Bugle 198 – Warm up and melt down

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 198 of the Bugle audio newspaper for an unapologetically visual world the enemy of injustice, hypocrisy, and fact.

With me, Andy Zoltzman, the three-time European Winemaker of the Year.

That's wine with an H.

Man was

unannoying, five-year-old and 18-year-old and 35-year-old.

And joining me live now from the city known variously as the Big Apple, the Frotting Elk, the Little Apple, that's going back a little way now, and the Apple Pit, that's back to the 17th century, and also known as Quite New York.

In other words, New York, it's the man who eats news and belches satire.

It's John Oliver.

Hello Andy.

Hello buglers.

Andy in case any non-American buglers are wondering if this November's presidential election is going to be interesting or not, let me quickly bring you up to speed.

I spent a fair amount of this week working on a story for The Daily Show about Florida voting laws.

And for those buglers who are not aware of Florida as a state, let me bring you up to speed.

Florida is basically where America's grandparents and its democracy go to die.

The current governor of Florida is involved in a controversial attempt to purge the electoral voter rolls in a move that many people believe to be politically motivated due to the fact that it is.

And you might be thinking, hold on, a Florida governor purging voters just months before a presidential election?

I think I'm experiencing dejard douche.

Well, you are, because Florida, of course, dragged us through all of this in 2000 2000 when the presidency was decided by under 600 votes.

And it looks like they're up to their old tricks again.

So there is so much to look forward to already in November, Andy, because it once more looks like the White House is in the hands of a state which has alligator crossing signs in the road so that, you know, you can drive around f ⁇ ing alligators in the road.

I think if they're going to purge voters, they should have the decency to do it properly.

You know, Stalin style.

You know, I know that's.

Yes.

Yeah, at least be above board about it, Florida.

It's the subterfuge I can't stand.

As always, some sections of the bugle are going straight in the bin.

This week, a car accessories section,

including window holograms.

Do you like to drive safely and carefully without endangering your life and those of others by driving like an idiot in a potentially killing machine?

Well, don't worry, you can still look cool with our window holograms that make you look like you are not really paying attention.

Also, a traffic wasp, a new piece of technology that helps you find the jam.

When you're on your way to a tedious day at work or a family get-together that you would rather avoid, Traffic Wasp will direct you straight into the busiest possible traffic jams to enable you to turn up as late as possible, but with a half-decent excuse.

And also, an electronic scrolling message display so you can tell other drivers what you really think of them.

Just strap it to your roof, and it's equipped with basic phrases, including do not drive your car into my car, which is basically what most honks of the horn mean.

And you dick bag, watch where you're driving.

And also, slightly more generous, you took that corner really beautifully.

And also in the BNA special picnic accessory offer for the summer, we're offering you a free semaphork.

Eat your sandwich food on a scenic clifftop and communicate with passing shipping with the new semaphork

as used by Lord Nelson.

I heartily recommend, Dandy, that you plow your entire life savings into the Traffic Wasp business plan.

Top story this week, its name is Rio and its summit is deeply flawed.

Andy, next week.

Oh, you cut yourself off in mid-sold.

I thought I was going to go along there song, John.

Yeah, it could have gone long.

It could have gone long.

Leave the audience wanting slightly less.

That's always been our career motto.

That's right, John.

That's right.

Fractionally less.

Next week is the Rio Summit or Rio plus 20 as it's been branded to signify the fact that it was 20 years ago that 172 countries gathered in Rio for the first ever Earth summit and where all the global problems of pollution overpopulation and poverty were resolved and we all lived happily ever after.

That was the intention back in 1992 anyway.

What happened instead was that none of that happened at all.

But it doesn't mean that it's not worth trying because just because you fall off a bike and tumble over the edge of a cliff, breaking 32 bones before falling into the water and getting treated like a tasting menu by sharks, doesn't mean you shouldn't just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on the bike anyway.

Just because we failed 20 years ago and every year since, doesn't mean that this year won't be the year.

You've got to be in it to win it.

Yeah, as you say, Rio Plus 20, 20 years since the Rio Earth Summit of, hang on, 2012, takeaway 20, that's 12, in the year 12, when the world, as one, as you said, got together and said, so shall we save this crazy old planet of ours?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we should do that.

They agreed.

Sure thing.

We should

definitely do that.

That has gone straight into our interview.

Man, we are going to do some serious stuff about saving the world.

Damn straight.

We are going to do some stuff.

And that conversation has basically carried on in exactly the same way for 20 years until this day.

And then final round of negotiations leading up to the summit, which begins next Wednesday,

and there's still disagreements on issues like energy, water and food security in poorer countries and whether to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and boost ocean protection.

And with three days of negotiation left, only 20%

of things have been agreed.

Uh-huh.

I guess it's never good to rush these things, John.

I mean, let's take God as an example, the celebrity former deity.

He made the world in six days.

Now, he rushed it out for the sake of publicity.

And he got that publicity, but at the cost of a seriously botched planet.

In fact, the whole environmental problem we face today, or ignore today more realistically, comes down to the fact that God did in six days what any sensible person would have taken, I don't know, six billion f ⁇ ing years over.

He could have ironed out the rough edges.

This year's Rio Summit, as you uh mentioned, will supposedly focus on efforts to reduce poverty while protecting the environment.

The problem with that particular combination is that it's a bit like trying to save a child from drowning with with a breeze block tied to your balls.

You're unfortunately making an already difficult job much, much harder.

And as you say, pre-negotiations have been taking place in small pre-summits in an attempt to draft this agreement before the summit starts.

There have also been other key negotiations going on.

The US Secret Service have been negotiating to make it absolutely clear how many local prostitutes they are or are not allowed to sleep with.

They do not want another repeat of Columbia, where there was a bit of an administrative administrative grey area over whether or not part of their job down there was to sleep with prostitutes while leaving the president's schedule lying around.

I think they're wise to get that agreed up front.

And this draft agreement is titled The Future We Want and is apparently riddled with deletions, many instigated by the US and many by the G77 China bloc of developing nations.

The US has already drafted up its own counter-document called The Future You're Getting, but apparently that's not been accepted either.

either.

This Rio draft with currently around 20% agreement has been criticized in some quarters as being way too lenient on businesses, especially major banks and commodity corporations.

The main semantic sticking point is who the we in the future we want is referring to.

Because that basically informs the content of the rest of the document.

Greenpeace want we to refer to humanity in general and the US want we to refer specifically to the US government and select major multinationals.

America has said that they're willing to meet in the middle as long as the middle is in the centre of their own proposal.

Well, that just goes to show, John, you cannot spell future without F U.

The executive director of Greenpeace weighed in on this upcoming summit, saying the Rio Earth Summit will not bring about the future we want.

It will provide a stark and distressing reminder of the present we have.

Going on to say, a world in which public health, human rights and sustainable development are subordinate to private profit, shallow national interest and business as usual.

At which point most of the GA countries suddenly jumped up and said, That's it!

That is the perfect wording for the document.

Let's go with that.

We will solemnly work together to achieve a world in which public health, human rights, and sustainable development are subordinate to private profit, shallow national interest, and business as usual.

What a beautiful sentence.

That is poetry.

All of those who agree with that, raise your hands.

Okay, now just all the countries who can't, raise your hands.

Wow, it's unanimous that is the future we want print out a thousand copies and throw them at the press i am going to lunch

this draft agreement as i said would improve energy food and water security and i really like that as an idea john but you have to ask at what cost because like any other westerner i am quite prepared to let millions of poor people die unnecessarily due to water food and energy shortages to sustain my own lifestyle but the question is how many millions of people You know, we're talking 20 million a year.

I mean I reckon I can steal my soul to cope with that.

But if it goes much above 20 million, I'm afraid something is going to have to be done.

It must be a truly demoralizing area to work in because clearly the numbers here don't look good.

for next week's summit.

Since the last Rio summit 20 years ago, the Earth's population has gone up by 22%.

Seafood consumption has gone up by 32%.

Meat consumption has gone up by 26%, meaning that the planet's general fness has gone up at least 64%.

We consume so much now that apparently over one and a half planets are currently needed to meet consumption demands.

And again, there, when I say we consume so much, that we clearly refers mainly to America and Europe, who both see natural resources as very much an all-you-can-eat buffet.

If you're not slightly ashamed of yourself by the time you're leaving, you shouldn't have been there in the first place.

It would be easy to go into this summit cynical and depressed.

I believe it starts on Wednesday this summit, which is why it's so important for people to try to be upbeat.

In a widely circulated editorial, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who now runs Green Cross International, contrasted the optimism and hope of the Rio Earth Summit 20 years ago with the cynicism and despair surrounding this one.

So it was lucky that Jim Leap, the head of the World Wildlife Fund, had an inspiring speech to give us to lift our hearts as we go into next Wednesday.

He said, we are facing two likely scenarios.

An agreement so weak it is meaningless, or complete collapse.

Neither of these options would give the world what it needs.

Wow, that is negative, Andy.

I mean, I'm not saying that Jim Leap is wrong, but holy shit, that is pessimistic.

That is a man who could not give a good half-time team talk.

All right, team, gather around.

Now look, I know things look bad out there, but if we really dig deep, if we give everything we have out there, then we have two likely scenarios.

We either get completely humiliated or we get comprehensively destroyed.

Now get out there and take the crushing defeat that now seems inevitable.

Let's do this.

To quote Giovanni Trappatoni, the island manager from last night's game with Spain.

So there's this question about phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

I think this is the wrong way of going about it, John.

I think we should be encouraging people to use more fossil fuels by a significant amount because history has shown time and again, like the smug little know all I told you so condescending shit that it is, that the human soul responds to nothing other than deadlines.

And we need to use our fossil fuels as quickly as possible to give ourselves no option other than not to use fossil fuels.

Because realistically, the way the human brain works, we're not going to do anything about this until we all open our curtains every morning to see polar bears wrestling penguins on our front gardens.

So the green movement for the long-term good of the planet and the environment should be encouraging people to be as environmentally irresponsible as possible.

It's a lost leader.

The odds are obviously stacked against anything significant being achieved during this summit.

It's coming in the middle of a pretty tricky political period with a US presidential election later this year, an impending change of leadership in China, and with many nations experiencing very serious financial issues.

Not only that, but it seems like not only do most key world leaders not care about any of the issues involved enough, it seems they can't even be bothered to turn up either.

President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron, Angela Merkel and scores of other leaders have chosen not to be there next week and instead are sending inflatable versions of themselves saying, seriously, I give you my word that they will pay exactly as much attention as I was going to anyway.

Please keep me away from candles.

The summit is also going to focus on the thorny issue of population.

The world's 105 leading science academies, including the British Royal Society, have warned international leaders that failure to act now on population growth and overconsumption will have, quotes, potentially catastrophic implications for human well-being.

And God himself, as often these days, has been eerily quiet on the issue.

And we could really do with him coming out and issuing one of his rare proclamations to the world.

Look, I'm not really that fussed about that kind of shit anymore.

It was just more of a logistics and procedural thing for before Johnnies and stuff were invented.

I just didn't want people injuring each other's flobble cranks trying to make a prophylactic out of a pineapple or something.

Plus, life expectancy was pretty ropey back then, so we kind of needed all the people we could get.

That clearly isn't the finging case anymore.

So I'd really appreciate it if you stopped quoting some shit I said two or three thousand years ago as a justification for something that is obviously somewhere between idiotic and clinically insane now.

Capische!

Right, I'm gonna FRO again for the next 2,000 years.

I'm building a new planet, and this time I'm taking some fing time over it.

I'm drawing plans and everything, and no wasps, and no boobs or willies or anything like that.

They're clearly too much of a distraction.

Cheerio, up the quins, build on it, boys.

Don't want to be a flash of the fan.

Now, chisel that into Stone Moses and read it back to me

spain update now and well a few updates for you regarding spain spanish food update fantastic spanish football update sensational spanish economy update totally f ⁇ ed i mean turbo f dandy muchos muchos f ⁇ ed

Spain this week was forced to ask for a bailout as its economy threatened to pull a wide-brimmed hat over its eyes and take a permanent siesta.

The bailout will be an estimated 100 billion euros, but Spain contends that it is neither a bailout nor a rescue.

So what is it then Andy?

A gift?

A banking error in their favour?

What would they call someone giving them 100 billion euros?

The Spanish Prime Minister at Mariano Rajoy was insistent that the bailout, which wasn't a bailout, because he said he didn't want it to be a bailout, so it definitely wasn't a bailout, it just looked like a bailout and happened to be the same amount of money that a bailout would be and it was actually going to be used to bail out some Spanish banks but critically it was not a bailout he insisted that it was his idea all along he said no one pressured me into this I pushed for it myself because I wanted a line of credit it's not a bailout it's a victory the finance minister at Spain said in a press conference it's a loan with very favourable terms much more favourable than the markets in no way is this a bailout.

And the next day, when the Spanish people started calling bullshit on this whole explanation, the Prime Minister called a press conference and doubled down, still refusing to call it a bailout and instead referring to it as, and I quote, what happened on Saturday?

How long does he think he's going to be able to keep this up, Andy?

I would just like to thank the Eurozone for what happened on Saturday.

I hope this fixes our banks and we won't need another what happened on Saturday in the future.

also the terms of our what happened on saturday leave us room for maneuver and we intend to pay and this is important we intend to pay back every penny of our what happened on saturday

100 billion euros to rescue spanish banks that's quite a lot of money but i guess you know once you've started shoveling money into a black hole you really have to keep doing it until it fills up you know i'm not i'm not an astronaut but i reckon that's got to be uh

That's got to be the way forward.

There's been a lot of questions over where exactly all this money is going, to which which the Spanish government has responded, shh,

shh,

there you go.

It's fine.

The truth is that every single government that has received a bailout from Europe, Ireland, Greece, and Portugal, have fallen from power soon after.

So the Prime Minister of Spain knows that it's not one of those game shows where you have to avoid saying a particular word to win a prize.

He knows that the moment he says the word bailout, a buzzer's going to sound, a trapdoor is gonna open underneath his feet, and he's gonna be out of office before he can say, well, I've had a lovely day.

The thing that spoke volumes about the size of his cojones was after this press conference where he looked the press court in the eye and said the 100 billion bailout was not a bailout, it was what happened on Saturday, rather than retreat to his office to go and strategise with his economic team about how best to use the money to get Spain out of this recession, instead of doing that, he took a plane to Poland and he fed off to go watch the football.

That's pretty incredible, Andy.

Well, it's just the latest efforts to shovel out some of the financial shit from the Orgean stables of the European banking sector.

Basically trying to shovel it out with a kid's plastic bucket and spade.

And the problem is the feeling persists, John, that even if Hercules could clean all the horse shit from these particular Orgian stables, all he would find underneath is some stables made of horseshit and a load of horses cryptic crosswords tucked under their forelegs looking a bit pained in the stomach and saying, oh, that's gone right through me.

Excuse me.

I may be sometime.

Basically, Europe as a continent, which seems an inappropriate title for it in these circumstances.

As a continent, Europe has behaved financially like a man who got one testicle stuck in a George Foreman grill

and rectified the situation by buying another George Foreman grill with money it didn't have and slamming it shut on his other testicle.

So at least he looked vaguely symmetrical before saying, help, help, I really need your help.

Lend me some money so I can buy a George Foreman grill to put my penis in.

Andy, I don't think I've ever understood the complications of what's happening in Europe economy better than after that sentence.

You may have just stumbled on the most incredible economic analysis that's been written over the last five years.

Oh dear.

Spain is in real trouble.

They're in their second deep recession and have an unemployment rate of 24% for the adult population and more than 50% for the under-25.

So it may well be that this bailout is not nearly enough anyway, especially as Greece is holding more elections this weekend.

And if they elect an anti-austerity government, Europe could yet unleash its panic tornado again.

Some members of the Eurozone think that the only way to shore it up is to draw the countries closer together so it operates more like one big country with a single set of rules and regulations than just a collection of countries, basically buying one enormous George Foreman grill that we can slam down on all our testicles.

And a journalist wrote this week that that would mean the collective debt being shared by everybody.

So the weak are shielded and backed up by the strong.

A bit like adding your teenage offspring to your car insurance rather than making them apply for their own.

The problem with adding these troubled countries to your car insurance, Andy, is that you know that Greece are going to be asleep in the back of their car.

Italy is going to be banging its girlfriend in the back of its car.

And Spain is going to have its car roof caved in by a donkey that's just been thrown from a clock tower.

It's a high-risk strategy.

The truth is, it may well get to the point where Europe is forced to realize that it is more economically viable as a continent when we're all at war with each other than when we're all cooperating.

This, I thought,

really kind of epitomized basically what is going on and the way things work.

It was from a report on this story by Reuters.

who said Spain will have to play the right cards at the right time.

And that really leaves you in no doubt as to what is going on here.

This is not economics, John.

This is high-stakes poker.

And the cards are loaded.

They might as well have said Spade will have to guess the right number or at least get red or black right, spin the wheel and hope to fing God it doesn't end up being beaten to a pulp at the back of the casino by the casino owners hired goons.

Elvis has left the building.

Now Elvis is back in the building again.

He's back.

News emerged this week that Elvis Presley is to be digitally recreated for a series of live shows and TV appearances.

A virtual hologram style likeness of the king will be produced by the same company who made that amazing Tupac hologram that played at Coachella this year and instantly sobered up an entire crowd who'd not been warned that this was going to happen.

So essentially suddenly thought that the ghost of Tupac had emerged and was shouting at them.

What's up, Coachella?

I don't know.

What is up, ghost of Tupac?

The Elvis concerts announcement has caused understandably quite a stir.

Elvis Presley Enterprises said this is a new and exciting way to bring the magic and music of Elvis to life.

They went on to say, it's also a new and exciting way to milk the withered teeth of this cash cow's legacy.

Well, it's very interesting.

I mean, I've died at geeks, John, but not 35 years before I've even gone on stage.

But I think, I mean, this could be something Britain as a nation can learn from.

We've seen with the Jubilee celebrations

quite how popular the Queen is.

And just using holograms, we could make the Queen immortal, John.

And in fact,

I think she should be at least on backing vocals, preferably rhythm or lead guitar, at all rock concerts in Britain for all eternity.

I think we owe her that much after her six decades of not flouncing out in a huff like her uncle Eddie did.

I'd also like to see George Washington and Abraham Lincoln come back to life to work as pundits on CNN or Fox during this election campaign, just to see how long it is before one of them says, What the f is going on with this shit?

That's not what we meant at all.

At all.

I think the main question I have regarding the Elvis hologram, Andy, is though, which Elvis are they going to recreate?

Because personally, I want to see fat Elvis.

I would love to see bloated white jumpsuit Elvis sweating and wheezing his way across the stage.

But it also begs the question, where is this going to end?

Clearly, it's just a matter of time before they bring Michael Jackson back.

That's just a fact.

I guess they could also have Beethoven performing one of his piano sonatas and then maybe do some speeches.

Jesus performing his Sermon from the Mount.

Lincoln delivering his Gettysburg address.

You could go to a concert, Andy, and heckle Lincoln.

Now, I'm sorry, Andy, but I'm not, not going to take that opportunity if it arises.

Four score and seven years ago.

You shit, Abraham.

We've heard it.

Do some new stuff.

Because

then they'd have to program the hologram, Lincoln, with put-downs.

Who said that?

Don't come down to where you work and knock the scythe out of your hand.

We don't use scythes now, Lincoln.

We don't use it.

And we don't wear beards like that either.

You look like a registered sex offender.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Now, look, I emancipated the slaves.

Well, can you please emancipate a laugh from my mouth, Lincoln?

Because you are not funny.

Or maybe they could combine the two, Andy, speeches and music, and have the deliverers of landmark speeches singing karaoke songs.

I would love to see the hologram of Winston Churchill singing Skater Boy by Avril Levine.

Maybe have Jesus singing Simply the Best by Tina Turner.

Have George Washington singing De Dip.

You put your hand up on my hip.

When I dip, you dip, we dip.

What's that?

And what the hell is that, John?

What on earth is that?

And then have Pol Pot and Florence Nightingale do a duet of my endless love.

I'd also like to see Henry VIII brought back to life for the Queen's next Jubilee.

Preferably, that's going to be next month.

We just need to keep them coming.

That is all we've got left in this country.

I'd like Henry VIII to tap the Queen on the shoulder and say, Call yourself a monarch.

How many members of your family have you had killed?

Oh, just the one.

Okay.

But maybe, Andy, maybe we should do some live bugles, but only do them with hologram versions of ourselves.

We'd have to do it a bit more cheaply, obviously.

So we could just use some of the holograms that have already been created.

So, you know, we could just put my head on Tupac's body and your head on Tina Turner's body.

Oh, yeah.

Olympic opening ceremony feature now and details have been announced, John, over the most significant moment in British cultural history probably since the ancient Romans moved here and stopped us painting ourselves blue.

It's going to be amazing, John.

It is going to be...

There is almost nothing to do with Britain that is not going to be involved in this opening ceremony.

The details come out.

It's going to involve 12 horses, 10 chickens, 70 sheep, a village cricket team, two mosh pits, and a massive harmonically tuned bell.

Wow.

And John, the interesting thing is, all of those things were found in Osama bin Laden's compound in a bottomless.

Now,

one of the worries...

when we won the Olympic pier was the opening ceremony, especially because at the last Olympics in Beijing, China delivered an opening ceremony with all the spectacle that only a country unshackled by human rights could present.

When you saw thousands of Chinese people lifting columns in perfect synchronicity, performing flawlessly like their lives depended on it, you really thought this is what you can achieve if you hit people with sticks.

So it seems that Britain has opted to go a different way.

Because as you say, there was an early announcement of the details of the opening scene of the opening ceremony.

And the director Danny Boyle did indeed reveal it will feature 70 sheep.

Real sheep, honey.

Did you hear that, China?

Real sheep.

Sure, you had thousands of drummers making a noise that rivaled thunder itself, but we are going to have a startled sheep shitting in a field.

Because those sheep are going to shit, Andy.

And it won't be their fault when they do.

And to be fair to us, I don't think any Olympics opening ceremony in history has featured a shitting sheep.

So we are already breaking down barriers.

I play a village cricket as well, and it's rubbish.

The cast and crew, which will number 10,000 once volunteers are taken into account, have apparently one more weekend of rehearsals in Dagenham before moving into the stadium.

There have already been 157 rehearsals so far and I do hope who hope that one of those rehearsals involved what to do when a sheep freaks out and starts charging towards the Albanian swim team.

Danny Boyle, who is overseeing the whole opening ceremony, said said that there would be British humour and that the country's history would be represented, but not in a box-ticking way, and that the show would reflect and are, quote, parts of our heritage, but looking forward as well.

And I would love to be the first country, Andy, to acknowledge the atrocities they've committed during their opening ceremony.

I would love it if we recreated the Amritsa massacre as British troops open fire on 15,000 unarmed Indian people as Tom Jones belts out what's new pussycats.

that would bring the house down that's right it's the good and the bad John let's you know let's let's see both sides of that coin

and now to continue our exclusive coverage as the official broadcaster of the Olympic Games can we say that Chris can we say that if we don't say it it's all right okay right so as the official broadcaster of the Olympics the uh here are some more great Olympic moments from 1988 in Seoul, Ben Johnson's failed WAS test.

No, Mr.

Johnson, you cannot pour a carton of orange juice into it.

Well, I don't make the rules.

Well, that not since Yarmila Kratoshvilova tested positive for being an orange four years ago.

Well, I don't care if little Mr.

Gribbler is feeling shy, it's got to come out of him.

1960, Rome.

The moment that legendary barefoot Ethiopian distance runner, a baby Bequila, realised he'd forgotten his shoes.

Oh shit, I've forgotten my shoes.

Oh.

And 1936.

Berlin.

Andy, you should have a Vegas Impressions show.

1936, Berlin.

Hitler having dinner in the Reichstag with his cabinet the night Jesse Owens won the 100 meters.

So, Adolf, maybe we should go back to the drawing board.

Oh!

So, you channeled your inner a lower low there.

Andy is the man of a thousand identical voices.

I only need one to get them a roll in the Smurfs, John.

Can't argue with the petition.

Your emails now, and this one comes in from Nathan in Carbondale, Illinois.

That sounds like a made-up place, John.

Dear John, Andy and Chris, I have recently had two instances where my love for the bugle has made meeting women difficult.

The first occurred

while I was walking my dog and listening to the bugle.

As I bent to withdraw the deposit my dog had just left on a lawn, the bits in Bugle 193 about Osama bin Laden's last thoughts came on and had me crying with laughter.

After retrieving the parcel without any disgusting mishaps, I look across the street to see Joanna the Mad's sexy neighbour watching me with a disgusted look on her face.

I then realised all she had seen was a nearly 30-year-old man laughing uncontrollably as he ticked dog shit up off the ground.

Needless to say, it's been a little awkward since.

Well, I don't know, I'd have thought women would go for that kind of thing.

You know, that shows, you know, because they're maternal instinct, they're going to look for a, you know, potential mating partner who's not afraid to get their hands dirty with

bodily excretions.

You've showed you're a modern man.

The second happened last night.

A buddy of mine introduced me to his friend and we began chatting.

The typical questions like, what do you do, what do you study, etc.?

The music in the bar was splaring, and right as she told me that she was a theatre major, LMFAO's I'm Sexy and I Know It began pumping through the speakers like audible nitrous oxide.

For the rest of the song, I was giggling like Anderson Cooper during the ridiculous.

I'm afraid that reference has passed me by.

Can you fill us in, John?

That's stakeside.

He's a giggler.

He's a giggler, he does it at the end of his broadcast.

And she had the look on her face like, this asshole thinks my degree is not only worthless, but hilarious.

In neither situation did describing what the bugle was help my case.

Thanks a lot, guys.

Well, I think the bugle has proved over the years that it can shatter any

new or old romantic relationship.

And we put the shat into shatter as well.

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

And don't forget, you can access our episodes on our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle.

Yep.

That's got to be the greatest

on the internet, isn't it?

Yeah, it is, yeah.

Yeah.

sport now and as we record england are preparing for their second group match in euro 2012.

uh we drew the first game one or with france uh on monday and you can get uh highlights of the commentary that i did for that game with alan cochran on thebuglepodcast.com uh and as we speak now john roy hodgins england manager is giving his final speech to the team he's of course been praised for bringing a new tactical sophistication to england now tactical sophistication for anyone unfamiliar with football jargon in layman's terms means being unremittingly and grindingly negative.

But we're facing Sweden

this evening.

We haven't beaten the Swedes in a significant encounter since knocking them out in the semi-finals of the 1066 European Battle Championships when we beat them at the Battle of Stamford Bridge before going on of course to lose to the Normans in the final at Hastings in front of a capacity crowd when key player and captain King Harold got a bit overexcited and tried to head a dangerous looking arrow away, misjudged it in the wind and copped a career-ending eye injury.

Hodgson, probably as we speak, giving his final motivational barbs to the players.

Now, we know he loves philosophy and literature, John, but he's sensibly dropping into the level of his players.

And he's been reading them the very hungry caterpillar, which I think is all that England footballers can probably take on board.

In the draw with France, was that big news in the States, John?

I'd imagine there's huge screens all over New York showing.

Yeah, well, they were just pumping it straight through Times Square in front of

non-American tourists.

That would be the one place it would actually make sense.

England had a heroic one-all draw with France.

One shot on target to France's 15.

And they've been criticised by some for their negative approach.

And it might be true, John, that when it comes to football, I guess we are to football what Freddy Krueger is to ballet.

But at least that's our Freddy Krueger, John.

And I don't like ballet.

So can England win this tournament?

Well, to answer that, you have to ask the question, can a courgette beat a carrot in a most orange vegetable competition?

probably not but you just never know you know the carrot might be one of those purple ones you see sometimes or have gone all mouldy and the aubergine could have been cooked in some pumpkin ketchup we we don't know yet

so there's not much left for this week's boogle other than to uh inform you of some imminent uh gigs coming up i'm at the uh in taunton on friday the 22nd of june and Litham St Anne's on Wednesday the 27th.

Ah, could you believe that?

That's That's very nice.

I keep forgetting to

plug my gigs on this.

And it, well,

you know, it's the only form of advertising we allow on this show.

That's true.

I'm doing Central Park on Wednesday and it's free.

Oh!

Well, that's probably a better deal than paying 10 quid to see me in

the

much better deal.

Is it just you?

Is it just you standing in Central Park?

Yeah, that's true.

That's what I was about to say.

So

I mean, I'm going to be in Central Park on Wednesday and it's free.

That's all buglers.

Until next time,

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.