Bugle 189 – ‘Like eating Bill Cosby’

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world

Hello, buglers and welcome to issue 189 of The Bugle, the world's predominant reason for continuing to exist with me Andy Zoltzman live in London, but not just anywhere in London.

This week we are recording in a very special location.

In Chris's house.

Yeah.

I'm in your house.

I am in your house.

And joining me, a man who is in George Washington's house, by which I mean America, the north bit from memory.

He's in your house, Washington.

He's in your house.

It's the man who is to Equestrian Dressage, what what Elvis Presley was to Equestrian Dressage.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

So what a fascinating glimpse into the world of Chris you're getting right now, Andy.

Yeah.

Well, later on in the Bugle, I'll take you all on a guided tour of

Chris's palatial abode.

But, I mean, it is.

There is certainly a large gnome on a shelf.

And

that

I don't expect to have to deal with when I'm recording.

Well, Andy,

I went down to Miami last weekend.

I had to go down because we had a surprise trip for one of the producers who is leaving work soon.

Now, Miami and I are not natural bedfellows, Andy.

Miami and I go together like Simon and Garfunkel.

Not Paul Simon though, Simone Bolivar, the early 19th century first ever president of Venezuela.

We go together like Simone Bolivar and Art Garfunkel.

We have nothing in common and even less to say to each other.

Now,

it was a lot of fun hanging out with people from work, but it would have been even more fun to do that not in Miami.

It's not a great place, Andy.

It's not a good place.

It's not an okay

place.

My friend White Andy at one point looked out from where we were sitting to, I believe,

give the accurate collective noun, see a swimming pool of douches.

And he said something which I think really encompasses the place perfectly.

He said, this place is making me miss the wife and a family that I don't have.

And

I think that really is the perfect way to summarise Miami.

So this is Bugle 189 available from soundclouds.com and all good electrical retailers.

189 means we're now to have the same number of bugles as there were episodes of the sitcom Different Strokes, which

of course famously had to be radically rewritten after the first draft, which was set in in a nursing home for highly strung pensioners.

This is the

bugle for the week beginning Monday, the 9th of April.

Happy new tax year to all our British buglers.

And meaning it, it's 350 years since Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary, 9th of April, 1662.

Is it just me or is crapping in a bucket and chucking out the window getting a bit passe?

And 150 years since Abraham Lincoln invented basketball.

When, frustrated at the progress of the Civil War, he slumped back in his oval office chair and tossed his trademark stovepipe in the air in frustration.

The hat landed on a high shelf and Lincoln took out his anger by trying to lob a cantaloupe melon into it.

After several near misses, he leapt out of his swivel chair, bounced the Marilyn on the ground and using his six foot four inch frame, slammed-dunked it into the stovepipe before swinging off the shelf, shouting, take that the South.

And

on Tuesday, it'll be a hundred years since the Titanic,

the famous stunt ship, set off on its maiden voyage, intending to cannievel over a row of eight icebergs and through a flaming hoop.

To achieve this, with its weight of 46,000 tons, it would have needed to achieve a velocity of 2,374 miles an hour to be able to clear the eight icebergs.

And shipmakers Harland and Wolfe later admitted in the official investigation into the disaster that the ship's maximum speed of 28 miles an hour rendered the stunt mission, quotes, unlikely to succeed.

So, might have stood a chance if they hadn't missed the launch ramp.

We're recording the 6th of April, Easter Friday, which I'll be spending all good juice doing some DIY, just anything that involves hammering.

And coincides this year, John, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this, with New Beer's Eve in New York.

Are you familiar?

It's the,

not specifically New York, in America, it's the festival marking the end of Prohibition.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Is

New Beer's Eve not a big

thing?

No.

I've never heard of it, And.

Oh, really?

Well, it's on Wikipedia, so I I think you're missing out.

How are you intending to celebrate it now that you've just found out about it?

Well, I guess find out some more about it to check whether it's actually true or not, which I still doubt.

Top story this week, living in Antarctica.

Oh, yeah!

All right, it's very icy, baby.

It's pretty cold, all right.

She was an Antarctican girl.

Antarctica.

Yeah.

Here to house some motherfu seals.

Yeah.

Andy, the South Pole.

Wow, what an audition.

What an audition.

The South Pole, Andy, as we all know, is one of the world's top two poles.

Has been for years.

We operate very much a two-pole system in this world.

And it seems incredible that throughout human history a third pole has not emerged to challenge the dominance of the top two.

We even have buglers listening from Antarctica as we found out in an email a while ago we have a bugler listening in a research station down there presumably using the bugle to test what effect sub-zero temperatures have on extreme audio bullshit.

But the South Pole is not something that you think about a lot but we'd all miss it if it was gone or if you even skim read environmental reports we will all miss it when it's gone.

It's easy to ignore the South Pole until bits of it are floating towards a ship that you're on.

So let's give it a bit of attention this week.

It was a hundred years ago that Captain Scott, the explorer, adventurer, and greatest man ever to have the middle name Falcon.

That's a hell of a middle name, Andy.

If your middle name is Falcon, you better find a way of earning that name.

You had better get your ass to the South Pole or up a mountain once in a while, or it should be forcibly confiscated.

So

you rate Roberts Falcon Scott above Elvis Falcon Presley?

I do.

I do.

Controversial.

I do.

Go up a mountain, Elvis.

Go up a mountain.

Earn the name.

Scott, of course, famously reached the South Pole only to find out that Amundsen had beaten him to it.

Amundsen, as Andy himself once described it to me, was a, and I quote, cheeky Norwegian c ⁇ .

I don't think an English person had been so angry at a Norwegian since the Vikings turned up drunk and went on a pillaging bender.

Yeah, it's 100 years, as you said, since the death of arguably the most famous silver medalist of all time, Captain Scott, the Polar Explorer extraordinaire.

Sadly, not quite extraordinaire enough.

He popped his extremely cold clogs in late March 1912.

Clogs, pretty bad footwear for a polar expedition, I reckon.

After he and his team were pipped by Amundsen to the annoyingly chilly post.

Amundsen, the Scandinavian shithead, as the British media called him at the time, or

Freddie Frostyballs, the Financial Times went with.

But

the story is that after spending months trekking across the barren polar landscape, Scott and his team finally realised that they'd been beaten when they saw a sign in Norwegian saying South Pole That Way Losers, and then arrived at the pole to see the marks in the snow where Amundsen had slid over to the pole on his knees in celebration, before ripping off his whaleskin t-shirt as the rest of his party jumped on him in a massive bundle and then found a solitary Vikings helmet in the snow and the name of the ancient Viking king Canute misspelt in big letters.

But some exciting new developments in the Scott story, John.

I've recently unearthed some audio of the press conference Captain Scott gave the day after reaching the South Pole

in 1912.

And luckily we've managed to get exclusive access to that.

Have we?

Here on the Bugley.

We've seen an incredible scoop handy.

Well yeah, I mean I guess other media outlets were distracted by the phone hacking scandal and didn't didn't bid for and we we put all the bugle millions into it so

I think it was worth it.

It's very interesting stuff.

Chris can you play it in now?

Yeah well obviously it's disappointing to arrive at the South Pole after all the years of planning and months trekking across an obviously inhospitable continent to find that the Buy Hammerson had got there first but fair play to the big Norwegian he's done a terrific bit of exploration there the lads cracking effort and he's come out on top well on bottom I suppose but a fair play to Rald he was the better polar explorer in the day but I think we've got a lot of positives to take away from this one Captain Scott Julius Hardstash Times of London do you have a message for the British Antarctica fans you must be very disappointed at your defeat well I don't really see it uh I don't really see it as a a defeat Julie well you didn't win and now the fans want to know why well uh I think we can take a lot of positives away.

Stop crapping on about positives!

The fans don't want positives, Captain Scott.

They wanted you to come back with a Frobishous Thermal Jockstraps Golden Penguin trophy to parade around London on an open top horse.

You've let them down.

Well, Julian,

we gave it 110% out there.

We've left it out all there on the ice shelf.

And at the end of the day, that's all I can ask of the boys.

Pranton Jalhoun, Tunbridge Wells Courier.

Captain Scott, what is wrong with the British system for producing polar explorers?

Well, I think we're oversimplifying things.

We've got some terrific young explorers coming through.

And if any more poles are discovered, I'm sure Team GB will be right in there in the thick of the exploring.

Captain Scott, will you resign?

Captain Scott, Mickey Strong, Daily Star, what do you think of film star Mary Pickford?

Captain Scott, what about Mary Pickford's shin-length skirt that she was seen wearing on a beach last week?

Captain Scott!

Captain Scott, have you got anything to say about the rumours linking you with the Arsenal job?

That's all.

I don't want to take any more questions.

I'd just like to thank our sponsors, Wet Pawn's organic low-fat crispy penguin beaks, Jurek's whale gut condoms for reduced sensitivity, and Jack's homemade mahogany sledges.

No further comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Andy, I think you just brought down Chris's house price.

To commemorate this anniversary, people have been revealing details of Scott's final expedition, even some of what was on the menu.

Now, when they were at base camp, it was actually a pretty lavish menu on on special occasions meals ran to several courses.

Salted almonds, turtle soup, roast beef, stewed penguin, crystallised ginger and champagne all featured on such menus.

Now if you're anything like me you only heard two words from that list

and those words were stewed penguin.

I love penguins Andy, they're nature's clowns and it'll be a cold day in hell before I ever eat one of them cold or otherwise.

Penguins are too funny to eat.

It will be like eating Bill Cosby.

In fact, I would eat a stewed Bill Cosby before I would ever eat a penguin.

Fact!

But, I mean, you have to ask, John, because, you know, it's always been hard to get good quality penguin to eat, even in the most expensive restaurants.

And you have to think when we look at Scott's reputation, it's swung up and down ever since.

Some accusing him of costly errors, others saying he was a hero and inspiration.

But we have to ask: did Scott go to the Antarctic in the spirit of exploration or because it was the only way to make socially acceptable his uncontrollable urge to eat penguins?

Because

a man eats a penguin in London, he's a weirdo.

A man eats a penguin in Antarctica, he's just eating local produce.

For those of you wondering what penguins taste of, apparently it's a cross between a gorgonzola and raspberry souffle, a pint of whiskey spritzer, and a smoked hedgehog.

It's actually much easier to study Antarctica now than it was back in Scott's time, partly because there is much less of it.

The European Space Agency announced just yesterday that a massive ice shelf in the Arctic Peninsula has shrunk by 85%

in the last 17 years.

I'm guessing that that is bad news, Andy.

They weren't specific about whether it was, but I'm guessing that it hasn't shrunk by 85% in a good way.

The amazing thing is that with all the technology we have now, there are still things about Antarctica that we don't understand, even what is under all of the ice, which is amazing.

I just presumed that we knew that, Andy.

I knew that I didn't know, but I just presumed that someone else did.

I feel that way about so many facts.

I don't know what the capital of Botswana is, but I presume that somebody does.

I'd assume that under the Antarctic ice sheet is

there's just some

evil

megalomaniac with a giant rocket.

Well, I think so.

But just slightly regretting having concealed his secret hiding place and launch pad, arguably too effectively.

Well, that might be much more true than you think, Andy, because scientists have been using radar and other imaging technology to uncover what's under there.

Apparently, under the East Antarctic ice sheet, there is a huge mountain range as big as the Alps, and they're also looking for hidden volcanoes.

I love little volcanoes, Andy.

You never know what's inside them.

As you say, it could so easily be an evil lair.

My dream is to live in a hidden volcano, Andy.

The only problem you got there is the lack of natural light.

But I'm guessing that's what makes living in a hidden volcano affordable, especially if it's not in a very expensive area.

But as you say, scientists, those self-proclaimed arbiters of measurable facts, those unrepentant users of research and evidence have claimed that the ice shelf has shrunk by 85% in 70s.

I can back that research up John because I put an ice shelf up in my living room last summer to try to keep my books fresh and that shrunk by 100% within a day.

So I can see, you know, this for me, this rings true, this scientific research.

But the European Space Agency had been doing this research, using one of its satellites to snoop on the celebrity southernmost continent in the world.

And with its hidden in space camera technology, it peeped on the Larson B ice shelf, stripping off 85% of its ice.

And there's a problem with satellite technology, John.

When ice shelves know they're being watched by the scientific paparazzi, they just get paranoid about body shape and just start trying to lose ice for the photographs.

It's been a bad time for the Larsen ice shelf family.

Larsen B falling to pieces for almost 20 years.

Now Larsen A disintegrated completely and died in 1995.

Larson C just about holding itself together, but I mean it's just...

It's like the Jacksons all over again.

And to finish our Antarctic section, a rather delightful quote from one of Scott's contemporaries, I believe, an explorer called Apsley Cherry Garrard,

who said, polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has yet been devised.

Is that true?

Yeah.

That is a great quote.

China news now, and when you hear someone shouting, I need a Weiwei, you you know it is either a small child still mastering the age-old art of bladder control, or it's the Chinese government trying to control the renowned artist's antecedent, Ai Weiwei.

And he's hit the headlines again, following on from

previous artistic stunts, including last year's hit piece of installation art entitled, Myself in a Prison Cell for No Reason.

Bit modern for my liking, John.

Why couldn't he just paint a picture of a horse like George Stubbs used to?

And also his current interactive exhibition, Oh oh no I've been grounded my government doesn't understand me

and he has installed four live webcams in an effort to satirize the surveillance that the Chinese police have put him under 24 hours a day since his release from jail that's right Andy he he is one Chinese artist who has been repeatedly speaking out against the Chinese government's human rights abuses and when you do that you can be sure of one thing and that is that the Chinese government will provide you with food and low-grade lodging completely free for the foreseeable future with fellow like-minded people who also thought it would be a good idea to run their little mouths off.

So yet the odds in question is Ai Wei Wei or name not found if you Google search his name is in China.

Ai Wei Wei is both one of China's best known artists and best hated artists depending on who you are.

He is famous which I guess makes killing him frustratingly difficult and he's also the son of one of the Communist Party's most revered poets making his criticism even harder to swallow.

Now in April 2011 he was detained by authorities as he boarded a plane to Hong Kong and held in a secret location for 81 days.

He was freed on condition that he would not speak to the media, a condition that he has in every sense not kept.

Surely the Chinese government should know by now Andy that he's not going to do what they say.

They need to try reverse psychology.

Just release him on the condition that he do nothing but speak to the media in the most critical possible terms.

Then they can just sit back and wait for him to take a vow of silence.

Instead, the government have been investigating him for so-called economic crimes and several months later served him with a bill for 15 million yuan, about $2.5 million in back taxes and fines.

Now, I'm not an accountant, Andy.

I don't know the full details of the tax returns in question, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that those accusations are at best convenient and at worst complete bullshit.

It is starting starting to look though John that the Chinese government and Ai Weiwei are just never going to get on.

I mean

it could it could just be a kind of a soap opera style slow build up to a late flowering romance but it just doesn't it doesn't look good.

It does not look good.

Especially because he's come up with a new imaginative way to infuriate the Chinese government.

He's set up four live webcams at his home putting himself under self-surveillance in a nod to the 24-hour police surveillance that he's lived under for the last year.

He said that by setting up the cameras, including one above his bed, he hoped to encourage transparency from all sides.

He describes this project as a negotiation between private space, the public nature of security, and the power of the state.

Yeah, it's true.

It's true, Andy, but it's also a good way to annoy the f out of the Chinese government.

Let's not leave that important detail out.

But perhaps, as you say, this is going to be the Chinese government's defence, that all their human rights abuses and restrictions on personal liberties are just a performance art piece as well, to make people think about how it would feel to live under repressive conditions such as those.

They're really posing the question, what is freedom, with their ambitious 9.6 million square kilometre installation piece?

If you are listening to this podcast in China, either everything has gone silent for the last few minutes or you're about to hear a lot a loud knock on your door.

China is not a big fan of freedom.

That's the basic overall message here.

China feels about freedom, how I feel about the Dave Matthews band.

They just don't see the point of it and they find its popularity slightly depressing and occasionally infuriating.

But not to worry.

Luckily China has found a clever way to defeat the rise of freedom and that is to crush it mercilessly under a government boot.

Take the internet.

For instance, the World Wide Web.

It's supposed to be just like that, worldwide.

And it's also supposed to be the Wild West, an unregulated land where anything is possible.

And banner advertising pop-ups shove the latest installment of the American Pie movie atrocity series down uninterested throats.

China, however, sees the internet a different way.

They see the internet like an irritating wasp at a picnic that must be swatted.

And the internet seems to view China a similar way.

Although it's worth mentioning that Google has a different opinion, seeing China as a dominatrix under whose high heel they long to lie.

The anonymous hacking group this week launched an attack on China, defacing almost 500 websites, including government sites, official agencies, trade groups, and many others.

They placed a message on the site saying that the attack was carried out to protest against the Chinese government's strict control of its citizens.

The message read, Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible.

Today websites are hacked.

Tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall.

The Chinese government presumably replies by sending a message back reading, Dear Anonymous, you have no idea who you're f ⁇ ing with here.

China don't play that shit.

You have just opened up a fortune cookie of pain, and the fortune in it reads, beware your own bullshittery today, for tomorrow the next global superpower will f ⁇ you in the face.

Now,

it's unfortunate as well that Anonymous chose to post their message mostly in English, so it will probably make exactly as much sense to Chinese people as if you put a similar message up on the FBI website in Cantonese.

But it was posted in English, John, but it was English that appeared to have been put straight through a translation, a bit of translation software.

Yes, that's it.

Because it makes almost no sense whatsoever.

I'll just

a couple of words from the message of solidarity with the oppressed that Anonymous put up.

Over the years, the Chinese communist government to unfair laws and unhealthy process to control the people.

Dear Chinese government, you is not never fall.

And today the website is black.

Tomorrow is your evil regime fell.

So,

I mean,

it's hard to know what to read into that.

I mean, yes, freedom is good, but arguably grammar is better.

The Chinese web surveillance system is more repressive than a Victorian sex education teacher who's allergic to the word penis.

It's more constrictive than a Burmese python that has your balls in a nutcracker.

I'm saying it clamps down pretty tight, Andy.

Tighter than an oyster with an attitude problem.

The system is one of the most comprehensive surveillance systems in the world, and it's known as the Great Firewall of China.

In the future, Andy, tourists will come from all over the world to fail to look at what's behind it.

Apparently, astronauts can even Google it from space.

The Great Firewall, which definitely sounds like something Evil Knievel would have tried to jump over,

second mentioned for evil knieval oh yeah that's a that's a big big big week for conievil

it it returns no results for searches of banned terms censors chat and vets blogs banned topics include the falun gong uh spiritual movement and human rights activist i weiwei the uh the system polices where chinese people can go online and tries to restrict what they can talk about chinese censors are even actively targeting social media sites such as facebook and twitter to stamp out any discussion of banned topics.

Andy, you can't stop people talking about the things they most want to talk about.

Well, I mean, you can, you can do that, or you can at least give it a very good go, as the Chinese are proving, but you shouldn't.

That's the point.

It's like banning Belgians from saying the word waffle.

It's what's in their hearts.

Without the ability to say the word waffle, Belgians would just stare blankly into space, making grunting sounds at each other.

Testify.

Bugle feature section now and a very special property section this week in which we are taking a tour around

our much loved producer Chris's house.

Now thanks so much for inviting us into your home, Chris.

Pleasure.

It's great to be able to be able to go on this tour around your house and land.

And man,

what a pad this is.

I'm here in the living room here in Chris's place in Hackney in East London.

It's modelled, if I'm not very much mistaken, on Nero's famous palace, the Domus Aurea in Rome, right down to the live dolphin in the pool.

Just don't put too much wasabi on his sardines.

And the sofa, well, it's the ultimate in luxury, this elk skin sofa, but it also has a bit of history to it, Chris.

I believe

you bought it at auction, and I believe this is the sofa from Downing Street, where in 1985, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came one badly timed knock on the door away from making out.

Lovely bit of history.

So, um, and the draft excluder just by the door there.

Looks looks eerily, unbelievably realistically like a boa constrictor.

That is a lovely touch.

I don't have one.

Ow, get it off me.

Get that f ⁇ ing thing off me.

Ah!

Ah!

Tell my wife I like her.

Into the kitchen now, and well, it's quiet in here now, Chris, but from the look of the place about two hours ago, it was echoing to the sounds of the dying screams of some very angry livestock the Zanussi home abattoir that's uh how long have you had that

couple of years yeah you want to sharpen the blades on that mate they're not made to last anymore

into the garden now and the sweet smell of hackney redolent in the air and Chris I have to congratulate you that is easily one of the finest urban vineyards I've ever seen

and a man who owns his log flume is a man who has your full and undivided respect.

Up here on the battlements now and what a delightful 18th-century siege cannon that is.

That should keep the local riffraff away.

And finally,

let's just see what Chris keeps down here in his cellar.

Oh

my god.

Can I go now, please?

Please.

I want to go home, please, Mr.

Chris.

Let me go home.

You can join in if you like.

Your emails now, and we have an email here from James Lynch under the subject line Assad, don't talk, just kiss.

He says, I was amused to hear Andy speculate about the meaning of kiss in Syrian Arabic in the bugle discussion of Bashar al-Assad's iTunes Favourites.

Having stuck, I'm sexy and I know it.

This is how I roll.

Left us kid pants all out of control.

God, phenomenal song.

That's been in my head ever since we played that, Andy.

It just shows how it's been in my heart ever since.

Yeah.

He goes on to say, having studied Arabic in Damascus for a year,

I can tell you, in fact, that the word kiss is almost the exact equivalent of the C word in Syria.

Thus, a favoured insult in many Middle Eastern countries is the charming kiss umak, your mother's blank.

Now, I'm not sure what this might tell us about Bashar in terms of his fondness for the song Don't Talk Just, Kiss, but I thought you'd want to stay abreast of the Arabic swear words.

Kiss Amak, Chris, he says.

Oh, very nice.

I'm always interested in Arabic swear words, Andy.

Yeah.

That is an endless well of profanity.

That's right.

Yeah.

If you know any further Arabic swear words you think we should be alerted to, do email them in.

Well,

you're going to regret asking that question

to info at thebuglepodcast.com or bashir at assad.siri.com.

This email came in from Pierre-Luc Gagnier and had various emails on this subject and comments on Twitter as well.

On the subject, Stephen Harper.

Hello, Chris, Andy, and John, in order of ability to get basic facts right about Canada.

Last week, John, you called Stephen Harper the President of Canada.

You moron!

Stephen Harper himself did not put back the Royal in Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force and replaced famous Canadian paintings in Ottawa with pictures of Queen Elizabeth to be called President.

No, sir.

Canada is a proud abuser of the Westminster system and a former colony of the UK.

We therefore have a stupidly conservative Prime Minister just like you across the pond.

Regards Pierre Luc Gagnier.

So that is us put in our place by Pierre and several other emailers about

there you go but doesn't the question is John Prime Minister President it's still Canada it's still Canada it doesn't matter it's still Canada you're burying the lead there the lead is Canada so it doesn't matter

and this came from James who writes on the subject losing my job

that's a good subject dear john and andy while listening to your latest podcast i found an interest in looking up what a pasty was i made two mistakes the first of course was listening to the bugle at work the second was using google images instead of a regular search.

It seems that pasty, or pasties, are, in fact, small glittery pieces that are meant to go over a woman's nipples as part of erotic shows.

Really?

I mean, that's...

That's a Cornish pasty.

Anyway, it doesn't bear thinking about.

I'm sure there's probably a website with that as well.

So imagine if you...

There's nothing sexier than a Cornish pasty strapped to a woman's nipple, Andy.

Testify.

Imagine, if you will, a young male at work whose boss can easily see over his shoulder his computer.

Now, imagine this worker has a computer screen full of women, mostly nude.

I thank whatever God I don't really believe in that my boss was at lunch, or I'd probably have lost my job.

So I'm misled in my subject line, but I feel this stupid little story deserves to be told to someone.

From James.

Well,

that's pasty or pasty.

That's

those are two words you do not want to get mixed up on various different occasions.

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

And don't forget, you can listen to the bugle on SoundCloud.

Go on, do it now.

Sport now, and almost all sports are concerned with safety at the moment.

Ice hockey and American football are being forced to take a long overdue look at concussions.

But thankfully, there is one sport stepping up to replace the element of reckless endangerment of human life which is at the root of all great sport since the classic Christians versus Lions boxing tournaments of the Roman era.

A new sport has been launched in the US called Taser Ball.

Now imagine in your head what Taserball might involve.

That's right, it's that.

It's that.

It is exactly what you're thinking of.

It's described as a variation of sports like rugby, soccer, hockey or football, but there's a big difference.

Each player player carries a stun gun and is allowed to electronically shock whichever opponent is carrying the ball.

Come on Andy.

It was invented by three friends who wanted to make a game that they described as more intriguing than the usual sports.

I don't know if intriguing would be the word I would use there, as f ⁇ ing insane.

Ultimate Taser Ball, which is called UTB for short, pits two teams of four players against each other.

Each team tries to get a medicine ball into the opposing team's goal whilst tackling and attacking the other team's carrier.

A stun gun manufacturer released a statement saying, stun guns are designed to incapacitate people using electroshocks that disrupt muscle functions and were intended to be used for defense purposes, not for sports.

Oh, shut up!

Just because they found a better way to use your product?

Yeah, ultimate taser ball.

Personally, I've always preferred penultimate taser ball.

I just don't like the feeling of finality.

It just slaps your own mortality in your face like a freshly executed haddock.

But it skirts that fine line, John, between aggressive policing and sport, which is, of course, how most sports began.

And besides, you think this is violent, John?

Have you never watched rugby?

A taser is nothing compared to a 19-team stone Samoan flying headfirst at your ribcage as if he's just been fired out of a cannon.

The inventors of the game said, just because no one intended tasers for sports sports doesn't mean that they aren't good for them.

And I think that's a very, very strong argument.

The same is true of the harpoon.

Only a few weeks ago, Andy, you, for instance, invented Olympic cycle joust.

Sports have to evolve.

Yeah, I think, well, taser wrestling in the Olympics, you could see that really taking off.

Because

what is Greco-Roman wrestling?

No one really knows what it is.

It's just like rolling around in a leotard quoting Virgil, I think, isn't it?

But chuck a taser in.

Everyone's watching.

In Ultimate Taserball, Andy, or UTB, players can get stunned between 35 to 40 times in a game.

And apparently, they can give out between 3 to 5 milliamps.

Apparently, it feels like a rubber band snap.

It's shocking, but it will only make you twitch or drop the ball.

And it works on the nervous system, so no one will get immune to it, so we won't have to raise the level in the future to get the same effect.

You won't have to, no.

But you might might find that you want to anyway.

How else are you going to take Ultimate Taserball to the next level?

Ultimate Turbo Taserball, Lightning Bolt Level.

The teams in the league are called LA Nightlights, the Philadelphia Kilowatts, the Toronto Terror, and the San Diego Spartans.

But other impending franchises potentially include the Buffalo Ball Blasters, the Boston Incapacitators, the Sacramento Singers, and the Miami.

Because the origins of sport are often very interesting, John.

It's great to see sport embracing technology in this way, and I think other sports could learn from UTB and use similar technology to raise their audience ratings.

And, well, it looks like Peter's lining up the blue to the left middle here.

This could clinch him the crucial seventh frame.

Oh, there.

What's Alan?

What's Alan doing here?

Ah!

Ah!

Oh, tremendous tactics by Alan.

He knew Peter was in a good position, so he's tasered him in the nuts.

Oh, that was perfectly timed there.

Perfectly timed as a super player.

Terrific snooker.

Taserball began, of course, after a gang of thieves stole a prize-winning pumpkin from a vegetable store, and police tried to fizz them with tasers

as the robbers passed the pumpkin between them, and that's what gave these guys the idea.

And it's very interesting seeing the origins of sport.

Lacrosse, John, began in late 17th century France in Louis XIV's rat-infested kitchen.

And the staff had to catch the rodents in a sieve or colander and then fling them to another kitchen hand by the window who would catch the flying rodent in his colander and hurl it out of the window into the moat.

And they had to do this before the Queen, Maria Theresa, saw them because she really hated rats.

And the word lacrosse, lacrosse, in French, of course, literally means she is cross.

Water polo began with a food fight on the Titanic, and apparently the last words of the captain of the Titanic were, I don't care if it's sinking, Marjorie, this is fun.

Now catch my cantaloupe.

Rugby, of course, largely a means of regulating homoerotic impulses in British public schools.

And basketball, of course, everything is basketball for very interesting.

They were a means used by early European settlers in America for knocking parakeet eggs down from nests in trees.

In fact, until 1917, professional basketball was played with a Carolina parakeet in the basket, and a basket would only be confirmed if the parakeet squawked.

Sadly, North America's only native parakeet rapidly became extinct due to the invention of the slam dunk, and the practice was ceased.

Oh, hang on.

I've just contradicted my own earlier lie about the origins of basketball.

Oh, no, I'm confused.

Oh, no.

Caught in your own life.

What's real anymore?

Baseball now.

To mark the start of the 2012 Major League Baseball season, and I don't know about you, John, but I'm going to watch all 2,450 games of it.

We have a quick baseball quiz.

Now you have to tell us which two of the following actually happened in Major League Baseball.

A,

Merkel's Boner,

B,

the strawberry cheese fake, or C, Johnny Dick Shot.

Now,

two of those are real, one of them is made up.

Have a background.

One of them.

I'll give you a background on them.

Merkel's boner, not an undercover scoop by the German newspaper Debuild, which, when it comes out next week, could prove the most explosive story in German politics since, well, since, let's not go into that again.

But Merkel's boner was in fact an incident in a Brooklyn Giants, the Chicago Cubs game in 1908, when the Giants Freddy Merkel made a base running error that cost his team victory.

And it came for some unknowable reason to be known as Merkel's boner, possibly related to him finding bottoms of ninth innings strangely erotic, possibly because of his trademark celebration when his team won a game in which he chewed an ox bone like a ravenous dog before throwing it into the crowd and shouting woof.

The game had to be replayed as the final decisive game of the season.

The Cubs won, the Giants were eliminated, and the Cubs went on to win the World Series for the final time 104 years ago.

That was Merkel's boner, the strawberry cheese fake, Daryl Strawberry, the Mets and Yankees legend.

He received a 20-game ban.

in 1992 for repackaging low-grade Danish blue cheese, passing it off as Genuine Stilton and selling it at a 500% markup in a food market in the Bronx

and that was the strawberry cheese fake and Johnny Dick Shot was

a nickname earned by major leaguer Johnston Harmetis in the 1920s.

Harmetis of the now defunct Washington Spittoons

when batting with runners and scoring positions would intentionally step into the line of the pitch and let it hit him in the groin.

He would then collapse the ground in agony whilst opposition players rushed to check if he was okay and his own teammates scuttled round to home plate to score.

The dick shot earned Harmettis 37 RBIs in the 1926 season before the baseball officials closed the loophole that meant that balls which slammed players in the nuts were counted as fair hits, which had been introduced to trying to make the game more exciting in the 1860s.

Harmetis later explained that a chartered accident in which he was head-butted in the crotch by a hippopotamus on a school trip to the zoo had left his nether regions impervious to pain.

So only two of those are real, John.

What's it gonna be?

I don't know, Andy.

I just don't know.

I don't know.

I feel like I'm caught in a web of bullshit, Andy.

I'm just waiting for a spider to kill me.

Okay, well, buglers, write your answers down now, and I'll tell you the answers in five seconds' time.

And if you get them right, then you win the rights to play third baseman for the New York Mets

for the rest of the season.

And the ones that are real are A Merkel's Boner and C, Johnny Dick Shot.

Admitting my explanation of the Johnny Dick Shot was not real.

The strawberry cheese fake, I'm afraid, was made up.

Merkle's boner was the 90.

Merkel's Boner was the 1908 incident.

And in the late 1930s, the Pittsburgh Pirates did have a player called Johnny Dick Shot,

which

he recently inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame stupid name section alongside the likes of the St.

Louis Browns picture Emile Bill Dilley.

The Atlanta Braves player, wonderful terrific Mons

and of course the Detroit Tigers immortal Rusty Kuntz.

And

those are all real.

I've got a bit of a boy who cried wolf issue going on here.

But don't those were real.

Johnny Dick Shot played for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the thirties.

The Pirates franchise was later taken over by an East African Islamic group.

Relocated and renamed the Somali Pirates.

Well it's been quite a bullshit heavy bugle this week.

Sure has, and

I think there's something about Chris's house which is sending your brain into a very worrying place.

And if you want to see more bugle like this live, Buglers, I have some gigs coming up that you might like to come to.

In particular, the 13th of April in Reading at

God's sake, Andy.

Also, the amount of lies that will come out of your face during this bugle, I don't know why they would think any of what you're about to say is actually true.

The 13th of April, Friday, 13th, Reading, the South Street venue.

Bath on the 15th of April, although there seems to be some doubt over whether that would go ahead, but so check your local listings.

And 18th in London at the Udderbelly, the upturned purple cow on the south bank.

Do particularly come to that because it is a big venue and it feels quite spacious when there's not many people in it.

18th of April.

That's about it for this week's Bugle.

Thank you for listening.

John,

what's in store for you for the next week?

You know, same,

the same Andy.

Work, sleep.

Work, sleep, repeat.

Yep.

I'll probably go with sleep, look up stupid baseballers' names.

Sleep, look look up some more stupid baseballers' names.

Potato, potato.

Yeah, that's right.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Do keep your emails coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com and find us on SoundCloud.

We forgot to mention the last week, so I've had to make up for it with three mentions this week.

Bye-bye.

Happy Easter.

Sorry for your loss.

He's back again.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

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.