.

And of course when things are going badly, blame is thrown around like a 95-year-old woman who accidentally entered a professional wrestling competition.

But you just get the feeling, they just don't have any control.

It's basically like cavemen eating berries, John.

They just bite into an economic policy and hope that they don't keel over instantly.

Dead man talking news now and a man in Brazil calmly turned up to his own wake this week freaking the living f out of his family who had gathered to be by the side of his open coffin.

So now

you might think how did this work?

Well what happened was that his family had not heard from him in a few months when local police called to say that he'd been killed he worked as a car washer and another car washer who looked really quite spookily like him had been killed.

His brother went to identify the body and mistakenly identified it as him.

Cut to the man in question walking down the road only to have a neighbor say, You'd better get home quickly, they're burying you today.

At this point, Andy, I'm guessing there were, you know, just an absolute avalanche of emotions going through that man's mind.

But if he'd managed to just stop and think for a second, just had that momentary pause, he'd have realized it was worth putting some serious thought into that entrance.

That's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Andy, to really grab the attention of a room by the balls.

What do you say when you burst that door open?

Do you just go with

ta-da!

Or maybe, I'm a ghost, I should be invisible.

Oh shit, how many of you can see me?

Or perhaps just, what the f have you done to my secret twin?

Yeah, I mean, at the very least, a bed sheet with some eye holes cut out of it.

That is an absolute minimum.

I guess, I mean, it's interesting to see the story because presumably in about 2,000 years' time, people will be celebrating this man's birthday with a needlessly commercial festival.

Basically, clearly, what happened with Jesus?

There were a hell of a lot of guys with beards in those days.

That's true.

Beards absolutely ripped six packs.

It could easily have been a case of mistaken identity.

That's right.

And rather than being honest about the fact that he'd been away for a few months and been in church, he went, yeah, I'm back.

That's right.

I'm back.

God, Jesus was away for a bit, wasn't he?

Rise from the dead.

Basically, guy's been in the wilderness this is it's uncannily identical john but also there must have been also conflicting emotions for his family because you know are you pleased that your loved one is still alive or deeply annoyed that you've just pissed away 150 quid on sandwiches you didn't need and

and what's the etiquette on the coffin i mean do you tip the corpsicle out of the box and save it when someone in your family genuinely pops their clogs or do you let the current dead guy keep it and reach an agreement with his family that they will pay for your next family coffin price determined by an inflation-linked index.

I mean, these are just the social etiquette, John, is just so ill-defined these days.

It's just so hot to know how to behave.

Parents of the year news now, and Jay-Z and Beyoncé, real names Jay Z and Vera Lynn III, have lost a court case in which they attempted to trademark their daughter.

Blue Ivy, named of course after the medieval poison used to kill John F.

Kennedy.

Just

it had a fatal effect on him about a second before he was shot.

They also tried to trademark her name,

Blue Ivy, and

the ruling means that parents in America can continue to have female offspring for the foreseeable future after daughters were not trademarked.

And it's been welcomed by some equality activists, but greeted by other prominent Republicans as, quote, disastrous news for the economy.

Jay, the former world-ranked 34 snooker player, who can forget his Titanic final frame decider against Tupac Shakur in the World Championship qualifying in Prestatin in 1994.

And Beyoncé, of course, the daughter of the former world-ranked number two snooker player, Tony Knowles.

Man, their children are going to be ripping up in the crucible in 20 years' time.

You cannot fight genetics.

They're basically the Agassian graph of snooker.

Anyway, they'd filed a petition to trademark the name Blue Ivy shortly after their daughter was born in January, apparently seeking to reserve it for use as a possible brand brand name for a line of baby-related products.

Now,

reportedly after the court case verdict, Jay-Z and Beyonce were devastated that their precious little bundle of commodity could not be protected by a trademark, raising fears that their house could soon be filled with thousands of knock-off imitation blue ivies.

And let me tell you, John, parenting is tough enough with your own children.

When illegal counterfeit imitations of your kids get dumped on your doormat every day, it gets at least twice as hard.

The baby-related products they were attempting attempting to uh uh to potentially market down the line include carriages bags and baby cosmetics and uh baby cosmetics might be a phrase that opens up a portal to hell actually so i'm a little nervous about even saying it out loud however that there is the problem was there was already

a wedding planning business called Blue Ivy.

That was the problem with this application run by a woman in Boston.

So she has effectively won the right to keep using that name.

The US Patent and Trademark Office Office has ruled that Jay-Z and Beyoncé cannot trademark the name Blue Ivy so the wedding planner can now continue to use the name without fear of being sued by a 10-month-old baby.

She said the wedding planner that she was initially surprised to learn that Jay-Z and Beyoncé had given their child the same name as her wedding planning company saying, I was really blatantly shocked.

I didn't think it was true because nobody names their daughter Blue Ivy.

Well, that wasn't true, was it, lady?

You were being naive because if you're smart, Andy, you will name any baby in the future after something that you can collect the royalties on.

And that is why I'm going to name my first child the 1984 Audi 4000.

That way,

whenever one of those cars is sold, I'm going to be rolling in money, which is just as well, because I'm going to need to start saving for the 1984 Audi 4000's future.

And

also the countless hours of therapy that the 1984 Audi 4000 is clearly going to need after being labelled a commodity at such an impressionable young age.

And the spare parts, of course, they they are prohibitively expensive in the first place.

Now, I guess the question is,

is this a good use of the trademark law?

And is this a good use of everyone's time?

And I think the answer to both of those questions is clearly yes, Andy, because you cannot think too early about products placing your infants in the modern world.

Don't think of your child as a baby.

Think of them as a brand.

Don't think of it as a birth.

Think of it as a launch.

They're not born into this world, Andy.

They're launched into the marketplace of life.

Now, of course, some winers are against this.

Christina Mikolos, a trademark and intellectual property barrister who clearly can't be that good because the name Christina Mikolos is not trademarked at all at the moment.

She said, a trademark's purpose is to let the public know that goods come from a particular trade source, that your bottle of Coca-Cola or your Arsenal t-shirt are genuine.

Trying to register the name of a baby that as yet can't even speak, let alone endorse goods, is a waste of time and an illustration of the depths to which celebrity cashing culture has sunk.

Well, here's the thing.

You don't have to speak to endorse goods, Andy.

So that's her first mistake right there.

That baby could easily hold up some kind of sign saying a company name or have a company logo painted onto its face.

And I'm sure most people would take that as a full endorsement from the baby in question.

I have to say though, John, at least for me, it's questionable parenting.

As I know only too well, it is so hard being a celebrity parent when, you know, as soon as your kid is born, born, the paps want pictures of it.

They want to know what it's called.

They want to see it, want to tell everyone about it.

They start prying into its life.

Sorry, not paps.

Sorry, my parents.

But the point stands.

And it's tough naming a celebrity baby as well, because you've got to make your mark with a celebrity baby because you can lose your celebrity status if you give it a normal name.

And I guess the choice is, do you give your child a sensible name that needs no commercial protection?

I guess the pros of that, no hassle.

makes you look like normal parents, makes life easier for your kids.

But the cons of that are no hassle, makes you look like normal parents and makes life easier for your kid.

The other choice you've got is to give your child a deliberately f ⁇ ing ridiculous name and then try to slap trademark or copyright protection on it.

Now the pros of that, that makes you look like seriously abnormal parents, and that has to be good for your careers.

The cons are well it could lead to tough conversations later in life when the kid grows up to be maybe five or six and starts asking questions about its life.

Mum, dad, what did you used to do with me when I was a baby?

Did you take me to the park?

Did we go to the zoo?

Well darling, actually we tried to turn you into a commercially protected commodity.

Oh, why did you do that?

Shut up and eat your dinner.

I've had enough.

I want my pudding.

No, eat your vegetables.

I want pudding, mum.

I love pudding.

And I can see that you've made my favourite and it's ready to eat.

Sorry, Blue Ivy.

I just don't think you're ready for this jelly.

Why do you always say that, mum?

At least can you put something sweet on my broccoli to make it taste less disgusting?

Oh, okay, I know you usually have it on toast, but why not try this on boiled veg?

Here you go.

Yes, I want some more.

and the acacia one and the lavender flavoured one and the greek one yes all the honeys make it yummy oh mummies girl

wow

well i uh like i've expanded my references it was good yeah it's good it's proper pop music from the last five years yeah just about 10 15 yeah just just about I like the idea of Hello Magazine having a picture of you in your shed, Andy.

Matter of time, mate.

Yeah, it's good.

Matter of time.

Your emails now, and thank you so much for all your fantastic Daredevil-related emails, which we will hold until next week.

Again, that is a promise that could so easily be broken if Jay-Z and Beyoncé choose to do something else stupid.

And Andy and I continue to lack the focus and discipline to ignore it.

So our first email is from Tristan, who says, Dear John, Andy, and Chris, in likely order of being responsible for me getting a date, I just had to share this.

A few months ago, I got out of a long-term relationship and have only recently started looking at getting myself out there again.

In order to do this, I signed up at a popular dating website and when filling out my profile, mentioned that the bugle was far and away my favorite podcast.

Within three hours, I had three dates lined up with all three people mentioning the bugle and how great it was.

I just had to share this, that the bugle appears to be some sort of dating cheat code

near instantly getting you dates online.

Perhaps this was how Berlusconi assembled the guest list for his bunga-bunga parties.

Hoping my dates are with actual women and not the internet pretending to be women, Tristan.

Well, Tristan, I mean, I think the truth is, you know,

when you're using the bugle to date people, you're probably either going to have a fantastic date that can become a life partner, or you're going to get murdered.

It's worth really a risk worth taking, isn't it?

I mean, it's probably a 90-10 chance, isn't it?

Either way.

Yeah.

So please, Tristan, please let us know how those dates are.

But also, seeing as they're also buglers, please.

Buglers who aren't picked by Tristan.

Because, yeah, two of them.

Maybe we should set up a bugle dating site as part of the.

Actually, Tristan's Rejects.com.

That's both a good,

frightening, and a potentially legally difficult idea.

Any subsequent children were entitled to 10% of their life earnings.

Yeah.

Let's Let's play balls, little f ⁇ ers.

Yeah, and the Bugle's influence on the world goes beyond even romance.

This comes in from Dr.

Charlie Nunn in Bath,

UK,

who writes, Dear Andy, John, and Chris,

in order of how you will appear in the list of authors, there you go, interesting.

I'd like to acknowledge you all as co-authors in a scientific paper detailing the effect that the Bugle podcast has on bacterial cell culture.

I'm a scientist working in the field of biochemistry and one of the tasks I perform is to grow bacteria called Escherichia coli, abbreviated E.

coli,

in large complicated vessels called bioreactors.

You sound like you are employed by the remnants of the previous Iraqi government.

E.

coli are rod-shaped bacteria that are commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms.

And because of where they choose to dwell, these bacteria are nicknamed bumbugs by those unfortunate scientists who have to grow them.

I was having some problems last week as the bacteria were refusing to grow, despite me twiddling the knobs on the bioreactor to adjust their food.

This is how so many wars start.

To adjust their food, temperature, and air intake, which normally resolves the issue.

As a fairly new but now dedicated bugler, I then had an epiphany as I realised that what the bumbugs needed to grow was a constant stream of nutritious bugle bullshit to provide a closer environment to their natural intestinal habitat.

Convinced by my plan of action,

I proceeded to put all the bugle episodes on the the laptop in the lab and then left the bugs to grow overnight to the sound of the audio-cryptic crosswords and socialist hate cheese.

That's going back a while.

The pugnacious fog which greeted me the following morning when I opened the door of the lab was truly something to behold.

The sheer volume and density of the bugle-stimulated bumbug growth was unlike anything I've ever seen before, and thankfully, since, therefore, making this ill-conceived experiment truly worthy of publication.

So, I may present the effect of audio stimulation on the metabolism of E.

coli in a bugle bullshit bioreactor of bumbugs, Journal of scientific obscurity 2012.

Authors, Nunn, Charlotte, Zoltzmann, Andy, Oliver, John, and fk you, Chris.

Full manuscript to follow.

So basically,

in this email section this week, we have become the

god of love Eros, firing arrows into the hearts of buglers.

And basically an agent of biological warfare.

That's what we bring to the table, world.

We can make you fall in love, but we can also kill you all.

We never pretended to be something we weren't.

Do get your emails coming in to info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Don't forget your daredevil emails.

We'll be on the show next week or in a subsequent week or never.

Don't forget, you can always, or you can also find us on soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle, the greatest webpage in the history of the internet.

No sport this week.

There is no sport.

There has been no sport in the world apart from Madison Bumgana pitching superbly in Game 2 of the World Series and just reminding the world of what an unfeasibly magnificent name he has.

It is just outstanding.

If you've got Madison Bumgana pitching to Alba Poohols, you have a collision of two spectacularly named worlds.

No, that is a name.

That is worth trademarking.

Madison Bumgana.

Yeah, that's exactly.

That's a name that should have some baby monitors named after it.

I used to suffer terribly with hemorrhoids until I bought myself the Madison Bumgana.

Thank you for listening, buglers.

We'll be back next week, subject to confirmation from Jay-Z and Beyonce's lawyers.

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.