Compromised to a permanent end

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

And welcome to issue 152 of The Bugle, the world's leading um uh what's the word thing.

The world's leading thing for the week beginning Monday, the 9th of May, 2011.

I'm Andy Saltzman, and I'm in London, UK, where yesterday the British people were given the opportunity to grasp their democratic nettle and bend it to their own will.

And they rose as one in glorious democratic defiance and said,

a bit stingy, the nettle.

Don't want it.

Leave me alone.

And in New York City, the city where polar bears fear to tread out of basic self-preservation, it's the man who discovered for the world that the difference between a romantic gesture and a bomb hoax is often a tone of voice.

There's something special under your pillow.

It's the wizard of wit,

the magus of the mirthsome, the sorcerer of satire, the bomo of big laughs, the shaman of sharp gags, nearly done, the hoongan of hilarity, the necromancer of nice material.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Well, how was your week, Andy?

Fun?

A lot of fun?

Well, sensational, mate.

Really?

Love a week with a

major hit.

But

keeps the news busy.

I did a

for the first time in and the last time in my life I hosted an award ceremony this week and

I know those on those words don't sound right coming out of my face even now.

It was for the ethical corporation awards which are very

very worthwhile awards trying and have

you know it's a part of a campaign that's sort of pushed some of the world's biggest companies into

putting more effort into corporate ethics.

And

I had to do 10 minutes of stand-up before everyone's dinner.

It doesn't seem like that big an ask, Andy.

10 minutes.

10 minutes.

Ten minutes and jokes.

Should be fine, right?

Should be fine.

Should be fine.

But it turns out that high-ranking executives in companies with one-eye on ethics don't really go for my shtick, John.

And they don't really go for it in a very kind of silent, backed-to-the-stage kind of way.

And

yeah,

I've done two corporate gigs in my life now.

One with you, John, in Huddersfield, I believe it was.

It was Harrogate.

It was a Harrogate.

It was in Harrogate.

It was somewhere beginning with Hutt.

And this one was a good thing.

I think it's fair to call that a complete disaster.

So I'm now 0 for 2 for my lifetime career in corporate gigs.

0 for 2, John.

And at the end,

it'll be a struggle.

And, you know, they just about tolerated my stand-up because it didn't last very long.

And sat patiently through the awards ceremony and at the end I said now often when a comedian has struggled at a gig

he will take the piss out of the audience for what they do with their lives but clearly here that wouldn't be entirely appropriate

and there was a sort of murmur of approval

that's where you got him that's right seceding the moral high ground

So this is the bugle for the week beginning Monday the 9th of May, meaning exactly now 200 years since Napoleon Bonaparte invented break dancing whilst trying to explain military tactics to Marshal Ney on a large floor map.

And it's Bugle 152, which coincidentally is also the attendance at my Edinburgh Fringe debut show in 2001.

Now, 152, you might think, is not bad for the first night of a debut show at the Edinburgh Fringe, but those that 152 broke down into one famed hunter, five people who worked for my management team, and the two people in the show, namely me and John.

onwards and upwards onwards and upwards John

and as always the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week this week a special commemorative one off you and your compound section how to turn your regular suburban dwelling into a domestic fortress simply put up a fence cancel your internet and don't order pizza in bingo

Well, I think it's pretty clear that one story has been understandably dominating the news this week, which is why we're devoting devoting this entire episode of the Bugle so far to our top story this week: Ding-Dong, the is dead.

Bada-boom, boom, boom.

Another bites the dust.

Shot in the eye, and you're to blame.

You give

a bad name.

This is not so much a tribute episode to Bin Laden as a special eulogy to the big man.

Andy.

Andy.

I'm glad you enjoyed that.

Yeah, I did thoroughly enjoy it.

I expect to see that in a dictionary near me within two years.

Andy, you ended the last bugle by saying that after the royal wedding, the world had nothing to look forward to anymore.

And while yes, Saturday in itself was quite boring, apart from Chelsea tightening the gap on the Premiership title race, you have to admit that Sunday really delivered.

What with that whole killing of the most wanted terrorist on the planet thing?

That's right.

Osama bin Laden, the former leader of al-Qaeda and former living inhabitant of the planet Earth, was forced to surrender both of those titles around the time that a bullet developed a very strong attraction to his face.

And he was a tall, handsome man, bin Laden Andy, but I have to admit that I always thought that he'd have looked even better if he'd considered getting his left eyebrow pierced with a bullet.

And I I think I was right about that.

I think his face was successfully accessorised with a piece of high-speed, pointy metal jewellery.

It's funny old world, though, isn't it, John?

Because last week, most wanted man in the world.

This week, a seriously malfunctioning submarine.

And fish food.

So, yeah, it just goes to show, upon slender threads.

So, you know, he's gone from, you know, he's the leader of the world's most tedious minority interest pressure group, a man five times voted least cuddleable dude by Touchy Feely Monthly magazine, a man commonly known as the rowdy Saudi, Terry the Terrorist, the Mighty Douche, the Tora Bora Law Ignorer, and the Angry Turnip.

He had his clogs forcibly popped by American special forces.

And I do wish that Barack Ababa had used those words.

Yeah, we have

popped his clogs.

It certainly feels like a much more pleasant globe to live on this week without bin Laden living on it too.

It's like when a terrible neighbor moves away and property prices in adjacent properties automatically go up.

By dying, Bin Laden has effectively gentrified this entire planet.

To prove this, upon news of his death, the stock market went up and oil prices went down as if collectively everyone agreed that things had just got slightly better.

As if the world breathed a sigh of relief and together muttered, oh good, that is good.

Now, I don't know where you were when you found out, Andy, I'm guessing you were asleep, but I just finished watching 60 Minutes and was checking in with the Mets Phillies game when it became clear that something very important was about to happen and the president was going to address the nation and after watching him announce that America had successfully located and killed bin Laden I started watching the news and then well I flicked through the channels a couple of hours later to see that the Mets were still playing the Phillies.

It was the 14th inning and they had resumed the game and most of the crowd was still there.

And not only were they still there, they were watching the game with complete concentration.

And I've got to say, as a sports fan, I find that so impressive.

Remember, this is a meaningless game at the start of May between one team which will challenge for the World Series and one that will not make the playoffs.

To care about that at all is a challenge.

To care about that when it's just been announced that bin Laden has been killed is fing incredible.

The CIA's most wanted man has literally just been assassinated and you are rooting for Raul Ivanez to get a base hit.

I think my favourite reaction from all this actually came from the Mets manager after the game because you know people in sports just cannot help themselves but speaking clichés and that's never more exposed than in moments of deep genuine significance.

And in the post-game press conference Terry Collins said this.

He said

well this is a good win for us and obviously a huge win for America tonight.

He should have carried on that thought.

You know, I think America really answered the critics tonight.

Many have said that, you know, to to go on a nine-year streak of not killing bin Laden was a slump we were never going to get out of.

But I, for one, had nothing but faith in us as a team, and I knew if we just kept swinging, kept focused, we'd get that hit.

As for the future, who knows what that holds?

I'm just concentrating on a home series against the Giants next week.

Thank you, no questions.

I think as well, Al-Qaeda had a press conference at which they said, well, there's a lot of positives we could take away from this.

Obviously, we're disappointed to lose Aussie, but we'd like to see it more as an opportunity for someone else to step up to to the plate and deliver.

Of course, the best place to have heard the news would undoubtedly have been Tampa, Florida, in the middle of the crowd of a live WWE wrestling event.

How do I know this?

That's a fair question.

Because I saw a clip on YouTube of a shirtless John Cena addressing the Tampa crowd to deliver the news at the end of a bout saying, I'm extremely proud after 10 months of being your WWE champion.

I walk out every night with hustle, loyalty, and respect on my sleeve.

It's worth pointing out that at that point he was sleeveless.

He went on to say.

He's got the names of his dogs tattooed onto his arm.

No, no, no.

The president has just announced, he went on to say, that we have caught and compromised to a permanent end Osama bin Laden.

Andy, that is magnificent rhetoric from the four-time tag team champion, inventor of the twisting belly-to-belly suplex, and self-styled doctor of thugonomics.

In fact, all of those things are true.

In fact, if I'm honest, I prefer what John Cena said to the president's speech.

Courts and compromise to a permanent end, that is linguistically sensational.

In fact, that phrase is not all that the president should have borrowed.

I think he should also have walked into the east room of the White House and said, I walk out every night with hustle, loyalty, respect on my sleeve.

I think he should also have done that shirtless in a pair of cut-off jeans, holding a wide microphone before leaving to rock music and fireworks.

I don't think anyone would have begrudged him that.

So Obama, of course, had been watching nervously in the White House on Skype, I think, supporting his troops by firing an imaginary pistol at his computer screen and shouting, Kapow, Kapow, as the troops went in.

And then announced the action to the watching world, creditably without using words like we got him, mission accomplished, or bag him or tag him, which is not necessarily something his predecessor could have been entrusted with.

He didn't even hold two fingers to his mouth and pretend to blow gun smoke away from them before re-holstering his fingers and winking at the camera, which

some might have seen as an opportunity miss.

And of course, you know, there's been some

newspaper reaction.

Obviously, quite overexcited.

Some of the headlines here: this

Al Krieda,

here's one with

that fake picture of Bin Laden's

headlines, Osama.

Also, this article looking at the damage to Al-Qaeda caused by the attack under the headline, Ain't No Cure for the Osama Dying Blues.

And

this one here, Man 54 Dies.

Which doesn't really give the full story.

But it deals with facts, Andy.

And not only is that what you want from print journalism.

And another tableau one, Death in His Vest.

I'll play on Death of the West.

Clemming been others and been pinged out whilst wearing a sleeveless t-shirt.

Revealing an unexpected tattoo of May West leaning over a bucket of soapy water.

Which I guess the subtext would be America is the Great Satan.

I'm guessing.

I'm guessing.

So, but

it was a kind of personal success for Obama, that seems to be how it's

been received.

The operation code name variously Operation Shave That Beard, Operation F that Shit, Operation Reese Witherspoon.

Not sure how I got that name.

I think I'll have to ask General Protraeus about that one.

So more details are trickling out as the story shifts from one day to the next.

It does seem now that

they found Bin Laden with a sock on each hand, putting on a a sock puppet production of Daisy Earth Dirty Dancing for his young relatives in order to inculcate in them a lifelong hatred of Western consumerism.

And when the Seals came in, he untangled Baby and Johnny and said in his characteristic monotone draw, Did someone order a takeaway and not tell me about it?

They also found in his children's playroom blackboards with the words George W.

Bush is a premium grade wiener written over and over again.

And another report suggesting that Bin Laden's last words were, Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

To which I'm guessing the Navy SEAL said, it's kind of both.

Obviously, as you mentioned, newspapers around the world reacted the next day by plastering bin laden as the lead story all over their front page so credit has to go as as andy and my friend danny boy said to us to the daily express online who stuck with their gut andy and they ran the bin laden story second

behind the headline about prince william and cape middleton foregoing a prenup

wow

Listen, you've just got to give it to them, Andy.

It's as simple as that.

You have to really, really care about the royal wedding to lead with that two days after the wedding happened over the fact that Bin Laden was literally just shot in the head.

That is a royal wedding super fan right there.

Maybe it was the two are linked, John.

I mean, it seems clear that

the two are linked because on

Saturday night, Prince William and Princess Kate were whinging about not receiving a wedding present from the White House.

And then they received a card on Monday morning saying, happy wedding.

Harrods had sold out of dinner plates, so we killed Bin Laden instead for you.

I wonder if that's where Bin Laden's body actually is.

It's like when you have a cat and it kills a bird and leaves it outside your bedroom door as a kind of thank you.

I wonder if they woke up in the next morning to see the corpse of Bin Laden lying in front of them.

Oh, that's lovely.

Isn't that nice?

Takes me back to the morning after my wedding.

Let's not delve into that.

And there's also this kind of slew of conspiracy theorists coming out due to the absence of a photo of the body.

And there's a great problem with conspiracy theorists.

Basically, give them a glass of water and they'll use it as proof that Elvis was drowned by the FBI.

Give them a photo of Neil Armstrong playing golf and they'll tell you it proves that the moon landings were just doctored photos of the astronaut standing over a three-foot putt, foreshortened to make the dimpled cratered ball look massive.

And I don't really trust conspiracy theorists.

But my theory, John, is that most of the utterly implausible conspiracy theories about major events that we've seen this week and that we've seen over the years are actually put out by our governments in order to discredit real conspiracy theories and mean that they are viewed as being the realm of nutcases and cyber looms.

So the whole thing is a conspiracy.

And incidentally, the 13th annual American Conference of Conspiracy Theorist had to be cancelled last month when no one turned up after everyone assumed it was just a ruse by the government to get them all in the same building.

But the conspiracies are that Osama is not dead, but any guesses, alive.

Didn't see that one coming.

And that America faked his death because of something or other.

The other th the other one that caught my eyes was that he'd been dead for years but kept in a freezer in the Pentagon.

And they staged his death after Robert Gates got peckish one night a little while ago whilst making plans for a potential invasion of Belgium and mistook Bin Laden's foot for an ice cream.

And so they, you know, they had to come clean.

So so we don't we just don't know, John.

We jo until until we have photos of the corpse, until every single person in America has been allowed to go up to Bin Laden's dead body and prod it with a stick to see if it reacts.

And we won't know for sure that he's dead.

That's the thing.

They have to let that happen.

Or stick a pickled onion in one of his bullet holes to see if he flinches.

We will not know, John.

And I, for one, cannot sleep at night without worrying if Bin Laden's gonna wander into my bedroom asking if he can borrow my first aid kit and have a glass of water.

I can't live like that.

And besides that, even if he is in the sea, well, I am never swimming in the sea again.

Because what if I swallow a molecule that used to be in his wang?

I can't take that risk.

Also, all fish is now not kosher

because it's entered the fishy food chain.

Eating any bit of fish now could turn you terrorist.

That's what we're talking about.

If you're on a shipwreck and you grab hold of some floating debris to save yourself and then you realise it could well be a bit of bin Laden, should you let go and allow yourself to drown with dignity?

I mean, there are so many unanswered questions, John.

Some of the initial crazy conspiracy theories came from the the first White House press conference when Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counter-Terrorism John Brennan had said, Now we can say with 99.9% confidence that this was Bin Laden.

And the follow-up question from Chip Reid was, why not 100%?

And the obvious answer is, well, DNA issues mean that 100% match is incredibly difficult to achieve when you're testing against samples from relatives rather than the subject in question.

And the slight hysteria after this made me think of when I was at the super collider in Switzerland a while ago, and they'd been asked by journalists whether or not there was a 0% chance of the super collider causing a black hole that would destroy the planet.

And the scientists had pointed out that, well, in science, you can never say absolute zero, but there is absolutely no way that that's going to happen.

And that had been reported by journalists as scientists admit they may blow up Earth.

So the scientists in Switzerland had officially been told, even though it's scientifically inaccurate, just say zero.

Just say zero.

These idiots cannot handle accuracy.

Just say zero.

And the same could be said here.

Just say 100%.

I know that's not 100% correct, but just say it anyway.

Because if it isn't him, it's not like you've covered yourself from consequences anyway.

If it turns out not to be bin Laden after all, people aren't going to say, well, to be fair, they did say there was a 0.1% chance that it wasn't him.

I don't think we can be too angry about this.

The other theory during the rounds that was also on the Daily Express website is in fact that the American forces were not involved at all, and that Osama was, in fact, indirectly slain by Princess Catherine by looking so radiant last Friday, she snuffed out all evil, causing a bullet to spontaneously fire itself into Bin Laden's face.

So

that's the power of British royalty, John.

You cannot, you just can't fight that.

You cannot fight it.

He was basically killed by that dress.

And her sister's ass.

Oh, oh, Pippa.

Oh, oh, Pippa.

She's become a Facebook hit, by all accounts.

Yes.

Oh, Pippa.

Britain's greatest exporter of the third millennium.

The key questions now, other than wanting prurient details on exactly how bin Laden was killed, seem to revolve around Pakistan.

And it turns out that the compound bin Laden was living in was actually only 900 feet from the most prestigious military academy in Pakistan.

And that really does look bad.

He was hiding in plain sight.

And to be fair, to be fair, I distinctly remember the Pakistan Secret Service had said that they'd looked absolutely everywhere 1,000 feet and further from their major military bases.

I didn't think much of it at the time, but that qualification does now seem seem kind of important.

But it really is incredible.

This base is the equivalent of West Point in America or Sandhurst in Britain.

So it turns out that when the military elite were gazing out of a window there, wondering where he was, they were actually looking right at him.

And this seems even worse than when it turned out that Bosnian warlord Radovan Karadich had just grown a beard, put on some big glasses and had been wandering around in plain view, giving public lectures as an alternative medicine expert.

Bin Laden was apparently living in the compound for six years, Andy.

Six years?

How do you miss those signs?

The compound itself was eight times bigger than any of the surrounding houses.

It was built very soon after September the 11th, 2001.

There was razor wire and security guards yet apparently no one knew who was living inside there.

Bin Laden even modelled for their local life drawing class Andy.

If only they hadn't been too embarrassed to look up at his face, they'd have seen him sitting right there.

And you know what?

Even that's no excuse, because apparently, weirdly, his penis actually looks a lot like him

but uh yeah it's kind of embarrassing isn't it I mean I guess it's inevitable if it turns out the world's most wanted man has been living in your country in a massive house near a military academy in a large town questions will be asked John and eyebrows will not so much be raised as catapulted off the tops of foreheads before being replaced with a heavy frown drawn in an indelible marker pen and it is going to put a lot of strain on the US

relationship.

And

much more concerning from my point of view, it's not really going to do any favours for the cause of Pakistan being allowed to play domestic Test cricket again.

It's really probably put that back at least another 18 months.

It's very sad.

Very sad indeed.

In fact, talking about cricket, CNN's Nick Robertson

reported that when children, when local children hit a cricket ball over the compound wall and asked if they could go and look for it, they were told by bin Laden supporters to go away and were given money for a new ball instead.

So he was even stealing children's balls, Andy.

Did that man have no soul?

And to offer money for the balls, you suddenly realise these local kids are culpable in this cover-up as well.

They should have done what any child's instinct should have been in that situation.

Realize that if you just keep hitting balls over the fence, you were going to get rich and then bombarding the compound with cricket balls.

It's a rock-solid child's business plan.

Apparently the man in the compound gave them far more money than it costs to buy a single cricket ball to make those kids go away.

So just use the money to buy two balls, hit both of them over, use that money to buy four balls, hit them over, and so on.

The fact that the children didn't do that doesn't make sense, Andy, and it's suspicious in itself.

I think the local children must have been complicit in hiding him too.

This whole thing stinks.

Although, it does show that bin Laden was doing his bit to spread cricket to the local community.

So, you know,

every cloud, John, every cloud has a silver lining.

Another piece of good news is that apparently, along with killing bin Laden, the SEALs also managed to seize a number of computers and hard disks with a great deal of information on them.

One White House official reportedly said to a journalist from Politico, Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?

And not only is it going to be interesting to see the financial records of al-Qaeda and any planning that bin Laden may or may not have been involved in, it'll also be interesting to see what's in his iTunes folder, Andy, or, you know, if he had any apps, maybe extremely angry birds.

That might be something he's interested in.

Most of his music was just Debbie Gibson, apparently.

Big fan.

It would get him pumped up for jihad.

Also found in the compounds,

and I don't know how it's going to be tough for estate agents to...

I don't know how they're going to...

I guess there's an opportunity for redevelopment.

But also found two buffaloes.

And I guess, you know, a man, no matter how naughty, and I think we're all agreed that Bin Laden was one of the naughtiest boys in the world, a man must have access to quality mozzarella.

And I think that's what this is, Sean.

Also, a cow and 150 chickens.

And this can only mean one thing, John: that the people in the Bin Laden compound have been entertaining themselves with chicken races.

And the fact that Bin Laden was found

with $450 of cash sewn into his clothes.

So just say, he's had a couple of big wins recently.

Big wins.

I think that would have shown that America had already rendered Kim completely incapable to be leader of Al Qaeda if he was wasting his days taking part in chicken races.

And in that case, I'm sure they were just watching him from drones going, oh, look at this.

They're doing another chicken race.

Is it wrong that I just find this sad?

I'm starting to feel sorry for him.

But he's been a recluse for some time, John.

You say five years he's lived there.

Constrained by the fact that I guess he was the world's most wanted man, and also by the fact that with his CV, finding a new job would have been at best problematic.

So, Mr.

Binlon, you say you love working as part of a team and describe yourself as a highly skilled organiser.

But we are really looking for someone who has specific experience in cosmetics and retail and hasn't spent the majority of his career trying to destroy the Western or all it stands for.

But I'll I'll keep your details

on file.

And no, you cannot do unpaid work experience for us.

Please leave our office.

All attention now turns to who's going to be the new number one for al-Qaeda.

They've issued a statement saying they are in no rush to appoint their new CEO, but will seek an experienced, internationally known figurehead.

Joe Torre, the former Yankees and Dodgers boss, has ruled himself out of running for the Al-Qaeda hot seats.

He said it's not right for me at this stage of my career.

Al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is hotly tipped by the bookies.

And while he distanced himself from the previous incumbent, saying, in retrospect, Aussie was a nightmare boss, and his PR skills were at best basic.

The England and Wales Cricket Board moved swiftly to tie down their coach, Andy Flower, to a new contract.

So, I mean,

it's going to be interesting to see how it all pans out, John.

Yeah, could be musical chairs around the world to see who is jockeying for that position.

But first off, Andy, let's admit, Bin Laden is not going to be easy to replace as head of al-Qaeda.

He is the poster boy of hate.

In fact, if al-Qaeda ever decides to do something like Mount Rushmore, one day we may see bin Laden's face carved into the side of an Afghanistan mountain before being immediately dynamited by Islamic extremists for being a false idol.

And the point, this is certainly going to be a fascinating campaign to watch.

So who are the top candidates?

Well, as you mentioned, the favourite seems to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born surgeon who was Bin Laden's closest lunatic.

In many ways, he's the safe choice for Al-Qaeda.

He's very much the establishment candidate, years of experience.

The concern seems to be that, as they say, he's notoriously lacking in charisma.

But when did fronting the most dangerous terrorist organisation in the world have to be about personality, Andy?

The fact is,

symptomatic of everything that's wrong in modern politics.

We've become so shallow with the way that we treat people.

The fact is, you judge a terrorist on his record, Andy, and this guy's a serious candidate.

His opponents, sure, they might argue that he's made some very big campaign promises that he might struggle to keep.

He said recently American streets would run red with blood.

Really?

All the streets, Al-Zawahiri, I've crunched the numbers.

I just don't think he can back that claim up.

And isn't that exactly the kind of pie in the sky talk that al-Qaeda needs to move away from?

Anyway, candidate number two, if not Al-Zawahiri, likely seems to be Amwar al-Awalaki, an American citizen, turned radical cleric living in Yemen, who's been placed on the CIA's official shoot-to-kill list.

So he's certainly qualified.

He's a much younger candidate, Andy.

He speaks perfect English.

He claims that he can activate the vital younger bloc and encourage them to blow themselves up.

Plus, he's American.

So it's going to be very hard for people here not to root for him in a way.

It's like cross-country skiing at the Olympics.

No one cares about it, but if Americans end up paying attention, they'll always end up rooting for the American there anyway.

Candidate number three, Saif al-Adel, seems popular.

Another younger man who has always seemed destined for terrible things.

In his high school yearbook, he was voted angriest at prom

and most likely to go on to run an international terrorist organization.

He made a real stir at his high school by apparently trying to ban the female volleyball team.

Now, in terms of outsider candidates who don't have a great deal of momentum to to them, CNN were talking yesterday about Abu Ala Al-Libi.

Now, the first thing to note about him is that he's actually black.

Is al-Qaeda ready for a black leader, Andy?

The old guard will say no, but younger people will say that the world is changing and al-Qaeda has to change with it.

Obviously, there are going to be questions around his experience as well.

He became famous for escaping from Bagram Air Base, but is that enough?

I'm not sure.

Maybe in a couple of assassinations' time he'll be ready for the big job but let's having said that let's not rule him out here let's not forget another young charismatic black man with a funny name who no one gave a chance about who rose to power on a wave of support yeah but yeah I don't think he should even be considered until he has shown conclusive proof that he was born a terrorist

and finally the the real outsider candidate seems to be Ilyas Kashmiri now if you've seen any photos of him I think I ate one of those the other day in a fancy restaurant

He has an extremely funny, massive beard and sunglasses.

So he's already wearing a disguise.

And I guess the key questions around him will be, is he ambitious enough?

He targeted the Eiffel Tower recently before the plot was discovered.

And sure, the Eiffel Tower is a landmark, but it's a very small landmark that doesn't have any people living inside it.

It's like targeting the giant doughnut in Los Angeles.

Is he aiming high enough to become leader?

Now, CBS did an early poll of who was the front runner in this race.

It's been on the news all over here all week about who's going to come up next.

And 3% of Afghanis said Al-Zawahiri.

2% said Anwar al-Awlaki.

4% said bin Laden was still alive.

And a whopping 91% said, sorry, I don't have a phone.

And a sign of how much this race is hotting up is that there's already some attack ads between the candidates circling.

One has a video clip of Al-Zawahiri drinking a can of Coke with the VO, Ayman Al-Zawahiri says he hates America, but apparently not enough to stop drinking Coca-Cola.

Does that sweet infidel sugar water taste good, brother?

Al-Zawahiri can't be trusted with a mini bar, can't be trusted with al-Qaeda.

Paid for by jihadis for a terrible America.

Now, often, John, when a high-profile person dies, the media suddenly comes out with stories suggesting they liked him a lot more than they did when he was alive.

But this didn't really happen on this occasion.

This wasn't quite the Queen Mother all over again.

And I think it's time now to look back at the life of Osama bin Laden.

Born in 1957, coincidentally.

the same month as the Canadian actress Shannon Tweed.

Now, if in their early years you'd been asked to predict which one of these two would become Playboy Centerfold and star of countless erotic thrillers, and which would become a global terrorist, fermenter of hatred, and bringer of destruction, you'd probably have replied, Ah, too early to say, but on balance, I'll say the girl will probably be the centerfold.

So maybe Bin Laden's destiny was always destined to be his destiny.

But thus it was that Osama and Shannon Tweed took very different paths, which crossed only very briefly when Bin Laden appeared as gas station attendant in Body Chemistry 4 Full Exposure.

If you watch the scene where Tweed

If you watch the scene where Tweed fills up her car at a gas station in the Arizona desert, you can see in the background a bearded figure shaking his fist, mouthing something about where Bill Clinton can stick himself, and holding up a placard saying Death Valley to the West with the word valley crossed out.

Tweed herself has no documented links to international terrorist cells, although she is married to rock legend Gene Simmons, front man of KISS, whose possible links to the FARC rebels in Colombia have never been investigated, and who has also never denied being involved in the Narodnaya Volya terrorist group who assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

Tweed is rumoured to have it had it written into her contract, then that's in her trademark erotic thrillers.

She would not have to do any topless scenes with convicted or suspected global terrorists, or play the part of a suicide bombstress unless artistically valid.

Bin Laden's Abotabad video in Gamestrom, ironically, contains no DVD starring Shannon Tweed, or at least the White House has not intimated that there were any there.

But they did find a pirated copy of Kiss's 1983 platinum-selling album, Lick It Up.

Read into that what you will.

But Tweed herself has never been seen in the t-shirt denouncing the radicalisation of young Muslims.

So I don't know what we can read into all this, John.

But anyway, Bin Laden does seem now to be set to be remembered as the third millennium's first major baddie.

He had

around 26 children from six different wives, which seductively clearly loved the chicks, more so than some of his public pronouncements might have suggested but his daddy married 22 times and had somewhere between 50 and 60 children which to me sounds like an extremely dangerous combination of indecisive and randy

according to an ex-squeeze of bin ladens he had a major thing for whitney houston

what no is that true please tell me that's some bullshit you made up it's true that an ex-girlfriend of his claimed this but there are suggestions that she is bonkers

but apparently bin Laden was even willing to break his quotes colour rule to make Whitney Houston one of his wives.

But he went about trying to impress Whitney Houston in a pretty fing weird-assed way John.

Now I am no expert at seducing women but threatening to destroy Western civilization has never really worked for me even when backed up by a very expensive dinner and some mind-bending origami.

And yet it all could have been so different for bin Laden.

He was born into a mega-rich construction family, multi-billion dollar building empire, but he chose destruction over construction.

And one of his brothers heads the Saudi bin Laden Group, a global oil and equity conglomerate, and one of the world's largest construction firms grossing over $5 billion a year.

And on its website, in the backgrounds of the company, it says, in 1967, Mohammed bin Laden died.

That's Osama's father.

But his life's work was carried on by his eldest son, Salem bin Laden, and, quotes, a selected group of his brothers.

Now, I think the words selected is very important there.

They have made it clear that's not all his brothers involved.

Definitely, some brothers did not make the cut.

And it seems that Osama was one of those brothers.

So, I guess in conclusion, what we've discovered from this is that I set out to write an obituary.

I got distracted by the Shannon tweed thing and didn't finish it.

Your emails now, and this one comes on the subject: Dreams Can Come True to John, Chris, and Andy, in order of who is most likely to be able to pull off a windmill dunk.

Again, is that ascending or descending?

You know, I've been working on my game.

I've got

shapes.

Anyway, the burning question this week, above all else, is not how much did Pakistan know, but has to be, has John Oliver got his Nostradamus on?

It would have been easier to gloss over the throwaway comment that John made last week in Bugle151 about a recurring dream had it not turned out to be so portentous.

During the broadcast, he casually mentioned a recurring dream he has.

This dream was not of scantily clad ladies or public speeches made while naked, but of a seal shooting him with a paint gun.

Ring any bells?

Now, if someone can turn some 16th-century gobbledygook about two brothers torn apart by chaos in the city of God to predict 9-11, there is not too much of a leap to think that the performing

fish-eating symbol to the highly trained square-jawed killing machine that is a US Navy SEAL, the paint gun to an M60 assault rifle, and the stinging thud of the paint-filled plastic ball on the ass to a fatal high-caliber bullet in the face.

Can anyone truly say John Oliver is not some kind of new age seer?

I look forward to the people looking for greater significance in his crazed dreams where Kenny Douglas signs Chad Ochosinko to play in the hole behind Andy Carroll.

Yours truly, Scott Cooper, Glasgow.

Well, Scott, I'm not sure if Scott Cooper knows this, but Chad Ochosinko is actually a huge soccer fan.

Really?

Yeah, in fact,

I can't believe I know this.

He tried out.

He's just been training with, I think, the Seattle Rapids.

Really?

I think that's right.

But he didn't make the cut.

Really?

As I heard it, he was also on non-contract terms with Mansfield Town as well.

So that's it.

We're going to extend the voting in the coat of arms for another week.

You can see them on the Bugles

temporary website, thebuglepodcast.com, for which I've had a lot of criticism for the slightly retro design.

Chris is very unimpressed.

It's because it's shit.

Alright, mate.

I've never designed a website before.

And the programme I've got is fing dreadful.

But anyway,

it's just

hopefully a useful portal for you to access the bugles.

But anyway, in the absence of the former bugle page.

But anyway, if anyone's not happy with it, they can go f themselves.

So, why does it always have to be about presentation?

Anyway, so but do keep your emails coming into thebugle at timesonline.co.uk with your thoughts on the world and your votes on the coats of arms.

And follow the Bugle Twitter feed at hellobuglers.

And come to my gigs next week.

Wednesday at the Udder Belly in London, Thursday at the EM Forster Theatre in Tunbridge, at my old school, John.

I'm returning to do a gig at my old school.

Oh, boy, that seems like a bad idea.

I'll look forward to hearing about that next week, Andy.

I'm expecting my old house master to be sitting in the front row with a loud hailer.

Yeah.

That's it, Buglers.

Enjoy the first full week in the post-era.

Bye-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.