Bugle 190 – Santorum splashes out

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The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 190 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World, the podcast which, if it had been around 230 years ago, would probably have stopped America from splitting off from Britain, its rightful owners, and if it had been around 2,000 years ago, would have stopped the Roman Empire taking its eyes off the ball and becoming obsessed with feeding people to lions.

But we weren't, and instead of doing those things, we're busy trying to stop Newt Gingrich becoming president of America.

I'm Andy Zaltzman, I'm in the Olympian city of London.

Chosen by God to stage the greatest ever sporting event in the history of the world, by God in association with the International Olympic Committee.

But I think God would probably have chosen London anyway.

It's convenient for him with him having a couple of cathedrals here, saves on accommodation costs.

Although even he couldn't get tickets for the 100 metre final and despite his omniscience, he doesn't understand the medieval levels of secrecy around the ticketing process.

And in New York City, USA, it's the man who only has to look at a pecan nut these days to turn it into a pie.

It's John Oliver!

Hello, Andy!

Hello, buglers.

I hope you all had a good Easter, Passover, or just weekend last week, depending on your beliefs, or at least depending on the beliefs that you're willing to pretend you have when family or chocolate is involved.

Andy, you're back in a studio this week after last week recording from inside Chris's house.

And what was it like journeying inside the DMZ of Chris's dwelling, Andy?

You must have felt like one of those journalists that managed to get inside North Korea.

Is it just filled with gigantic statues honouring Chris and people averting their eyes or bursting into tears whenever he walks into the room?

It's pretty much like that.

To me, it was like journeying not so much into Chris's house but into Hieronymus Bosch's soul.

I imagine that Chris spends most of his time parading around his house holding a nuclear weapon up in the air to send a message to the neighborhood.

Well you gotta do that in Hackney otherwise no one respects you.

It's like those Western journalists that are currently in Pyongyang to watch the missile launch.

You can't get taken in by the propaganda.

Sure, Chris probably offered you a cup of tea and tidied up his house so it looked nice.

That's because it's what he wanted you to see Andy.

If you scratch beneath the surface, there are probably millions of suffering people living in that house under his brutal regime.

All I know is that he had George Galloway coming around for tea, and that had to raise suspicion.

Nice guy.

Incidentally, some late-breaking news.

Apparently, the North Korean missile launch has failed.

Which is an embarrassment to the North Korean leadership because they don't really, when you build yourself upon exceptionalism to that extent, you don't really give yourself any buffer room for a rocket failing without looking unbelievably stupid.

Could they?

Because it crashed into the sea.

So, I mean,

had they had a more experienced leader in charge, he would have just passed it off as saying, well, this is an anti-submarine missile that we're testing out, so it's all gone perfectly well.

But I think

the little fella's shown his inexperience there, John.

Well, it does show his inexperience, because also the state television apparently just announced, yeah, it failed.

With Kim Young-il, that would never have happened, Dandy.

Whether it failed or not, you'd have had a journalist on TV saying, triumphant, triumphant success.

The rocket left the Earth with the glorious leader Kim Yong-il riding it like a pony, and then it returned for a perfect landing after orbiting Jupiter.

And very little splash on entry, so that's going to get high marks from the judges as well.

What I learned this week, John, I had a few days holiday down in Kent with my family, and we went to the zoo.

And what I learnt this week is that when one of your children asks you at a zoo the question, what do they feed the lions here the correct answer is not necessarily naughty children

depending on you know how fractious an afternoon you want to have

top story this week presidential race update Andy Rig Santorum is pro-life in all circumstances, but in a surprise move, he performed a mercy killing on his own presidential campaign this week as he presumably just couldn't bear to see it suffer anymore he announced his run for office uh last year saying that god had told him to do it well it appears that god has now told him to step aside saying yeah i'm sorry about that whole you should run for office thing rick we just thought it would be hilarious up here that that time that we had herman kane and you leading in the polls was just so funny to see the look on your faces anyway sorry for f ⁇ ing with you but if it's any consolation you were absolutely hysterical.

Look, anyway, look, I'd better go.

We just need to mess with Gingrich a little bit more before that's all over.

I'm sure I'll speak to you later.

Toodles!

Indeed, the Agatha Christie-style page-turning who's gonna do it Republican nomination race thriller entitled, And Then There Was One, brackets, well, technically there are still three, but realistically, there is only one, now has an answer.

Mitt Romney is gonna do it.

It's not the most thrilling thriller.

The plot has been fairly predictable.

Some of the main characters have been massively overwritten.

And there has been some frankly ludicrously unrealistic dialogue.

No one actually talks like that or talks about those things, surely.

Not surely.

And Donald Trump was written out far too early to make it really entertaining, John.

But Gingrich and Ron Paul are still hanging in there, like the last two residents in a condemned nursing home.

So this is indeed now like a whodunit crime novel in which the guilty suspect is clear 150 pages from the end, but in which another character keeps claiming outlandishly that he did it, despite having a cast iron alibi proving beyond doubt that he didn't, and another clearly innocent suspect gets mentioned once every 80 pages or so, each time drawing the reaction from the reader: who was he again?

I've forgotten he was in this book.

Santorum had so many wonderful moments, Andy.

Let's try and focus on the dishes that he brought to the crazy table.

Who could forget when he argued against these signs of climate change by saying there is no global warming and then saying the dangers of carbon dioxide?

Tell that to a plant.

Point made, Andy.

Point made.

Not a good point made, but a point made nevertheless.

Maybe he meant that you should just talk to a plant about the dangers of carbon dioxide, just like you should talk to teenagers about the dangers of drugs.

That would actually make a lot more sense than what I think he was trying to say.

Another of his greatest campaign hits, and you may want to wave your lighters in the air during this one, was this, I quote, You are black by the colour of your skin.

You are not homosexual necessarily by the colour of your skin.

Undeniably true, Andy.

Undeniably true.

I'm not sure that that needed to be said or necessarily should have been said, but that is a fact from Big Ricky Sands.

No one's going to argue with that, John.

Not necessarily, anyway.

Not necessarily.

Right.

So it seems that America has looked a gift horse in the mouth.

with Rick Santorum and turned him away, probably because they weren't sure if he was actually a gift horse or one of the four horses of the apocalypse.

Mitt Romney, as you say, looks like he's all but tied up for the Republican nomination and that Republicans are going to have to do what women sometimes tell themselves they have to do and just settle.

Just settle.

Sure, he may not be perfect.

He may not be who you dreamed of ending up with.

He's not Mr.

Wright.

But look, it's time to just suck it up and settle down.

You could do a lot worse, right?

Maybe.

Sure.

Besides, as long as your skin doesn't crawl when you see him, you're doing the right thing.

Hold on, what's that crawling feeling?

Oh, boy.

And as you say, the only candidates left now are Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich.

And Newt Gingrich is still in the race, either because he feels he can get as far as a brokered convention or as is much more likely because he needs money because his campaign is in a f of a lot of debt.

The Gingrich campaign recently bounced a $500 check for the filing fee for the June the 26th Utah primary.

That's a bad sign, Andy.

That's very bad.

And apparently his campaign is around $4.5 million in in debt.

Having said that, could Gingrich not argue that what is more American than being in a massive amount of debt?

Does that not make him more quintessentially American than any of the other candidates?

Especially Romney, Andy.

What better reflects a country that is $15 trillion in the hole?

Mitt Romney or a man who's bouncing checks all over the place?

That should be Gingrich's campaign slogan in Utah.

Newt Gingrich 2012.

Please don't cash this until next week.

From Gingrich's perspective, he now has an ice horse's chance in the bowels of hell Grand National of winning.

But you can see it from his point of view, John.

Staying in the race, well, A, it's a good way to meet potential new wives in case he decides he's due another free upgrade.

That's a good point.

And B, when you're his age, it's good to have a hobby, John.

Something that gets you out of the house.

And speculatively running for president and wasting money you don't have on something you can't possibly achieve is just as good as line dancing or crown green bowls or stamp collecting or trying to get your parrot to breed with your goldfish so you can scare the living shit out of your grandchildren at Christmas or that other staple of old age time passing shouting at traffic and in fact campaigning for the Republican nomination is essentially indiscernible from shouting at traffic other than the fact that it is more expensive and generally slightly less coherent

for Romney's part after a long hard primary campaign in which he was forced to pander to the right-wing base of his party he must now find a way to desperately crawl back to the middle ground and hope that no one remembers the things that he's been saying over the last six months.

The early battleground between Romney and the president seems to be waiting over the female vote.

There's been a tornado in a teacup over the last couple of days here after comments made by Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen about Mitt Romney's wife.

She claimed that Anne Romney had never worked a day in her life.

Now, Anne Romney did raise five children and indirectly claiming that motherhood is not work, even if you are married to a multi-millionaire is not an incredibly clever thing to say Andy it's somewhere between not clever and electoral cyanide

the White House immediately tried to distance itself from the comments and Hilary Rosen herself quickly backtracked like Michael Jackson on a moving walkway saying as a mom I know that raising children is the hardest job there is as a pundit I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen I apologise to Anne Romney and anyone else who was offended at this point Conservatives occupied the moral high ground, which is their happiest spot, Andy,

for an ostentatious picnic.

Unfortunately, even they found it hard to stay up there for long after the RNC themselves had to quickly distance itself from the Catholic League, a Conservative group, who attacked Hilary Rosen's comments by saying that lesbian Hilary Rosen had to adopt her kids while Anne Romney raised five of her own.

Well, congratulations to both sides.

You both managed to make yourselves look like assholes.

Also, having the moral high ground in American politics, I guess, is like climbing the tallest mountain in Holland.

You're still essentially pretty much below sea level.

But Romney does now have a clear run-in to tackle the reigning US presidential election champion, Barack Obama, or as many Republicans still think of him, Mohamed Kiptanui.

But the major concern for Romney, the Massachusetts Machiavelli himself, and for his supporters, must be that their man, having power-spewed so much vitriol and overcoming Santorum, might actually have vitrioled himself out by the time he even tries to chunder more vitriol all over President Obama, who of course has his own lavish vitriol spewing machine at the ready for the battles ahead.

So the results of the election, John, could depend on how successful Romney is in his latest vitriol raising drive.

Because with an opinion poll deficit to overcome, the rules of modern democracy state that in order to fully dissolve Obama in his vitriolic acid, he will have to blast his vitriol at 330% of the pressure, 275% of the viscosity, twice the biliousness, and 400% of the splatter range that he's been blasting it at his own party.

So it's a tough, tough task for Romney, John.

Tough task.

It does raise the somewhat disturbing question for all democracies though.

Has top-level democracy now become the preserve only of those who have access to massive reserves of vitriol?

What chance now for candidates who just want to debate the issues, but are power hosed into oblivion by candidates with seemingly inexhaustible supplies of their own personal and big corporate vitriol resources?

Isn't democracy fun?

We fought world wars for it.

People have laid down their lives and freedoms for it.

It has been held up as a beacon of hope for the oppressed and the disenfranchised, all with the distant expectation that one day a multi-millionaire vulture capitalist would have the rights, the freedom and the inclination to spend millions and millions of dollars on advertisements savagely lampooning someone who essentially thinks exactly the same as him.

George Washington must be spinning in his grave, John, and spinning so fast that he will probably soon power drill his way out of it and find himself zooming around over America in a low orbit, shouting, No, you finging numbskulls, it wasn't supposed to be like this.

Grrr!

Grrrrr!

Grrr!

RARA!

Georgie Cross Lion!

RAAAAAAAAH!

Georgie want zebra!

Sorry, I'm getting off point.

The point is,

Is this what you did at the zoo in the weekend?

Sorry, yeah, I haven't been to the zoo.

Yeah.

Oh, Andy, you've been personifying animals for too long this week.

Well, it's good that I've moved on from making my

chicken noises, whatever my wife suggests you might want another baby.

Titanic news now, and it is the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster.

Can you believe that Andy?

It feels like only yesterday that the Titanic was not at the bottom of the ocean.

It seems like only yesterday that its very name was not synonymous with complete catastrophe.

There are so many events going on to commemorate everyone's favourite ocean calamity.

There are cruises going out to the exact spots where the Titanic sank.

Some people are choosing to commemorate the anniversary by putting an extra piece of ice in their drink today.

There have even been new reports on how many dogs were on the Titanic, Andy, and how many survived.

The answer is 12 dogs, 3 survived.

There is a fact that you would do very well to instantly forget.

I think they did slightly better than third-class passengers in that case.

It doesn't

show the social strata of the time.

I was going to say, you have to understand the complicated British class system at that time, which went upper class, middle middle class, dogs, cooks, third class.

Sorry, luggage, third class.

As he said, it is 100 years on tomorrow, Saturday, as we record,

late Saturday night, since the Titanic, that most quintessentially British of ships, current joint world record holder for the world's wettest tourist attraction, attempted to politely move an iceberg out of the way before its female passengers bumped into it.

As you said, the 100th anniversary has been marked with with various commemorations of the famous Nature One Mankind Mill showdown of 1912, which followed swiftly on the heels of Nature's points victory over Captain Scott just a couple of weeks before.

What a great year 1912 was for nature really exerting its primacy over human freedom.

Icy Nature.

Yeah, Icy Nature really landed some punches that year.

There were 1,300 passengers on the Titanic, John, and 900 crew.

And the little incident happened late at night.

So statistically, it is almost certain that one of the passengers would have been getting a drink at one of the bars on the ship.

And one of the bar staff must have said, Would you like ice with that?

The passenger would have said, Yes, please.

Crash.

Not that much.

That must have happened.

That must have happened.

If it didn't, it should have done, Andy.

And that's the much broader point here.

The movie Titanic, featuring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio and the ghost of Celine Dion, has been re-released in 3D so that you can now enjoy the reenacted deaths of an actual 1,500 people in a whole extra dimension.

But China have exercised their twitchy censorship finger again, as they've apparently censored Kate Winslet's breasts.

from the film, thus removing what many people would consider to be the movie's only redeeming quality.

All I'm saying, Andy, is that Titanic is a long, boring movie to not have Cape Winslet's breast in it.

James Cameron knew that.

That's why they were in there in the first place.

I don't know why China finds that so difficult to understand.

There was a statement from

an official of China's state administration of radio, film and television, the organisation behind the censorship, apparently saying, considering the vivid 3D effects, we fear that viewers may reach out their hands for a touch and thus interrupt other people's viewing.

To avoid potential conflicts between viewers and out of consideration of building a harmonious ethical social environment, we've decided to cut off the nudity scenes.

Now you might think that can't be a real statement can it?

And you'd actually be right, but you'd also have put more thought into it than any of the news agencies that reported that statement as a fact yesterday.

It was literally too good to be true.

But I guess it was so good that people like MSNBC here thought it was too good to be false as well and just ran with it anyway.

Apparently it was basically a joke on someone's website that got out of hand and everyone thought, oh,

let's just assume that the Chinese actually said that.

Because, you know, they're stupid.

Oh, it's a shame that didn't actually happen, John, because that would have been the most roundabout way of saying to a girl, you've got a cracking pear.

The Chinese state pretending to chat up Kate Winslet.

It'd be the ultimate compliment for Kate Winslet.

That's right.

The largest emerging economy on the planet is saying, listen, love, we just can't have them.

It's no good.

I mean, it's too good.

That's the point.

Oh,

Pippa.

Some people are holding special viewing parties of the movie.

One screening took place in a swimming pool where people watched in period clothing sitting in rowing boats on the water amongst dry ice.

And Andy, I wonder if when people were floating in the frozen ocean a hundred years ago waiting for rescue or death, I wonder if they were thinking, oh in a hundred years time, do you think anyone will remember us?

How do you think they will do that?

With a solemn ceremony?

Or with a re-release of a highly profitable blockbuster film?

but with added controversy about the WAPs being taken out?

Or do you think people will watch that movie in rowing boats in a swimming pool so they can better enjoy the experience of watching actors pretend to be in the living hell that we're currently experiencing?

Or do you think it will be with commemorative mugs?

I think it will be with commemorative mugs.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to die now.

To be fair, the people who are

using the swimming pool for their reenactments will be drowning

three dogs out of the four who are attending.

Well, listen, if you want to feel closer to the movie, then that's the kind of thing you have to do.

That's right.

Well, what was the Titanic's legacy?

Now that we're 100 years on, we can view it with a bit of objectivity.

Well, I guess one lesson learned was that ships should probably take a bit more care not to slam snout first into icebergs.

No longer consider a rite of passage for a new ship to prove how tough and masculine it is by ramming an iceberg.

So I guess that's a a step forward.

I guess we've also learnt not to ignore warnings that there might be icebergs in the way.

The Titanic apparently ignored six ice warnings.

And again, that is a very British level of stubbornness.

Cannot possibly inconvenience the ship.

I'm sure everything will be fine.

Also, there were only enough lifeboats for one-third of the passengers.

Now with hindsight, that does look like an administrative howler.

But In those days, these kind of things just gave you the added opportunity to be even more British about stuff.

No, no, I insist.

After you, no, no, no, no, please don't mind me.

I'm waterproof.

No, no, you first.

I'm descended from fishes.

I'll probably be fine.

No, really, I've always wanted to know what whales talk about when they're under the sea, and we can't lip read them.

So this could be the perfect opportunity to find out.

Tell you what, why don't we make this a bit more fun?

Let's race to the bottom.

Losers by the drinks.

Tallyhoe, want to say goodbye to your wife and children?

No, no, wouldn't want to interfere.

Right.

Three, two, one.

Splosh.

We've also learned: if you are a nearby ship, do not ignore distress signals, mentioning no names, the SS Californian.

And I've got a bit of new observational material about the Titanic as well, John.

It's never been my strong point, as you and various audiences well know, but I thought I'd move sideways into observational.

I'll tell you another way in which men and women are different.

Women, well, they would probably survive an early 20th century naval disaster, but men, they'd almost certainly die.

What's up with that?

Needs a bit of fine-tuning probably, but

it was, but it was 185 women and children survived in first and second class, only 18 died, but of men, 71 survived, 272 died.

Get pretty quiet about that, Mrs.

Pankhurst, didn't we?

I think, George.

If women want equal prize money at Wimbledon, they should have died in equal quantities on the Titanic.

Take that, Bully Jean King.

I think that's a fair point, Andy.

There was that technique around the time of women and children first.

Apparently, chivalry on the Titanic led to 70% of women and children surviving, while only 20% of men escaped alive.

Now, the art of chivalry now, Andy, is dead.

It died alongside the 80% of men that day.

And next time you don't hold a door open for a woman, you should turn around and scream at them through the closed door.

I'm not doing this because it starts here, doesn't it?

It starts here and it ends with me drowning in a frozen Atlantic Ocean.

Unbelievable!

Also, more British people died than Americans on the Titanic, Andy, because a study was released saying that at that point in time, British people were more polite, while Americans were more assertive.

But

Americans should not feel bad.

Andy, about their ancestors elbowing our ancestors out of the way, because that was ultimately a truly honourable death for the British people on board that ship, Andy, because for Vikings to enter Valhalla, they had to die violently with the sword in their hand.

For British people to enter British heaven, we have to do so basically completely unnoticed without causing too much of a kerfuffle.

And we did that day, Andy.

We did.

So I guess the only question remaining with the Titanic now is, could it be repaired?

Well...

Strange things have happened, John.

Actually, I'm not sure that stranger things have happened.

But if ever there was a time for the Titanic to be fixed, it has to be now.

There must be some ludicrous oil shake or Russian fueligarch who wants something other than a football club to piss his people's money away on.

And the Titanic, John, arguably only slightly more of a wreckage of its former self than Fernando Torres was when Abramovich bought in for Chelsea.

So I think this could be on the cards.

And it's worth thinking about this as well.

There were some quite prominent people on the Titanic when it went down, some industrialists and even one former first-class cricketer died on the Titanic.

And it makes it

if that had happened today,

which celebrities would have been on the Titanic?

And

well I've done some research into this and the celebrities who would have been on it include the rapper and activist Usher,

the BBC tennis host Sue Barker, and the film star Kelly McGillis.

Now none of them would have died because the old school Women and Children First has been superseded by celebrities first, but still

I think that puts it all in some kind of perspective.

They'd have got to America late and those celebrities would have been inconvenienced.

And

in many ways, that's a much larger tragedy than what actually happened.

Could I ask who the first class cricketer was and what his batting and bowling averages were?

There you go, Andy.

Hang on.

Oh, I'm disappointed.

I thought you'd know.

Yeah.

He was quite.

You shouldn't have to look it up, Andy.

It was quite obscure.

His name was John Thayer,

and

he played

seven matches that are now regarded as first-class cricket matches, all of them for the Philadelphia Cricket Club in America.

Good side.

He scored 138 runs in those seven matches and took six wickets.

His best was three for 17.

Unspectacular career from J.B.

Thayer, but still former first-class cricket.

Of course, his final statistic was Court and Bowl's iceberg.

Bugle feature section now and expensive art.

It's been a great week for expensive art, John.

Eduard Munch's The Scream is going on show in London.

It's set to be auctioned in May.

and is expected to fetch $80 million at the auction in New York.

Now, the screen, it's one of four versions of the screen, the one that's going on show and being sold.

It's a pastel version and a very famous picture.

And it kind of, you know, we can all relate to it because, you know, you look at the face of the person in the screen man, you think, well, we've all had gigs like that.

Sorry, we've all had days like that.

Eduard Munch, also known by his nicknames Eddie the Easel, Teddy Chomp Chomp, Percy Pallet and the Flying Flipchart, the origins of which remain obscure.

He pasteled out this version in 1895.

and no one is sure exactly what the subject is.

It's thought to be either a man who just remembered that he'd forgotten the eggs at the shop and was supposed to be cooking a carbonara for his girlfriend for dinner, or it was a woman who'd just seen a man wearing socks with sandals.

What a fashion faux pas.

Or it could have been a Chicago Cubs fan.

I guess we'll never fully know.

Four versions of the scream exists, although new research suggests that Munch was in fact trying to paint different noises, but they all ended up looking the same.

The pastel version on sale was supposed to be the Yelp.

A lithograph version had been provisionally entitled the Whoop.

A second painted version was known as the man who had just stubbed his toe on a priceless Ming vase.

It's also thought that if the scream is bought by an American buyer it will be renamed so that young Americans can understand it better as OMG.

Oh god that's depressing.

Also up for the sale, also up for sale at the Impressionist and Modern Arts evening sale in New York on the 2nd of May.

Are you going to go to that John?

You've got a couple of spare walls in in your flat, I noticed when I was.

Yeah.

Definitely.

I mean, it would look great there.

So I'll probably go in big early on.

Get it moving.

It would be nice to just go in and put the first bid on, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

Just go in.

$20.

Okay.

Bye.

Now, it's amazing the amount of money these pictures go for, John.

Some would say that £50 million for a piece of expressionist art is a lot of money.

I think that's a lot.

Other people say that's nowhere near enough for a piece of art history.

I mean, it might seem a lot, but in context, it's nothing.

Some will even say for expressionist art, it's a paul clea sum.

Paul Klee.

Others would say that's.

Others would say that.

Come on.

It's too soon.

Others would say it's too soon.

It's too soon.

No, Andy.

Andy.

Come on.

Come on.

It's like it's been too soon.

He painted it nearly 120 years ago.

Others would say it's way too much to pay for a painting.

I mean, who are these people wasting all this money?

They must be complete and Otto Dicks.

I took my wife to see an exhibition of Expressionist Art recently.

Okay, okay, that.

I hate myself for saying this.

I quite enjoyed that one.

But

that is a one-off, Andy.

We still get on.

Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

We still have not a 24-hour clock.

We still get on, even after 15 years together, me and my wife.

Honestly, we're still friends, mark my words.

It's friends, marks, slightly more obscure than

anyway.

We went to the cafe for lunch.

To start, I had a cheese roll finished with

pickle.

Rolf Nesh.

Now, that was a new name for me, to be honest, John.

Rolf Nesh.

My wife ordered a straight bacon sandwich, but when it came, it had egg on.

She left it on her plate.

Egg on Sheila.

No.

You must know him.

Pictures of ladies with their bits out.

No?

Of course, not all the paintings were good.

There was one really stupid painting of leftover food containers hurtling down a mountainside.

Really stupid painting.

It was silly.

Cantin skiing.

Silly.

Okay, that's a bit of a stretch.

I'll give you that.

Any Kantinski fans out there.

But my wife enjoyed the exhibition.

It's good when you have a lady friend who likes that kind of thing.

It marks Chagal out as being in touch with her artistic side.

We went to the souvenir shop.

My wife bought a really lovely looking thing to keep her keys on.

Yep, really, a handsome key fob.

Anselm Kiefer, German neo-expressionist.

Now look,

to be honest, I've got Wikipedia to thank for that one.

I wouldn't know one of Anselm Kiefer's paintings if it came up and neo-expressionised me right in the face.

But the Bugle is the only, only news source prepared to take this issue on.

There were some celebs at the exhibition too, John.

It's still going.

It's still going, Xander.

It's still going.

Okay.

On the way out, we passed Michael Jackson, Jesse Jackson, and Glenda Jackson being surveyed on which expressionist artists they liked the best.

It was neck and neck.

They just couldn't decide.

No, this isn't going to a Jackson Pollock reference.

There was a real Jackson Pole lock.

So, on the way home, we saw the film star Daniel Day-Lewis driving his lucky automobile.

You know the one that he drove to pick up his Academy Award in 2007?

He had specially modified with a cudgel under the steering wheel to smack him in the penis if he ever drove too fast.

That's right, he was in his Oscar cockosh car.

Oh, come on, that's worth something, isn't it?

Oscar Kokoshka.

If I focus carefully enough, I'm not here.

That's it.

You need almost Buddhist levels of meditation at this point, Chris.

I'm sorry about that.

Especially because you need something that is going to will you towards non-violence.

I'm in the woods.

I'm sorry, but

this is a medical thing.

A lot of people have emailed in suggesting I could be suffering from whistle-sucked.

That's a medical condition that makes the sufferer disposed to make puns.

So that could be the, you know, this is

you're making light of my affliction.

And I think it might get worse with age.

Yep.

I'm ill and older than I used to be.

There's a little Emil Nolder joke for any

fans.

Andy,

there's no audience for this.

No, I'm not.

There's not any audience.

You're appealing to nobody.

I just think.

It's important.

Why did Hillary and Tensing climb Everest?

Because it was there, John.

And I made those puns because they weren't there before and they are there now.

It's going to be impossible for all of us to understand Andy and his desire to do this.

And I know that many of us

have understandable feelings of disbelief and anger when he starts going through these lists of verbal atrocities.

I will just say this in Andy's defense.

I think it's important for us to remember that it seems with Andy, you cannot have a flying George Washington acting like a lion without also having whatever those puns are.

Yin to the yak.

I don't even know.

I know nothing about expressionist art, John, but I'd like to feel that I've encouraged our listeners to take more of an interest in it.

Emil Nolder was probably not on many people's radar before that.

True.

I think we've got to keep these memories alive.

And now, like a Pavlovian response, every time anyone hears the name Emil Nolder, they're just going to instinctively feel angry and betrayed.

Come on, the Oscar Kokotska one was quite good.

I mean, come on.

Andy, I took a photo of you during that run, and you look so happy.

i'm gonna tweet that later on the only language it's like your version of the mona lisa smile andy so enigmatic

your emails now uh and we have an email here saying dear andy chris and john in order of whom i think will make the funniest joke about this article well let's see let's see about that shall we i came across this article while reading twitter today and i just had to share it although i haven't personally seen the smurfs wait what

i just don't think i can agree with this line in the article.

And she's linked Andy to an article with the headline, Mom Who Had One Too Many at Smurfs movie with Daughter Pleads No Contest.

Basically, a mother was pulled over drunk, Andy, while driving

because she had taken her daughter to watch the Smurfs movie, as all mothers should.

And the police found a bottle of vodka in her purse and her blood alcohol level tested at 0.35.

the police officer said I know the smurfs can be tough but they can't be that tough listen listen

you don't need

you don't need alcohol to enjoy the smurfs Andy

you might need methadone but you don't need alcohol and let me tell you as someone who recently started work on smurfs too

I can say that woman had better she better start herself a nice little heroin habit to get ready for the blockbuster that is coming her way summer 2013.

So what work have you started on it?

Well I did I did some

about as much work as last time Andy.

I did Vanity Smurf is back.

That's all I'm saying.

That's all I can say at this point Andy

Vanity Smurf is coming back.

Summer 2013.

Bring your drunk children.

Oh no, it's no

get drunk and bring your children.

Maybe we have a carpooling system for parents who have to take their kids to the have a designated driver.

You know what I mean?

You don't have to, you should want to, Andy.

Well,

half a billion dollars.

Numbers don't lie.

They mislead, but they don't lie.

Brianne finishes the email saying, I would never condone drinking and driving, but I would say that drinking might be the only way for anyone to make it through the whole movie.

You haven't seen the movie, Brianna.

Don't criticise what you don't understand!

This email comes in from the wonderfully named Gorasht Kos,

who writes, Dear J A and C, in order of how likely you are to become exiled from China.

Well, that's that's up in the air, though, isn't it?

Up in the air.

As long as I can remember, I've been proud of my surname Kos, which in my native Slovenian language means blackbird.

The surname is also shared by such remarkable things as the US corporation Kos Pharmaceuticals, characters in the Game of Thrones, and Norwegian Olympic medalists.

A few years ago when I still had a noteworthy job and was visiting Iran on business for the first time, a gracious business partner had informed me just before I was about to make a public presentation that my last name Kos means k in colloquial farsi.

Whoa!

Startled, I had to quickly alter my presentation, so at no point mentioned my full name, and had made sure no matter how formal the occasion had been, that I mentioned only my first name.

So now condemned to only a one-word name in Iran, I share the same fate as Madonna and Prince, where a higher power has made sure that we will never again make public appearances in that country again.

Yours truly, Goraj Kos.

Is that why Madonna and Prince only have one name?

Yep.

Because their surnames are like

wow,

you're making your own bleeping work now, Chris.

You're doing it to yourself.

This is self-sabotage.

Well, I've got a load to put in anyway.

What's a few more, you know?

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

Sport now, and well, it's been an amazing time in Britain, John.

The boat race last weekend.

Did it make much of a splash in America?

Unless you're referring to the Titanic, no.

Unless you're referring to the Titanic anniversary, which I guess was a race in a way.

Well, it was lead news here last weekend.

Now, usually the boat race just involves two teams of tall, skinny, foreign post-grad students pegging it up the Thames in a desperate attempt to prove that boats are still better than cars, whilst the rest of the country busies itself not giving a flying fk about it.

But not this year, John.

This year was the most controversial contest in British history since the famous 1649 showdown that ended King Charles 0, Acts 1.

It all kicked off when Oxfords, rowing in their now-trademark 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 tiny little one formation,

were neck and neck with Cambridge, their old rivals, rivals, when all of a sudden a man's head appears in the water.

Excellent, I thought.

A lot of BBC have souped up their coverage with some mid-race on the spot interviewing.

And I waited for Gary Lineker to pop up and ask, so you're halfway through the race.

You still haven't thrown your breadcrumbs in the water for the ducks.

What's gone wrong?

But it wasn't that.

I was speculation, what could it possibly be?

Was it a Titanic Centenary fan who'd forgotten his pantomime iceberg outfit?

Or was it Jesus shouting, hi, sorry I'm late.

I was supposed to get here in the 1930s, but something f up?

It wasn't that, it was a 35-year-old man, John, protesting against the concept of privilege.

Which was a strange way to do it, John, to basically risk your head getting sliced off by an oar.

But that's how he chose to do it.

And

not really the time or the place.

I mean, he could have nailed his nuts to Buckingham Palace or stood at the end of Downing Street shouting, if we're all in it together, how come all of you dream of shooting rhinoceroses at point-blank range for fun?

But protesting against the boat race is really only protesting against people who suffer the niche psychological condition that makes them want to sit in a boat for hours and hours on end going backwards at medium speed towards nowhere in particular.

The main problem though was that security concerns were raised ahead of the Olympics and people worried what if the same thing happened during 2012?

What if a man in a mole outfit burrowed up through the track and tripped up Usain Bolt?

What if Tom Daly was standing on the 10 metre board above the water ready to leap to glory when he looked down and saw an escaped shark in a pool with a handkerchief round its neck, saying, yum.

I mean,

we can't take that risk, John.

We cannot take that risk.

So anyway, the boats, the race restarted.

The boats jousted like Randy Dolphins.

Oxford broke an oar.

Then could a seven-awed boat beat an eight-aware boat?

Well, could a three-legged horse win the Grand National?

Does a one-legged pope shit in the woods?

No, of course it couldn't.

And

Cambridge won.

But it was highly dramatic.

And the man was hauled to the shore.

It turned out it was, in fact, Elvis Presley, and his first words were, What year is it?

All I remember is falling down my toilet after having that massive burger.

That is it for this week's Bugle.

Thanks again to SoundCloud for generously hosting us.

You can find us on SoundCloud.

Oh, shit.

Andy, for f sake.

What's the name of the

address?

Of the page.

Soundcloud.

This is willful incompetence.com slash the hyphen bugle.

Okay.

You can find us at

our SoundCloud page at soundcloud.com

slash the hyphen bugle.

How's that, Chris?

Was that bang on the banana?

It was close enough.

Close enough.

It was close enough to the banana.

Soundclouds and bugle in.

And look at all the other amazing things on SoundCloud.

And

save.

And do follow the at Hello Buglers Twitter feed for up-to-date updates on what's happening in the world and gigs that I'm doing that I need people to come to, including this coming Wednesday at the Udderbelly in London, the 18th of April.

I'll see all of you there.

John, you're coming for that, aren't you?

Yes and no.

I mean, no.

Thanks, Buglers.

Happy Titaniversary.

We'll speak to you next week.

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.