Bugle 205 – The Trojan Horse

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 205 of the Bugle for the week beginning Monday, the 20th of August, 2012.

I am Andy Saltzman alone and bereft in the city that was London 2012, the nation that was Team GB and the planet that was Sportopia and in New York City the city that wisely avoided hosting the Olympics and therefore isn't having to go through this very painful cold turkey process.

It's John Oliver.

Hello Andy, hello buglers.

I guess that's it Andy.

If you can't handle the come down don't take the Class A sport drug.

I guess first off, Andy, the question that I'm sure is on everyone's mind is, are you okay, Andy?

Well, Owen Tonight has been one of the toughest weeks of my life, John.

I mean, the Olympics is finally over.

I know that can't be easy for you.

Have you been watching YouTube videos of the 1960 Rome Olympics just to try and wean yourself off sport gradually?

Well, yeah, I mean, there was some terrific stuff in that Olympics as well.

I was wondering, Andy, have you been forcing your children to participate in Olympic-style events around the house just to come down slowly, you know, instead of hurdles, get them to run around the garden jumping over boxes instead of fencing putting a colander on each of their heads and getting them to hit each other with pieces of copper piping

instead of throwing the discus standing them at the top of the stairs and seeing how far they can throw the plates and instead of throwing the hammer just having them throw actual hammers at each other

i was watching the closing ceremony andy half expecting to see you burst into the middle of the arena screaming no don't do it the olympics is only over if we say it is if we don't officially close it, it never has to end.

Who's with me?

We can do this!

Well, we basically invented the Olympics, John, through both in ancient Greece, which of course subsequently became British society, and the modern Olympics that Decouputam was inspired to form after a visit to Britain.

So, I mean, we surely have the right to just extend them.

Yeah.

As long as possible, John.

I mean, look, it's already become clear in the few days since the Olympics ended that reality is still as shit as it was before the Olympics.

It is an act of grotesque governmental irresponsibility to have allowed that to happen.

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

Well, it isn't this week.

There is no section in the bin.

Life is in the bin.

Oh, God.

This is what I was worried about.

Well, at least there's some cricket on, but we're being stuffed by the South Africans again.

Oh, dear.

Top story this week, US presidential election 2012.

Vote or sigh.

Andy, I think that the US presidential election season is actually the perfect way for you to transition from your addiction to the Olympics because they actually have a lot in common, those two events.

Think about it.

The whole thing happens every four years.

It's two people racing each other.

After going round and round in circles, one will eventually be declared the winner.

It's incredibly expensive to put on and there's just as much corporate involvement that slightly soils the whole event it's perfect candy it's like a nicotine patch for a debilitating sports addiction

and there was a big development this week mitt romney finally picked his running mate and he went with wisconsin congressman paul ryan a move which seemed to energize the base of the republican party who love to be energized by conservative picks around this time of year now some people might say why the hoopla it's only the vice president why is everyone getting excited over a largely ceremonial role?

Well, because that is simply no longer the case.

You are thinking with a pre-year 2000 mentality.

Because it was around that time that Dick Cheney managed to successfully change his job description into something significantly more powerful than the job he signed up for.

With Cheney, the Republicans seem to unlock their ideal formula for a presidential ticket.

A sinister puppet master pulling the strings of a happy-go-lucky wooden boy.

The aim for the Republicans at the start of any search for a presidential candidate is now to find a nominee who's essentially an empty, amiable husk, just palatable enough to disguise the poisonous substance of their running mate.

Think about the track record.

Bush, Cheney, McCain, Palin, and now Romney Ryan.

Because Paul Ryan might look like an average Midwestern, good-looking man who was walking down the street when a Brooks Brothers store exploded all over him.

But he wants to end Medicare, has spent the last few years driving John Boehner, the Speaker of the House here, into almost unprecedented levels of obstructionism.

Now, you might think, why don't Republicans just nominate the person they actually want in the first place?

Why didn't they just nominate Paul Ryan if they like him so much?

Well, because they know that you cannot shoot pure heroin and it will fing kill you.

You have to cut it with baking soda, and that is what they've done here.

I cannot tell you, beauty, with the amount of empirical research that John has done into that joke ever since his troubled early teenage years in Bedford.

The heroine capital of hearts, beds, and bucks.

When in Rome.

Well, yes, I mean, he seems like many Republicans, too, love the concept of women having all the possible babies that they may or may not want, and of poor people retaining the God-given rights to die untreated in the maximum amount of pain.

So, I guess he's appealing clearly to the

Republican heartlands.

That's right, Andy, but what you're selling is not something that you can appeal to people with on the top half of your ticket.

So that's why this system they found works.

It's like when you give a dog a pill for worms.

It's never going to eat that pill on its own.

The pill is clearly disgusting.

So you hide that pill in a bowl of cottage cheese.

And if the Republicans have their way, Andy, come November, America is going to have cottage cheese all over its face and not realise what it's just eaten.

The concept is nothing new.

Look at the ancient Greeks.

They invented democracy, and when they sacked the city of Troy, they didn't just show up with a bunch of crazy Greeks.

They put a bunch of crazy Greeks inside an empty wooden horse.

What I'm saying is, Romney is that empty wooden horse, and Paul Ryan is a bunch of crazy Greeks.

I don't remember that horse being quite as much of a dick, though.

All right, that is the one flaw in that metaphor, Andy, but that's a fair point.

So the Trojans would have said, let's get rid of this f ⁇ ing horse.

this horse is an arsehole

also this horse is round in a ludicrous way it's all stupid classical music this horse does not pay enough taxes

and that's you just hate the success of horses actually you're trying to punish the success of that horse but that is the concern with this election in november the democrats have an old-fashioned ticket they're stuck in the 20th century andy in a time when the vice president was just supposed to be america's clown accidentally insulting people during state visits, giving thumbs up to people at a funeral, maybe swearing at some school children, just generally causing a distraction.

Under the modern Republican Party, all of that is the president's job, providing a smokescreen while the Machiavellian vice president pushes through things without anyone noticing.

If the Democrats, Andy, want to show a real intention to the country that they intend to get things done over the next four years, they have three weeks before their own convention to switch their ticket around and and send a message.

It's got to be Biden-Obama 2012.

Change you won't even realize is happening.

I promise you, buglers, this could really work.

If we had lived under President Biden since 2008, Vice President Obama would have been able to get through a public option for healthcare, a stimulus package twice the size of the one that America got, a comprehensive immigration bill, and he would have been able to close Guantanamo.

All the while, President Biden distracted everyone by charmingly and slightly racistly screwing up African dancers on the White House lawn.

Well, it's interesting that

this change that you pick out in the role of

vice presidents, because it has, as you say, always been traditionally viewed as pointless.

FDR's first VP, John Nance Garner,

observed that the office is not worth a bucket of warm spit.

Now, the other version of the quotation is that it is not worth a bucket of warm piss.

Now let's think about which one is more likely and which one has been clearly moderated for public use.

I mean when you filled up a bucket with spit, that's quite a lot of spit that takes.

That is going to clearly cool to ambient room temperature.

So you would have to reheat it to get a bucket of warm spit.

Whereas piss, I mean, you're going straight in with that.

He clearly said piss.

He clearly said it's worth a bucket of warm piss.

Harritch a great historian of human language.

Well, you've got to read between the lines on on these things.

The twenty-eighth vice president, Thomas R.

Marshall, lamented, once there were two brothers, one went away to sea, the other was elected vice president, and nothing was heard of either of them again.

And interestingly, Theodore Roosevelt admitted to sleeping through sessions and, according to one source, enrolled in law school whilst vice vice president because of boredom.

And this shows the kind of desperation that the office of vice president can drive someone to.

That two vice presidents have shot people.

Dick Cheney, clearly.

Oh, yeah.

The second.

I cannot believe I forgot that.

I cannot believe it.

And I think that is only the one that we've heard about.

I think he probably shot a lot more people than that.

And in 1804, the vice president, Aaron Burr, shot and killed the former Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel.

So,

well, I guess that was it.

Cheney could merely say he was restoring an honourable tradition.

But

I think the other way of looking at it is a lot of presidents select a vice president who's going to make them look absolutely awesome.

Clearly, Biden does that.

For Obama, he had Dan Quayle,

Al Gore.

That's right.

Abraham Lincoln had Hannibal Hamlin, who was listed by Time magazine amongst the worst vice presidents ever.

Apparently, they'd never actually met before he was made vice president.

And he was described as a notorious do-nothing politician who essentially ignores the Civil War.

That was, listen, Andy, from what I know of the American Civil War, that was a tricky one to ignore.

Yeah, I mean, it was a big...

The sound alone.

The bangs and the screaming.

It was a really big media story at the time, I think, wasn't it?

I mean, a lot of the papers went in pretty big on that.

But then Lincoln ditched him because he clearly wasn't useless enough, Hannibal Hammond, because he had a frankly awesome name.

And he replaced him with Andrew Johnson, who proceeded to prove himself one of the worst presidents in history after Lincoln had cleverly died to make himself look absolutely fantastic.

He timed it perfect.

He really dipped for the line, Lincoln.

Interestingly, this will mean, this will continue the trend of the last 30 years that there will not have been a bisyllabic vice president in terms of first name since Walter Mondale.

Since then, we've had a George, a Dan, an Al, a Dick, and a Joe.

And now we'll have Joe or Paul.

So clearly,

what this shows, that was after 10 10 consecutive bisyllabic vice presidents' forenames, following John Nance gone, who had the decency to chuck in Nance to compensate for the disappointingly informal John.

And it just shows the declining intellectual capability of America as a nation, that it is clearly no longer ready for a vice president with a name that a caveman couldn't say.

Well, well done, Andy.

You just managed to powerfully illuminate nothing.

Ulysses S.

Grant had Schuler Colfax as his vice president.

Oh, good name.

Wow, that is strong work.

Well, for both of them.

Yeah.

Ulysses S.

Grant is good anyway.

He could have been, he would have, no one would have blamed him for having the most boringly named person with him.

But no, he took it up a notch.

What a ticket.

Well, exactly.

How can you not?

You look at your ballot paper, you say Ulysses S.

Grant, Shula Colfax.

I'm having a piece of that.

I don't care what they think.

So the convention season is about to start here in America with the Republican National Convention taking place in Tampa, Florida at the end of August, fittingly being hosted by a city which is a physical and emotional swamp.

And the Democrats will hold their convention in Charlotte, North Carolina in the first week of September.

And sadly, I'm going to be at both of them with the daily show for the full duration of the conventions, which always provides for me a challenge both to my belief in human nature and my tolerance for balloons.

So

we won't be able to do regular bugles while I'm down there, but we might try to do a quick phone call together like we did four years ago.

I believe, if I remember this rightly, Andy, it's a bit hazy, but I believe the last time we did it, we did one basically in the middle of the night

when I was so tired I was technically lying naked in bed.

Is that not true?

Well I've tried to brush that out of my memory.

I do remember...

I don't remember anything from that conversation Andy but I only assume it sounded extremely sexy.

Yeah, I do just remember the mental process of me trying to block out the fact that you were

You were plums out during an official bugle recording.

That was a yeah.

When you lost on the during the convention season, you found a wife.

That's true.

I can't wait to find my next wife.

I mean, this is you're looking at wife.

Wife, too.

Statistically, my wife, I will be meeting my second wife in two weeks' time.

I'll tell you who you don't want to tell that joke to, Andy, what I found out.

Your current wife.

Oh, right, okay.

Not a fan.

Really?

Not a fan of that little uh observation.

Well, you know, if Mitt Romney becomes president and makes Mormonism compulsory, then she's just going to have to adapt to that, hasn't she?

I'm just hedging my best.

That's right.

That and my magic underpants.

Now,

that is the one thing I'm waiting for Mitt Romney to come out and say in a debate.

Just apropos of nothing.

I've got magic underpants.

I've got magic underpants, and you can have more than one wives.

Oh, what's that sound?

Is that my approval rating spiking through the ceiling?

I'll see you at the inauguration.

You will not hear from me again until then.

He's been talking about tax again this week, in which he said that he paid at least 13% of his income in taxes.

Which is heroic.

Yeah, with a really celebratory tone of voice, going, look, it's okay.

I did it.

I'm proud to have done it.

At least 13%.

Which I think I'm right in saying is about half the average tax burden of Americans.

So truly a man of the people who shares their pains and their struggles, but more so because he also bears the burden of having to look himself in the mirror every morning without smashing his face through it.

Which he he seemed to do quite effectively.

But yeah, he

proud of saying, I paid taxes every single year.

Now that is truly, truly heroic.

I guess it just allows him to be more philanthropic, because you can't be truly philanthropic unless you are, in economic terms, f rich.

And

Romney has been...

You know, he's given himself the opportunity to be hugely philanthropic into the humble, charitable cause of making himself president.

But personally, I would not vote for any candidate, John, who owns a horse or a home or a car or his own clothes or a mobile phone or a pencil because I don't think they can truly relate to the problems faced by the lowest strata in society.

Good idea.

You would go full Lenin, Andy.

I mean, what's your prediction for the election, John?

Because, I mean, from the outside, Romney is a hard man to warm to.

He seems to be a bit of a spiritual Siberia.

Well, you've got to remember, Andy, that, you know, American elections are always close.

No,

it can seem that that's not the case.

Yet the last election, Andy, really was pretty close, and it will go down to the wire again because

the whole of this job is decided, essentially, by three states.

And

it's not the healthiest situation.

I'd love to know.

Just when the returns for Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida are about to come in.

Just keep your fingers crossed.

A bit more detail on Paul Ryan.

He's from Wisconsin.

He said he's known as the man who puts the sconce into Wisconsin because because he just loves wall-mounted lights.

He simply cannot abide pendants and still less freestanding floor lamps.

In Wisconsin, a local TV station has refused to air a campaign advert showing Ryan tipping an old woman in a wheelchair off a cliff.

Have you seen this advert?

No.

It's excellent.

I haven't read the full article about it, so I don't know if it is a Democratic advert or a Republican one because, I mean, I guess they could probably

both approve

that.

I mean Ryan, it's unclear whether it shows the actual Ryan showing an actual granny off a cliff.

He's never explicitly denied hurling old women off cliffs, and that is an eerie silence that frankly speaks volumes of the man.

But I guess, you know, it's just hidden camera footage of his standard of his standard Sunday morning stroll to church, breakfast, kill an old woman, worship the Lord.

I mean, that is hard to be.

Hard to be.

But as with almost all political adverts, it is unlikely to have any effect because Democrats will see it and think, oh, this man shoves wheelchair-bound grannies to their deaths off cliffs.

That is awful.

I'm definitely still not going to vote for him, just as I wasn't already going to vote for him before.

Whereas Republicans are going to think, he shoves wheelchair-bound grannies to their deaths off cliffs.

At last, someone prepared to take tough action to solve this nation's social and economic problems.

It's only a start.

Would ideally like to see him shove the poor off cliffs as well.

But I guess he'll hopefully roll that out over the course of his vice presidency.

I'm definitely still going to vote for him, just as I was already going to vote for him before.

I fucking love democracy.

I guess it's all going to boil down to another classic Democratic spending versus Republican thrift battle after the Obama years have seen the federal spending budget balloon by 8% following eight years of belt tightening under Bush in which the federal spending budget shrank by minus 89%.

Hang on,

isn't that the same as growing by 89%?

No, no, that must be wrong.

That must be wrong.

No, no, no, it's not.

That can't be right.

That doesn't make any sense.

Under Bush,

government spending shrank to almost twice its previous level.

Yeah, that's right.

That sounds better.

Yeah, I'm glad I've got that right.

I mean, some of these figures might be wrong because I was using an Excel spreadsheet from whitehouse.gov.

So it's probably basically Soviet propaganda.

But America, this is still true.

The American government is currently spending 50% more than it's earning.

But I would say you're only what young ones.

America's only in its, what, 230s?

200?

Yeah.

220s.

It's still young as a nation, John.

Still young as a nation.

You've got to splash the cash about, Andy.

It's quite burning a hole in America's pocket.

Have fun.

Greatest idea in human history news now.

And Andy, humans have had many good ideas over the years.

There was the invention of fire, then there was the invention of marshmallows to toast on that fire.

And then there was the iPhone.

So there are three good ideas right there.

I can't think of any others right now, but I'm sure there must have been some in between.

Why can you get an iPhone app in which you toast marshmallows on a fire?

Well, if you couldn't, about 40 seconds after you say that, I think you probably can now.

A new idea has emerged now, which may put all previous ideas to shame.

If Archimedes Andy had thought of this particular idea in the bath, he'd have had a second public order charge on his record due to another case of indecent exposure running around Syracuse with his wang flung around like an ancient Greek wooden helicopter.

This idea came from two Germans.

Let's deal with the elephant in the room straight away.

The Germans have had a lot of bold ideas over the years, and to put it mildly, not all of them have been good ones.

But this idea, Andy, on the scale of Germanic ideas, is at the top edge.

But

we're talking more the idea of giving little Mozart a piano for his birthday when he was three.

That's right.

That kind of idea, not growing a little moustache and trying out a funny walk.

Right, what I'm saying is this idea is so good.

It's essentially on the scale the opposite of the Holocaust.

I am not saying that they balance each other out at all i'm just saying that this is as an idea this is as good an idea as the idea to exterminate millions of innocent people was a bad idea that's all i'm saying okay well that i mean that is a that is a seesaw with an extremely oddly placed pivot

that's right or one massively fat boy on one end now What happened was this.

Two German entrepreneurs have apparently pioneered a new system to help people deal with pent-up anger and blow off some steam.

They've launched a premium phone line that you can call and then verbally abuse the person on the other end of the line.

The swearing hotline known as Schumpfloss, swear away in German, has operators standing by seven days a week so that you can call them up and scream at them using whatever language gives you the most emotional relief.

And Andy, this is made for you.

You can conjure up a swear word, Andy.

You are a sorcerer of the swear word.

You're a cursing cardini you're the david copperfield of the cuss

yeah

are you expecting me to come up with one on the spot john

flam scrankle how about that

now you might you might think that this is a bad job to be one of those phone operators just on the other end of this

tornado of abuse is this just not any customer service helpline well that's what i'm saying

That's what I'm saying.

Now, if you work for a call center, this basically happens to you every day anyway.

You are systematically and spectacularly verbally abused.

It's just that you don't get paid accordingly.

It's just basically working for Delta Airlines.

Yeah, exactly.

Where's my f ⁇ ing plane?

Apparently, when callers are not creative in their swearing or find that, you know, stumble over their words a bit, operators are supposed to assist them by provoking them, saying things like, that's the third time I've heard that today, and is that all you've got?

And this is, it's just sensational.

And for a start, it is a real shame that this technology wasn't around in Germany before, because if they'd had access to this technology 100 years ago, we might have all had a significantly more pleasant 20th century.

That's right.

Just blow the steam off.

Blow the steam.

Blow it off.

Why are they getting all the jobs?

So, Andy, what I'm saying is, let's call them now.

Okay, that's cool.

Let's call it.

Let's call them.

Okay.

I was gonna say, let's just give.

I suppose they want their number to be given away.

So, let's apparently, just so you know, apparently, this service costs

1 euro.49 per minute, which is the owners say is completely justified saying forget forgetting everything off your chest.

It's a bargain.

So, here we go.

Paul, it's 0900

3960690.

God, God, I hope this is the right number.

I'll just end up shouting at a random German person.

Your call cannot be completed.

Oh,

man!

Don't f yourself, Germany!

Not for the fing first time!

That is bullshit!

Oh,

the one fing good idea you've had over the last century that didn't involve f in killing people.

F

you!

I'm gonna try it now with the zero.

We're sorry, your call cannot be completed.

These things never come in ones with Germany.

It's always twos with a sequel.

Oh, that's f unbelievable.

Well look,

I don't know.

Clearly, there's a problem getting through on that number, buglers.

It basically have the same effect, though, isn't it?

Yeah, with that German hoist coming back at you.

Yeah, I feel it.

I feel great.

I feel well exercised.

I think we'll try at some point over the next few weeks.

We might try doing it over Skype, which

might work.

My swear doorphins have certainly

kicked in.

I feel good.

I feel good.

Thank you, Germany, and fk you.

Corruption news now, and India has jumped into the corruption ring.

As well, in fact, it basically lives in the corruption ring.

If one of my trips to India last year, pick up any Indian newspaper, you have to turn to about page 21 for any news that isn't related to some form of corruption.

And a minister in India's most popular state, Uttar Pradesh, has said that bureaucrats can steal a little as long as they work hard.

Shivlal Singh Yadav told a gathering of local

officials in Carmen's court on a secret camera.

He said, if you work hard and put your heart and soul to in it, then you're allowed to steal some.

But don't be a bandit.

Andy, I can't work out.

quite what I feel about that.

That is either refreshingly honest or depressingly defeatist.

Is the extent of India's movement to tackle corruption, Andy, basically taking the same attitude to corruption that most parents take to their kids underage drinking?

Look, I know you're going to do it.

Just take it easy, will you?

Take it easy.

Well, it's basically the same attitude that Mitt Romney has to taxation.

So, you know, who are we to judge?

It's true.

That is exactly true.

Look, look, you are allowed to

avoid tax.

Just don't be a bandit about it.

I paid 13%.

Yeah, it's not like he was paying 0%.

But I want to know if Mr.

Yadav is prepared to roll this out to other crimes and say, if you've been very good all your life and never killed anyone, then you are allowed to clonk someone round the head with a crowbar and steal their wallet.

That is only fair.

The Minister Yadav immediately panicked and called a news conference, going into damage control mode and claiming that his comments had been taken out of context, saying, In that event, the media was not allowed in.

I don't know how they sneaked in.

And if they had sneaked in, the whole discussion should have come out in the press, not just part of it.

Going on to say, and I'll tell you what, I'm really confused about how they got in, because I had paid them all off to not be there.

But don't worry, I didn't go overboard.

It was a reasonable backhander.

No one went full bandits.

That was my point all along.

Uttar Pradesh was earlier governed by Dalit Queen Mayawati, who was criticized for spending millions of rupees on building statues of herself

and buying diamond jewellery, despite widespread malnutrition and poverty in Uttar Pradesh?

Sounds like she was the Indian female Donald Trump, Andy.

Well, yeah, fair enough.

I mean, how is she supposed to offer a symbol of hope to her struggling people, to the poor and malnutrinted, if she isn't allowed to build statues of herself, which simply scream out, One day, if you eat more and earn more money, this could be you.

Yes.

She's an inspiration, John.

An inspiration to her.

That's right.

Feature section now and official Bugle Olympics closing ceremony.

Well, Britain did it, Andy.

And I think whether you liked the opening and closing ceremonies of the London Olympics or not, I don't think you can claim that any country has ever taken those ceremonies less seriously.

Reuniting the Spice girls, Andy, only to make them stand on the top of illuminated taxis and hang on for dear life as they were driven bizarrely quickly around the stadium as if they were competing for a fare.

The closing ceremony started with a tribute to traffic.

Who does that, Andy?

Who thinks, what do we want the parting, lasting memory of this city and its wonderful games to be in the eyes of the world?

Oh, how about the fact that traffic in London can be a f ⁇ ing nightmare?

I wouldn't want that to not be a feature of the show somehow.

Oh, and also, how about we strap the Spice girls to the top of some cars and then basically race them?

That would be fun too.

In its most inexplicable moment, Russell Brand rode a bus into the arena, dressed as Willy Wonka, before performing a version of I Am the Walrus, which was the equivalent of unloading a gun into John Lennon's grave.

Yeah, I mean, he's not...

I mean, if putting together a...

You know, a cocktail of British musical culture, I guess, you know, you've got to give the organisers credit for balancing out, you know, some of the best, you know, the Who, iconic rock band, with some of the absolute shittest

in The Spice Girls, an embarrassing episode we're desperately trying to forget, and Russell Brand, who is not a singer.

So that's brave.

I mean, it's brave to show good and bad.

I did not see the opening ceremony to the Munich Olympics in 1972, but I'm guessing it was not as balanced as that.

Sorry,

we'll let it go.

We'll let it go.

Also, there were lots of massive newspapers in this closing ceremony.

The whole sort of opening in 20 minutes was played out and stuff made of massive newspapers.

I guess that's a tribute to the industry that has done so much in recent years to make this nation proud and happy.

Indirectly, by pneumatic drilling through the bottom of the moral barrel, so spectacularly that the people of Britain were provoked into reacting and thinking, hang the f ⁇ on.

We are better than this.

And I'm going to prove it by wearing a potentially lethal purple shirt, working for no money, waving a big foam finger around and being outwardly excited at the privilege of not being paid for stuff and smiling at strangers for fraud without it starting to feel weird.

I want my Briton back.

All thanks to the newspapers, John.

Heroes.

Now the successful athletes in the Olympics sometimes return home to sudden fame, lots of endorsement offers and parades in their honour.

And there have been some great stories like this.

Kashawn Walcott, the javelin thrower from Trinidad and Tobago, won that nation's first ever Olympic gold medal medal in field events.

He threw 84.58 meters and upon getting home was awarded £100,000

around 20,000 square feet of land and had a lighthouse named after him.

He'll also have his name on a Caribbean Airlines plane and will be given a luxury home.

Not bad going, Andy, for throwing a pointy stick just under 85 meters.

I reckon I could throw one about 20 meters.

Can I at least get a lighthouse named after me over there?

Yeah, some reports did say that he was actually given this lighthouse.

Others said that he was named after him.

But let's just assume that he was given a lighthouse.

And I don't know if he has to run that lighthouse because that seems, you know, that...

I don't know if being able to throw a javelin a long way is really a skill that you necessarily require with your

management of a lighthouse.

Unless you throw it at a ship, you know, to warn it, it clangs off the side of the ship and then warns them that they're about to get too close to some rocks.

Well, I guess that makes sense.

And it does away with the light pollution as well from lighthouses, which is quite annoying if you live near a lighthouse.

Right.

Whereas the javelin, if it's just going straight out to sea, that's not going to disturb anyone, is it?

Apart from me.

That's it.

That is their way of doing an environmentally friendly lighting.

And he can turn the light off and have an Olympic javelin thrower throw javelins at ships.

Oh, Clang, we must be around 85 meters from some rocks.

Thank you, Kashon.

I was watching that live.

I was sat up behind

the runway for the javelin.

And

it was quite early in the competition that he threw his

84 metres 50, I think.

And it wasn't clear that he was going to win, but it was his personal best.

And he just sort of shrugged his shoulders and said, yeah, that was pretty good.

That was pretty good.

And I looked at the crowd.

I said, yeah, I've done pretty well there.

He did not look like a man who wanted to own a lighthouse at that point.

I mean, it's hard to tell with sportsmen because they're trained to cover up their emotions.

But

he did not celebrate that throw by running to the crowds, standing up like a lighthouse and spinning his head round.

Or just firing beams out of his eyes.

Yeah, putting a flashlight in his mouth and just turning around slowly, turning it on and off.

But, you know, if that's what a javelin thrower gets in Trinidad, Andy, what does a multiple gold medal winning British athlete get?

Because, you know, Britain went Olympics crazy over Team GB, and I'll bet they really came through when it came time to reward our winners.

Well,

Olympic gold medal winner Ben Ainslie had a postbox in Limington painted gold in his honour.

Wow, Andy, he must have been thrilled when he found that out.

Was he thinking, um, is my £100,000 check inside the post box then?

Along with the keys to my new luxury lighthouse?

Are they inside?

Will I be getting them in the mail in a few days?

What's that?

This is it.

A gold painted post box.

Well, I'm so glad that I devoted decades of my life to this sport.

And I'm even more glad that you seem to appreciate that sacrifice so much.

But in fact, they've painted postboxes gold for every single gold medal winner in their

but it's caused a lot of controversy because there's some you know disputes over where they should be painted should it be in the birthplace of these athletes where they grew up or where they currently live which is why the Limington

I mean Limington basically almost broke down into civil war over this golden postbox because they'd already painted another one somewhere else for Ben Ainsley right and then a man in Lymington unilaterally painted one for the town that he now lives and was then threatened with I think he was arrested wasn't he for criminal damage for painting a postbox well this show there've been militant acts of painting postboxes gold this is about as revolutionary as Britain gets these days this is this should this is as close as we've been to chopping off King Charles's head

we've laid low for a while and now it's just painting postboxes gold.

The Hampshire Police have backed down and saying they will now be taking no further action against him after an outcry of public support for the renegade post-box painter.

So just to be clear, it's not that Ben Ainslie has had a post-box painted gold in his hometown in his honour.

It's that he's had someone not prosecuted for doing that for him in his honour instead.

Thank you, heroes of Team GB.

I guess

the argument's already beginning over the legacy of the Olympic Games.

We spent £9 billion on it.

It's roughly a lot of money.

Enough money that nothing major should have gone wrong, but a drop into the ocean, I guess, compared with the trillions that have been whazzed into the financial abyss trying to placate the fundamentally unstable Odin that runs the global markets.

So I guess on that scale, it's been a bargain, John, for the happiness and simple joy it has brought to Britain for the vicarious pleasure of watching someone win in a sport that almost no other countries take seriously.

Sure, we could have built a few more hospitals or a new gold-plated school, but it shouldn't be an either-or choice, John.

Yeah.

And, you know, even if the Olympics had resulted in the deaths of two and a half million people through through TVs exploding under the excitement of the BBC's commentary, that is a price worth paying for all the sport.

And finally, some sad news from the end of the Olympics, and Olympic mascot Wenlock is recovering in hospital after falling off Nelson's column whilst in a state of what police have described as industrial-level intoxication.

The giant metallic sperm, symbolic of the sperms that helped create so many of the Olympic athletes at the London Games, and of the sperms that also helped give life to the Games volunteers, was sighted atop the Trafalgar Square landmark at 5.30am on Monday morning, trying to shove Nelson, the former captain of Team GB's sailing squad,

back in the day when that was a real sport, off his famous perch whilst shouting, I'm Britain's hero now, you one-eyed

has been, when Locke reportedly lost his footing whilst fumbling in Nelson's pocket saying, where's your telescope, you dirty old sea dog?

Let's see if we can have a peek into the Queen's bedroom from here.

But fortunately, the mascot landed on top of one of the lions at the foot of the column, which were originally made from bronze, before being replaced with rubberised foam replicas in 1940 after Winston Churchill, Churchill, also in a state of inebriation, had to be winched down from the top of the column during the Blitz while swearing at the Luftwaffe.

The lines were specifically placed where Churchill was most likely to land given the aerodynamics of his tummy.

Wenlock, who has been romantically linked with Heptathlin gold medalist Jessica Ennis, after being seen near her as she celebrated her gold medal, and also with the IOC committee member Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden, actress singer Barbara Streisand, and with disgraced Belarusian gold medal winning, then losing shotbutter Nadzey Ostapchuk,

who was last seen departing Heather Airport cuddling a replica Wenlock and muttering, Well, at least the gold medal wasn't the only thing I was stripped of last night.

The giant sperm mascot was actually based on one of the 1924 100-metre gold medalist Harold Abrahams' sperms from the British Olympic Association's secret vaults, where they retained gamete samples from all medal-winning British athletes and have been conducting a secret IVF breeding programme ever since a historically poor performance at the Helsinki Games of 1952.

Here endeth the Olympic lesson.

Your emails now, and this one came in from Ian, who says, Dear Andy, John, and Chris, over the last two weeks, the Colympics brought a new understanding and appreciation of sports.

I now understand everything Andy has ever said about sport.

Does this mean the rest of the things I've always written off as bullshit might actually be true?

My perception of reality has been shattered.

All hell, Andy, the prophet of truth.

You've just had your equilibrium thrown way off.

The prophet of truth.

Oh, my my god well there is an explanation for this and that is that sport is basically pretend so i i find it easy to be truthful about sport because it is basically a lie so that's the only thing that's the only way i can be truthful about anything is pretend

it's basically the same way that the catholic church works

Well, that's all we've got time for because we've overrun again and we're about to be forcibly thrown out or shot in the studio in London here.

They're getting increasingly militant.

And

so we won't be back next week.

I'm on holiday at a campsite in France where they have a

compulsory speedos rule in the swimming pool.

Oh boy.

Oh boy.

I don't know what you know.

France is supposed to be a nation of culture

and they will not allow people to wear shorts in a swimming pool.

I mean, they're prepared.

I mean, I accept the cruelty to animals, but cruelty to humans.

Yeah, that's a whole different kettle of cats.

We will try and put something out next week.

And then the two weeks of the conventions, we will try if John's hectic convention and wife-finding schedule allow us to put

it.

I mean, what kind of wife are you looking for this time, John?

Are you going to get more of the same or something different?

I wasn't really looking for one last time, so I'll take whatever's there.

Yeah, it's best to go into these things with an open mind.

Yeah, of course.

Pick one up for me if you find one.

Sure.

I've had mine for ages.

I could do with an upgrade.

Okay.

Enjoy explaining that comments, andy

that's it for tonight buglers thanks for listening 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.