Bugle 186 – An Insult to Civic Society

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com.

The Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 186 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me, Andy Zoltzman, in of all places New York City.

Man has this place gone downhill since the Dutch left.

Sure there are more taxis but is that enough?

And also in New York City it's the Manhattan Mirthmaker himself.

The hilarity on the Hudson, the Bronx Boom Boomer, it's the bagel of destiny.

John Oliver.

Yes.

Hello Andy.

Hello buglers.

Andy, welcome to New York.

The gigantic apple.

You're in my house Andy.

You're in my house.

You are literally in my house.

You're staying the whole week in my apartment.

I had your your dog try to climb onto my head the other yesterday now andy you've been in new york for less than 24 hours according to my bagel tracker you've eaten 36 bagels so far i think i'm blending in with the locals

now uh i'm thinking andy of taking you to a batting cage at some point this week but i was going to do it maybe after you've recorded the stand-up show because if i take you before i've got a horrible feeling that you're going to appearing on american tv with two black eyes like a punk yield panda.

Yeah, or I'll just get picked up by the Yankees and, you know,

leave comedy behind.

I won't need it anymore.

It's pointless, it's a risk either way.

It's a risk, it is a big risk.

Now, welcome to any potential new listeners.

Apparently, we are iTunes episode of the week.

Podcast of the week, John.

Next week.

Podcast of the week.

The podcast episode of the week.

That means we are the greatest thing on earth.

At the moment.

For one week only.

For one week.

One week only.

Before...

Going back down to being one of the worst things in humanity.

So welcome to any new listeners.

I hope you enjoy this.

Statistically, many of you won't.

So

welcome and farewell.

You may already have left and thought, not for me, this is not for me.

But if you're sticking it out, then enjoy the ride.

Yeah.

Enjoy the ride.

So Bait, yeah, the bugle basically is the world's foremost source of news and information.

I'll say that's probably fair to say that, isn't it, John, would you?

Well, legally, no, that's not a fairly fairly fair.

No, no, that is probably an outright lie.

So,

and it features me and John every week, usually with an ocean between us.

but now there is no ocean between us, but I have strategically placed a glass of water physically in between us in the studio and you're just because I cannot interact with John without

a body of water of some size

in between us anymore.

So and this is Bugle 186 which means there's we've now done the same number of bugles John as the number of takes it took Clark Gable to get out the line frankly my dear I don't give a damn when filming Gone with the Wind.

143 times he went with frankly my dear I don't give a shit.

Gable was a stubborn man and insisted to director Victor Fleming that A, his red butler character would probably have said shit, not damn, and that B, he was clocking Gable and he'd do what he wanted.

Then we came a battle of wills, and neither man was prepared to back down and an increasingly exasperated Vivian Lee said, can we just get this bollocking scene in the can?

I left some belly pork in the oven and I need to get home.

When after 142 couldn't give a shits had been recorded and jettisoned, Gable tried one, frankly, my dear, I couldn't give a flying,

before being threatened with being edited out of the film completely and being replaced as a romantic interest by an adventurous collie dog called Lossie, Gable then went with a combination of frankly, sweet cheeks, I don't give a damn.

Then he went with, yeah, whatever.

Then, hey, let's cut through the froth, love.

Can I see your owl, did you just slap me in the face?

And frankly, Vivian, I don't give a damn.

What's wrong with that?

I'm just trying to bring some realism to this bullshit.

What's wrong with using a real name?

And on the final occasion, before he got it right, eventually, pull my finger.

Bye, new listener.

Bye.

Bye.

That will teach you new listeners.

Don't take recommendations from major companies when they don't know anything about you.

All they know is that you bought two Miley Cyrus albums, and so it might be that you're interested in this as well.

Well, they were wrong, weren't they?

They were wrong, John.

They were right in my case.

It's interesting talking to you, Chris, sounding like you're down a well for the whole episode.

But we've got you in a little well in the studio, lifting up the lid every time you need to speak.

I am actually in a well this week.

Good, good, I'm glad.

Could someone come and get me?

And something for new listeners to know, every week a section of The Bugle, being as it is an audio newspaper, goes straight in a bin in the manner of one of your traditional print newspapers.

And this week it's a book section, including a review of the new book from American Shock TV host Rush Limbaugh, an invaluable self-help guide, Are You a prostitute?

A step-by-step guide to working out whether you are or are not selling your body for sex for a living.

Fully updated and including a special additional chapter including, what?

Are you sure you're not a prostitute?

Absolutely sure, because I think you might be a prostitute.

Come over here and let me run my prostitute meter over you.

Yep, as I thought, you are a prostitute.

So I've got the book here.

John, let's find out if you yourself are a prostitute.

Have you ever used any form of birth control?

Yes, I have, yeah.

Prostitute.

Oh, have you ever used medicine?

Yeah, I have to admit, I have.

Prostitute.

You wanted to stay alive so you could do some more whoring.

Have you ever been paid money for work?

Yeah, I have.

Prostitute!

You take money for one thing, you've opened that moral vortex, John.

You're probably taking it for having thrumper dunks with someone as well.

Do you think women should have the votes?

I'm putting you on the spot here, John.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, oh, there's a man who's been married within the last year.

Prostitute!

Did we have state-funded birth control before women had the vote?

No, no, no.

Have you ever been or will you potentially ever be married?

Yes.

Prostitute!

All that shit about

sharing everything you've got.

If that's not a money or property for humping exchange, I don't know what is.

And final question: are you a woman?

No.

You're off the hook.

Oh, right up to that point, I felt like Julia Robertson, pretty woman, honey.

And you look like her as well, John.

Save me, Richard Gear.

Save me from myself.

I never knew you could carry a dress like that.

Top story this week, election roundup.

And I mean election roundup in the literal sense, because much of the election roundup news this week involves world leaders literally rounding up opposition activists before the election takes place and bundling them into a back of a van.

Russian election news now.

And the Russians voted for a new president this week, or as they would put it, they voted for a new president.

Woated.

Woated, Andy.

They can't say these.

Congratulations to Vladimir Putin, who staged a shock, come from the front victory to once again become president of Russia, meaning that he can now remove his hand and entire arm from the anus of Dmitry Medvedev, where it's been for the last four years, operating him like he was a piece of six-foot felt.

Mr.

Putin, that's not a puppet, that's an actual human being.

Nonsense.

This is no human being.

Isn't that right, Dmitri?

No, I am a human being.

Please take your hand very slowly and very gently out of my ass.

Shh, that's enough from you, Dimitri, or you can go back into your box.

No, please, I don't want to be in the box again.

I think I'll just have a drink of water while you tell the boys and girls about Russia's latest economic plans, Dimitri.

Help me!

Help me!

I'm an actual human being!

I don't want to live like this!

I don't want to live on this maniac's knee anymore.

Bye, new listeners.

Bye.

Astonishingly, Putin, in parts of Chechnya, only recorded 99.7%

of the vote, which has to be disappointing, John.

He thinks of himself as a quality Russian despot.

You've got to be looking at at least 120%.

He's admitted that he's lost touch with the public and has said that he is going to fully investigate why more people didn't vote for him at least twice.

And he's been,

This whole election's been looked at by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council for Europe, whose head is a Dutch politician by the name of Martinus Josephus Maria Cox.

But he is more commonly known by his nickname, Tiny.

Now, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no.

He's on Wikipedia.

I'm making this up.

Yeah, but you, as a human being.

Oh my god, it is.

You have access to Wikipedia, actually.

I've not touched his Wikipedia page.

Cox with a K.

I mean, admittedly, you know, the bugle for new listeners is,

you know, a high-end satirical organ.

You know, it leaves no hot potato unbuttered and it aims for the people in power who deserve to be taken down a peg.

But when a man is called Tiny Cox

and he is criticising Vladimir Putin, you have to ask, is he the right man for that job?

Is he going to scare Putin, John?

There were some surprising statements before the election was even over, Andy, with a Putin spokesperson at one point telling the BBC that Putin was a, and I quote, misunderstood liberal.

Wow.

If that's true, he has been massively misunderstood, Andy.

Is that implying that every order he's given over the last decade has been sarcastic?

Oh, let's definitely privatise the oil and gas industry and put it in the hands of a bunch of megalomaniacal tycoons.

Let's definitely do that.

Oh, I tell you what we should do.

We should assassinate a political rival by poisoning him in a London sushi restaurant.

Oh yeah, someone should get on that right now.

Who is going to break it to him that this ironic dictator character that's been doing for the last decade has been horribly misunderstood and he's going to be mortified.

Of course, he's not going to act that way.

He's just going to order the person who tells him that be thrown in jail.

But he doesn't mean it, Andy.

He's just being sarcastic.

That's the point.

Calvin Stalin had the same problem, didn't he?

Yes.

Yeah.

He was very much an ironic dictator, but he's way, way ahead of his talent.

He's more like an Andy Kaufman character than he was actually a mass murderer.

I don't know.

I'd never really go for cringe comedy.

And I guess when you slaughter 30 million if you're own people, that awkwardness just, I think for me, it just overweighs the humour of it.

An election monitoring group set up by protesters in Russia has refused to recognise the results of the election, saying that there was widespread fraud and that the result was, and I quote, an insult to civic society in Russia.

And there were reports of so-called carousel voting voters not only going around and voting a number of times but also doing so while riding elaborately painted horses it's just such a slap in the face to democracy Andy

I always thought people you know if you can be bothered to vote more than once then it just shows that you're committed to democracy right is that a crime yes it is but should it be yes

they reported this uh this group reported that putin actually only won 53 percent not 63.6 percent as reported officially Although it's worth noting that that 53% result would still have actually given Putin the victory anyway.

And he seemed very moved in his acceptance speech with tears running down his face.

Although it wasn't actually clear if those were his tears or whether they were the tears of a Russian dissident during interrogation that had been collected into a bottle given to Putin and that he had then drunk and was now weeping at how delicious they tasted.

It was a very emotional thank you speech that he gave Putin.

And he said he thanked everyone who'd elected him president he said I'd like to thank in particular Vladimir Putin for electing me president he made it possible I'm nothing without him and I will strive every waking moment to do what Vladimir Putin elected me to do was really touching yeah man's still that much in touch with his electorate that's very good to see the speculation is now likely to be what Putin is going to be like in his third term as president.

Will he make any reforms in concessions to a middle-class opposition movement that's been growing over the last year?

Or will he listen to his heart and his head and his balls and be the same tiger wrestling lunatic that the world has come to know and tolerate for years now?

In fact, one journalist asked the question this week: Will Putin be a pussycat or a tiger?

That's a difficult question.

And you know, if he's going to be a pussycat, it's going to be a very particular kind of pussycat, one that is hanging off your arm with its teeth biting through your flesh and with four laser cannons instead of legs.

Iranian election news now.

And Iran threw itself an election this week, but it was more of an election costume than the real thing.

It's like someone dressing up as a slutty nurse for Halloween.

It doesn't mean that you're actually a nurse, and it's actually pretty offensive to the thing that you're dressing up as.

This wasn't just democracy with a lowercase D Andy, it was democracy inside inverted commas with a question mark at the end of it, as well as a winking emoticon.

All the candidates in the Iranian election had to be pre-approved by Iran's Guardian Council, which meant that the contest was effectively between different conservative factions, largely those who support President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supporters of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini.

Basically, your choice was either conservative with an uppercase C or conservative with an uppercase K.

It was like choosing between full sugar Coke and full sugar Pepsi.

They both taste the same.

Both are extremely bad for you in large doses, but both undeniably give you a jolt of energy.

Is that how you sort of get yourself functioning in the morning now?

Just a little bit of extreme right-wing Iranian politics.

Yeah, because I'm just trying to kick coffee, Andy, and that's the only thing that really sparks me up.

Some hardline clerics just get you out of bed in the morning.

So would you have one sleeping with your dog in his little kennel?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a good idea.

Why not?

Yeah.

Just wake me up every morning with a call to prayer.

You just don't want your dog sort of

wakes me up every morning with a call to prayer.

So it's not a call to prayer, it's kind of a whine to dump.

Also, the subject of Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has entertained the world with his comments on the Iranian nuclear program, in which he said, ladies and gentlemen, if it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then what is it?

What is it?

That's right.

It's a duck.

Or it's Mick Jagger with a heavy cold and a minor dose of rheumatism, still cranking out satisfaction like he's a 25-year-old.

Awesome display by Netanyahu, but

he finished this sentence.

He said, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

But this duck is a nuclear duck.

And you cannot really put in any clearer terms the problems the world faces with Iran, John.

It is.

A giant nuclear duck.

Yeah.

The real concern is,

do the Chinese have a big enough pancake and enough enough plum sauce to deal with that nuclear duck?

I think the concern is that they're going to use that nuclear duck, Andy.

And, you know, if it has the range, they're going to fly it over to Israel so it can just take a shit on Jerusalem.

That's their worry.

I guess that is a thing.

I mean, what do you do with the duck?

I mean, even if Netanyahu is right.

And

this is not the first time an Israeli politician has used the duck analogy.

In 2000, the Speaker of the Israeli parliament, Avraham Berg, said,

Listen, let's not fool ourselves.

If it walks like a duck, if it talks like a duck, if it sounds like a duck, it's a Palestinian state.

I said, No, it isn't.

It's a duck.

It's a duck.

If he then fought out and say, oh, no, hang on, no, it is a duck.

Well, maybe he, if the Palestinian state is a duck,

maybe he was, this was, this was an olive branch.

He was really saying

this is just a duck.

This is

nothing to be worried about.

Unless, maybe, did God hate ducks?

I can't remember the Bible.

Was that on the good list or the naughty list?

Because Moses...

Oh, shit, no, that's Santa.

Moses

floated on the River Nile without being pecked at by a duck.

So they can't have been all bad.

That's true.

And in the New Testament, according to the recently discovered papyrus containing the Gospel according to St.

Lionel, Jesus did once kick off a parable by saying, sorry, I'm late, parablers.

A duck crapped on my donkey.

Nightmare to get it out.

I'm telling you, absolute nightmare.

Anyway, you didn't need to know that.

So let's get on with business.

So hands up, who likes being nice to people?

Well, have I got a treat for you today?

Right, strap in.

Once upon a time, there was a lovely little girl who was swept away in a tornado with her little pet doggy.

God, he was great, wasn't he?

But that could spin a yarn.

Benjamin Netanyahu, emphatically, Andy, gets the Bugle Award for quote of the week because it really was an absolutely incredible piece of speech making.

And in fact, that speech can be anything you want it to be in different forms.

It can be like a beat poem, Andy.

You see, Iran claims it's enriching uranium to develop medical research.

Yeah, right.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it?

That's right, it's a duck.

But this duck is a nuclear duck.

And it's time the world started calling a duck a dark

a duck

Or Andy or it can be like an epic speech in a $300 million American movie

You see Iran claims that it's enriching uranium to develop medical research.

You're right

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a a duck, then what is it?

That's right, it is a duck.

But this duck is a nuclear duck, and it's time the world started calling a duck a duck.

So let's get out there and let's kill those f ⁇ ing aliens.

The point is, it was an amazing speech, Andy.

It was an absolutely phenomenal speech.

Ehud Barak, the

Israeli defense minister, said about Yasser Arafat in 2002, Yasser Arafat happens to behave like a terrorist.

He looks like one.

He walks like one.

He quacks like one.

That is the key giveaway for all terrorists.

And

when they get nervous, isn't it?

They quack.

It's like a tick when they get nervous.

It is.

And I think it is frankly incredible that most airports now do not have...

quack detecting technology that you don't just suddenly jump try and surprise them just do a loud sound just a little little pond with bits of bread in.

Well, you know, as soon as anyone dives in, terrorists.

They can't resist it.

They cannot resist it.

So what are the options then for dealing with a duck?

I mean, you could shoot it or strangle it

or head-butt it in the beak.

But, I mean, should, in this situation, I know, you know, let's not rule out diplomacy with the duck, John.

Maybe we should be feeding the nuclear duck bread to earn its trust and take a bit of time to get to know the duck and understand its concerns.

And then once we've gained its confidence, just train it not to shit on our cars.

I think that's...

You've got to play the long game with the ducks.

But all through this, you haven't get the feeling that Israel is posturing like an Italian man with a new scooter and a passing lady to impress.

So the parliamentary elections on Friday in Iran were Iran's first national election since 2009, which you may remember ended with people rioting in the streets and Iranian protesters being attacked by besieged militia on motorbikes hitting people with sticks.

So not exactly a ringing endorsement of the whole process back then.

So this time they were much more careful.

The leaders of the opposition green movement have been under house arrest for over a year and were completely barred from taking any part in the elections.

The results were a win for the anti-Ahmadinejad Conservatives, those all loyal to the

Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameni.

And it has to be tricky for Ahmadinejad now to thread the needle of power when you have a supreme leader hovering over you.

It's like being the coach of a sports team, trying to get your team to listen to you while you have a turbo-supreme ultimate coach who claims he's been appointed by God right over your shoulder who can get rid of you any second.

Or it's basically exactly like being manager of Chelsea.

But the defeat for Ahmadinejad and his loyalists, including the fact that even Ahmadinejad's sister lost her election, means that he will face a more hostile parliament in his final 18 months in office.

And it really brings it home to you, Andy.

We have only one and a half years left of Captain Crazy, the Aradan arsehole, the man who put the mad in Ahmad Dinajad to enjoy.

Ayatollah Khamenei described Iran this week as moving into a more sensitive period in its confrontations with the West.

And he's right Andy.

Iran isn't going to be the kind of paint your bedroom black and listen to thrash metal disaffected teenager of confrontations now.

It's going to be the listen to Morrissey and read quotes from T.S.

Eliot and playing the acoustic guitar kind of disaffected teenager while developing nuclear weapons in a subterranean bedroom.

And the end could be coming soon for Syrian President Assad after Russia and China have finally stepped up to the plates today through the UN and said that Assad now has a maximum of 20 more last chances to stop slaughtering his own people.

Wow, they are talking tough.

So the end game is near, John.

Super Tuesday now

and America's Marathon Democracy Rodeo trundled on this week with Super Tuesday coming and going and doing absolutely nothing to bring this interminable primary contest to a conclusion.

Mitt Romney is still the front-runner, still the favourite to win the nomination, and still conjures up passion ranging from shrugs to half-hearted, limp high fours in even his most fervent supporters.

He's now claiming he can't lose, but at the same time, others are claiming he hasn't yet won.

It's a kind of ultimate sort of philosophical middle ground that he's in.

And there seems to be the whole Republican campaign seems to be skillfully crafted to ensure that they get the candidate they don't want, but in doing so, ensure that he is fatally weakened by the time they finally bring themselves to pick him.

It's amazing strategy.

How super was it as well?

So I didn't really follow it Super Tuesday this time.

Well, it's incredibly super.

Super is in the eye of the beholder, Andy.

Right.

It's turbo-democracy.

Don't mock what you don't understand.

There's some big news yesterday that Rick Santorum, who to these impartial eyes, untrained in the curious ways of American politics, seems to have been touched a little by the lunar stick, he had a massive celebrity endorsement boost from the man generally accepted to be the kingmaker in U.S.

presidential elections, the most influential political thinker of his era, the man who really pulls the strings that keep the giant metaphorical Uncle Sam Marionette waving cheerfully with a fixed and immovable smile on his heavily varnished face.

That's right, Santorum has been endorsed, John, by Philip Rivers, the San Diego Chargers quarterback.

Could this be the decisive moment in the Republican race?

Well, it could.

I mean, technically, it could be.

It's not likely to be by almost any parameters, but it could be.

I mean, Philip Rivers has got an absolutely huge arm on him, and he's got a real cannon for an arm.

So, you know, if if it if that affects the democratic process in any way, then sure, that's huge news for Santorum.

I mean, and do you think that Santorum's attitude towards

abortion and birth control and immigration probably helps a quarterback avoid getting intercepted in a what crunch play?

I mean, look, I'm not a professional American football player, Andy, or indeed a

professional football analyst, but I'm guessing that has absolutely no bearing on it whatsoever.

Right, even for Philip Rivers.

Even for the great Philip Rivers with his zero Super Bowl rings.

Right.

Because sometimes you see quarterbacks looking at notes on their arms.

I don't know if he's just got Santorum's policies on his arms that inspire him while he's playing.

That's what he does.

And then he shouts them out

to to

his offensive line just to make them angry.

33, 44, I hate women.

Newt Gigrich won the state of Georgia, but basically announced that he's far too much of a dick to pull out at this point.

He didn't use those exact words, Anthony, but he used all the separate sounds for those words in other words.

So I just rearranged them into a statement for him that made much more sense than what he actually said.

Rick Santorum, as you mentioned, won a handful of states, but crucially, narrowly lost Ohio to Romney,

meaning that a whirlwind of democracy basically left everything exactly as it had been before the whirlwind struck.

And you could see the visible irritation in the journalists who covered Super Tuesday all night.

They were annoyed that it was taking results so long to come in, annoyed that they were going to be there until two in the morning, and were complaining that they were having to cover all of this.

To which you wanted to look at the TV screen, Andy, and then start shouting, No one is making you do this.

No one is forcing you to spend six hours of live television reporting on something that isn't really happening yet.

You are bringing all of this on yourself.

In fact, there are incredibly interesting things happening all over the world that you are actively ignoring at this point.

The Middle East is undergoing fundamental change.

People are dying on the streets of Syria.

America's own soldiers are being shot at as we speak.

And you've chosen to embed a reporter not in Afghanistan, but in the Oklahoma caucus, where he currently seems to be watching retirement-age age volunteers count up different coloured coins and look bored.

Well, you bored yourself, and in doing so, you've bored everyone else.

This is your fault.

You did this.

No amount of holograms of delegates and 3D glasses so that bar graphs of voter turnouts can reach out of the TV and slap you in your face is going to make this a worthwhile use of time or resources for a news network run by actual adults.

Rather than looking at looking at exit polls of Tennessee primaries, how about looking at yourself in the mirror for 15 full seconds and asking yourself where the 20-year-old journalism student with hopes and dreams of quality reporting is?

I'll give you a clue.

That 20-year-old is dead.

Take that, the American news media.

Take that.

Foreigners in France news now and President Sarkozy of France has finally come round to the long-held British view that there are too many foreigners in France.

And as the French election approaches and Sarkozy is under pressure from the socialist candidate who is leading him in the poll to Françoise Hollande,

how's my French accent, John?

I think it was suitably offensive.

It's been a while.

He seems to have swung hard right, Sarkozy, to try and pinch votes from the National Front, whose leader, Marine Le Pen,

also caught a controversy this week by claiming that all meat in Paris was halal.

To which the meat industry replied, actually, no, it isn't.

And Le Pen said, yes, it is.

And that seems to be as far as

the debate got, John.

And Sarkozy has also kind of weighed into this, saying that it's wrong that all meat in Paris is halal, even though it clearly isn't.

And

it seems that France is following the rest of the world in fantilizing its democracy to spectacular levels.

But this debate about halal meat, I don't fully understand, because, you know,

is it so wrong if all meat was halal?

Because I had an elderly relative who used to go to church, but whose husband, also by coincidence an elderly relative of mine, was a fully convinced atheist.

Now when he died, and contrary to his explicit wishes, she had him buried in the local church.

And her logic was, well dear, if he's right, it doesn't make any difference.

And if it's wrong, it might do him some good.

So in fact, our government should be forcing us to eat nothing but halal and or kosher meat, preferably both simultaneously.

Personally, I'll try to cover all bases by eating halal hot dogs shaped like the Pope while saying oy vé.

I think I'll be all right.

Elections always bring out the true colours of candidates, Andy, and so often those true colours are a kind of industrial sludgy hue with a disgustingly oily residue.

And as you mentioned, French President Nicolas Sarkosi is facing a real struggle to win re-election.

He's trailing heavily in the polls behind the socialist candidate François Hollande and is competing for conservative voters with the far-right National Front Party led by Maureen Le Pen.

Incidentally, Marine Le Pen, by the way, is a biological argument for the theory that being a ⁇ is hereditary.

So

how has Sarkozy decided to win the people of France over?

Well, by saying that there are too many foreigners there, that's how.

And Sarkozy is no stranger to xenophobic race baiting.

He's done it numerous times during campaigns in the past.

In fact, xenophobic race baiting is his standard karaoke choice.

Not that there's a song called that.

He just asks for Spanish lullaby by Madonna and then talks over the top of the backing track about the dangers of immigration and the importance of keeping France French.

Don't go karaoke singing with Sarkozy, that's what I was saying.

In a TV debate, Mr.

Sarkozy himself, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, a fact that seems to be entirely lost on him, said he plans to almost halve the number of new arrivals in France if re-elected next month, and that he wanted to restrict some benefit payments to immigrants who'd been in the country for 10 years.

Nice guy, Andy.

Nice guy.

Nice guy.

Oh, and sorry, when I say nice guy, I actually mean Nice guy, the French city of Nice, which is famously full of arseholes.

I did a concert in Nice once.

Did you?

I was in a band when I was 12.

And we had all our money stolen from the hotel room while we were on stage.

What did you play?

I was a trumpet.

Yeah, and what did you, what, what?

Well, we played a load of kind of 1970s covers, kind of Credence Clearwater songs.

You deserve to have your money stolen.

12-year-old trumpet was 12-year-olds of fans.

Yeah, right.

We had two trumpeters, a couple of flautists,

three or four guitarists, five singers, basically anyone in the school who could do anything vaguely musical.

And we played this collection of

70s and

some classic 80s cock rock.

Final countdown was very much the signature.

The signature tune.

Feature section now, mathematics.

And there has been a controversy in a Washington, D.C.

charter school after a teacher was discovered to have assigned third-grade students a series of math problems around violent and illegal scenarios.

John, can I just put you up?

Maths.

Sorry, maths plus one.

One plus one.

One math plus another math.

Maths.

Maths.

Problems.

At first, the teacher said he'd been ordered to assign these problems, but it later turned out that he'd actually downloaded them from a free homeschooling website.

That sounds legit, Andy.

Why not?

An entirely unregulated website for homeschoolers.

I'd call that a valid resource.

The head of the school involved said, I was absolutely distressed.

It doesn't follow anything we do.

We're about character, excellence, and service.

And I found these questions to be violent and racist.

Violent and racist?

Sounds like someone just tried to make maths fun, Andy.

So violent and racist.

That's basically everything I was taught at school about British history.

That's right.

They're teaching the wrong lesson.

What's even better is that apparently the teacher in question is a minister as well.

So let's take a look at the questions in question, shall we?

Here's one.

I was sleeping one night when a hungry vampire sucked 3,652 litres of blood from me and 1,865 litres of blood from my little brother.

How much blood did the hungry vampire drink that night?

Now, I mean, that seems fine.

A bit violent, maybe, but nothing too bad.

A slightly worrying amount of blood being sucked.

But, you know, I guess it's all in cartoon fun.

Yeah, I mean, you've got got to do maths.

Yeah.

You've got to link it up with a biology cell.

Sure, surely.

Sure, exactly.

And after all, Sesame Street uses a vampire to teach children about counting.

It's just that vampire doesn't do that by sucking 3,500 litres of blood out of a six-year-old.

But, you know, still, not too bad.

Let's try another one.

Question number two.

I took a nap in a bog one day and woke up screaming.

We've all been there.

3,796 leeches, 2,910 fleas, and 1,044 vampire bats were stuck to my bald head, drinking my blood in ecstasy.

How many bloodthirsty bloodsuckers were dining on my head?

Okay, that's a bit weird, Andy.

We're now in difficult territory.

There seems to be a bit of a bloodbath going on in these maths problems.

It's like a mathematics course designed by Wes Craven.

There is a significantly much higher body count than you normally expect from a math test.

Because usually what you get is: oh, a train travels at 35 miles an hour.

Liverpool is 156 miles away.

How long will it take the train to get to Liverpool?

And not.

A train travels at 35 miles an hour.

Liverpool is 156 miles away.

The train hits a bus carrying 64 people, all of whom are severed in two and whose blood covers the wheels of the train, making go two miles an hour faster.

How long will it now take to get to Liverpool?

But hold on.

Now the train's going faster, it's unable to stop in time and slams right into the platform in Liverpool, where 314 people are standing.

How many of those people are critically injured?

It's another question.

John's father gave him 1,359 marbles on his birthday.

That's fine.

John swallowed 585 marbles and died.

That is not fine.

Nine of John's friends came to his funeral the next day.

John's grieving father gave the remaining marbles to John's friends in equal numbers.

How many marbles did each friend get?

Okay, that teacher is a serial killer, anyway.

That is also, why not?

I mean, if you're going to do that, at least get...

I mean, sure, you can get the 585 marbles back out of the kid.

Give his friend something genuine to remember him by.

Brian, a brave member of a SWAT team in California, had a terribly busy week last week.

He had to work for seven whole days.

He killed 163 terrorists, 296 murderers, and 206 arsonists.

Is this real?

How many criminals did he kill on average each day?

Is that true?

Yeah.

Oh, my.

Well, I mean, it's true.

It's on the website of the homeschoolingparadise.com if you want.

Rich entertainment and actually some quiet testing mathematics.

Let's give this website its duty.

Let's not bury the lead here.

These are not easy problems.

I mean the problem is that, you know, if you take this might explain some of the excesses of Californian policing over recent years.

111 murderers broke into my house because they wanted to steal my maths worksheets.

Luckily, I had a bulldog, a box and a mastiff to protect me.

My ferocious dogs killed all the murderers.

My brawny boxer killed 90 90 more murderers than my sleepy bulldog.

My massive mastiff tore apart thrice as many murderers as my boxer.

How many murderers did each dog kill?

Here's another one, buglers.

Uh-huh.

Do send your answers in.

Sally had between 35 and 60 ugly bearded men who wanted to marry her.

She finally told them to arrange themselves in groups of eight in her garden to help her decide.

However, there were five men left over.

She tried again and told them to arrange themselves in groups of six.

This time there was one hysterical man left over.

She married the hysterical man out of pity and told the rest to get lost.

How many men to me?

How many men wanted marriage?

To me, that just sounds like the plot of quite a good

buddy movie.

Yeah.

Either that or it's, you know, the next absolutely gigantically successful American reality show, I mean,

hysterical men

train to Liverpool, four hours, 31 minutes.

Your emails now, and we have an email here saying, Dear Chris, just, whoa, just dear Chris.

Well, I hope you are alone while you are reading this email.

If Andy is with you, just whistle and pretend you're doing something else so that you don't tip him off.

You are not safe.

I repeat, you are not safe.

Nobody is safe from these monsters.

Well, listening to the department, episode 201, which is a radio show that Andy and I did did

years ago.

That is series 2, episode 1.

Not episode 201.

No, that show was cancelled well before that.

Well before it.

I stumbled across Andy and John's Dark Secret.

There they explicitly say, you are allowed to kill buglers.

Five minutes, 40 seconds in.

I assume the whole bugle run has been an elaborate plan to create a following, a group of people who they've dubbed buglers and who are now getting ready to embark on their murderous spree against us.

It's obvious that you and Paul are the closest to these homicidal maniacs.

I trust that you two will be able to formulate a plan to take Andy and John down before it's too late.

Yours in terror and solidarity, Rodir.

P.S.

I suspect that Tom found out and was spared by Andy and John only after being agreeing to be exiled to Australia.

Please be careful.

Wow.

Well, busted, Andy.

Yeah.

We were setting up our own version of the Hunger Games.

That's right.

Gonna hunt humans down.

The ultimate sport.

And a barely listened to late-night radio 4 show that was wrongly cancelled.

For new listeners who are still listening, Chris is the current producer in London.

I don't think we can hear today because we're I am recording me actually here.

Oh, Chris is recording himself so we can hear him.

So he's the British voice been hearing.

Paul is

the guy here whose studio we're recording in in New York.

Where are you from originally, Paul?

Boston.

All right.

I was going to say...

Massachusetts.

Paul is the man whose studio we're recording.

He's sitting through the glass and fed us.

Chris, I think you should take this on board.

I came here today for the recording, and I'm presented not with just a humble cup of coffee, as you present me with, but with a full-on pasta dish.

Yes.

Outstanding kind of mushroom and tomato pasta dish

to set me up for the bugle recording.

So all I'm saying is raise your game.

Raise your game when I get back.

F you, Paul.

You meant to treat him like the

divide and conquer.

And Tom is the former producer who skipped off to us to the wrong hemisphere a couple of years ago.

The fact that I'm here and Paul and you are both together with Paul means I'm not quite sure if it's me or Paul who needs to be most worried right now.

But we did say, we did definitely say you are allowed to kill buglers.

Yes.

In

what turned into a very amusing Winter Marsalis joke.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

So do keep your emails coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

And don't forget that you can find the podcast on SoundCloud, easily the greatest hosting device on the internet, I'd say, John, wouldn't you?

Yeah, I mean, it's the only one I've heard of, Andy, but maybe that's because.

You don't need to hear about any others.

Sport now, and as John suggested earlier in the show, things have been happening at Chelsea after their young Portuguese manager, André Villas Boas, was sacked by Roman Abramovic after about nine months in charge and he became, I think, was the sixth manager that Abramovich has sacked in about six years.

He's announced today that in the four days since he sacked Vilas Boas, he has already sacked five more Chelsea managers.

He announced in a press statement, I've sacked ex-Italy boss Marcello Lippi and ex-Barcelona boss Frank Reichard, plus three others, without even appointing them.

I've had a phenomenal week.

And the Valencia boss Unai Emery has denied that he is interested in being sacked by Chelsea.

He said, I'm happy not being sacked at Valencia.

Villas Burris himself has admitted being sacked by Chelsea too early in his career.

He says, with hindsight, I should have gained more experience not being sacked by someone else before being sacked by Chelsea.

And also in football, a question from the homeschooling website that Rangers Football Club appear to have taken particular heed of.

It's a maths question, all about football.

What is 10 million minus 20 million?

Is it A?

30 million?

And that is the only option.

That appears to be the economics radis has been run on.

And many other football clubs.

So that's it for this week's New York Bugle.

I'll have some gigs in New York if you're around in this coming week.

It'll be interesting to see how smoothly this goes, Andy.

When are those gigs?

And where are those gigs?

Well, there's a list on the Bugle website, the Bugle Podcasts.com.

Andy.com.

The internet's been coming for 15 years now.

But you know,

the dot-com bit just seems kind of passe, doesn't it?

There's a full list on the Bugle website.

I'm doing a gig at the Upright Citizens Brigades on Wednesday.

Yeah.

And at the Duplex on Thursday.

And some club gigs also.

But do check for details.

And hopefully we'll see some of you at John's filming on Saturday.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Any further questions, John?

I've got nothing, Andy.

What else have you got in store for me for my New York week?

Apart from the batting cage.

Batting cage,

we'll probably get a burger somewhere, Andy.

And the rest of the time, we're going to be skateboarding.

Awesome.

Excellent.

You've got a half pipe in your flat, haven't you?

Heaven is a half-pipe, Andy.

Testify.

Skate or die.

It's in the book of Leviticus.

Or as is going to be the case this week, skate then die.

Thanks for listening, buglers.

We'll see you.

No, we won't see you.

We will talk at you next week.

Bye.

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.