Oil is running out, bring on the new stone age!

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to Bugle 93 with me, Andy Daltzmann, here in London and in New York City.

It's Mr.

John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers!

Welcome to the bugle, Andy.

Thanks, John.

Welcome to yourself.

Thanks.

That's touching of you just to say that.

Well, you know, about 45% meant it.

Really, that's well above average.

It is.

I don't know.

I've just had a coffee.

This week, Andy, I did a little thing on the daily show where I compared CNN to, and there is no nice way of saying this, goats.

Now,

it works in context.

Anyway, the point is, the guest that night was Secretary of National Security Janet Napolitano, who, as she was walking past me in the corridor on the way out with her Secret Service agent, said, I won't forget that for a long time, paused and then said, you goat.

It all went down so fast, I didn't really realise straight away what had happened.

And then I started thinking, well, I've just been called a goat f ⁇ by the Secretary of National Security.

Do I feel more or less safe knowing that the Secretary of National Security just called me a goat f ⁇ ?

And you know what?

I think I actually feel more safe, Andy.

I think I like the fact that she has that in her repertoire.

I think it shows just how far we've come from the last administration.

There is no way that someone like Attorney General John Ashcroft would ever have called someone a goat f ⁇ .

He'd have thought it, he'd have felt it, but he wouldn't have had the humanity to have said it.

In fact, I think we should go down a whole alert colour code for that and that alone.

She wasn't dressed as a goat at the time, was she?

Andrew.

Might have been a bit of a come-on, that's all.

It would be my honour.

Yeah, well, it's not really one you can turn down, is it?

She could have you killed.

Well, that's right.

Now I serve at the pleasure of the Secretary of National Security, Andre.

So this is the week beginning 19th of October 2009.

Holy shit!

The decade is nearly over.

Wow.

We're nearly 1% of the way through this shitty millennium.

We'll all be f dead before you know it.

Cheer up, mate.

I didn't have quite as exciting a week as that, John.

I wasn't called go f ⁇ by any prominent members of the British government that's for sure.

Not to your face.

Well exactly.

Brown does have that look in his face whenever he talks but he is slightly thinking that everyone he's talking to could be categorised as such.

We're recording on the 16th of October it's World Food Day for the 16th of October and in recognition of this this will be the first ever edible bugle.

So if you just play this into a loaf of bread, your bread will be 1% more nutritious.

And also to recognise World Food day and in solidarity with the world's hungry billions i will be on hunger strike for the duration of the recording wow yeah that that is more of a big gesture than buglers probably aware andy because you like to snack yep you will have a snack admittedly it's not quite as big a call as if brian wilson had said the same

how are you getting on with smile dear i'm just putting the fine little touches to it i really need a snack

so as part of world food day the un is dropping whole stilton cheeses over the starviest regions of africa and troops in the ongoing war between belgium and canada have agreed to put down their weapons and have a food fight instead

top story this week and oil We drank our milkshake.

We drank it up.

That's my Daniel Day-Lewis.

Have you seen There Will Be Blood, Undy?

Yeah, no, I haven't.

Well, I mean, that's in which case, I mean, that was probably completely inexplicable, that reference to you, wasn't it?

All right, it's on my list of films to watch, just below your one.

It is excellent, and I don't want you to then realize what a clever reference that was and you know, chuckle for five minutes and miss something important in the movie.

All right, but it's excellent.

Anyway, a new report has revealed that there is a significant risk the global production of conventional oil could peak and decline by 2020.

Now this has caused some panic because it turns out that 2020 is in most people's lifetimes and is therefore a very serious issue.

If it wasn't until a year like 2120 then that falls very much on the not-my problem pile and becomes a surprise gift to be unwrapped by future generations along with the issue of nuclear waste storage.

For a start Andy, whose fault is it?

that we're running out of oil.

Is it not the fault of animals, which are not dying and decaying quickly enough?

Come on antelopes, my new headphones need some shrink wrap.

Get down and break down.

See, you don't have to wait a few billion years for that.

It's mostly plant matter anyway.

Let's chuck a few animals in there, probably make your car go faster.

There you go.

Literally a bit of tiger in your tank.

You are not telling me that antelope oil would not be better.

You're not telling me that.

I think actually if you have any spare vegetables in your fridge, if you just get your heaviest friend to sit on them for 10,000 years, you might get a bit of usable oil.

It's got to be worth it.

We have to take personal responsibility.

Because the world's basic attitudes, John, towards this problem that a number of academics and economists have warned about for several decades now, the basic world attitude has always been, nah, it'll be fine.

It's a lovely day.

What are you complaining about?

There's always one miserable fly trying to shit in everyone's soup.

Has oil ever run out before?

No, so you can't possibly know what you're talking about.

People said the dinosaurs would never run out, and look at them now, everywhere.

Oh, sorry, I'm getting them mixed up with women.

But the point stands.

stands.

Exactly.

The UK Energy Research Centre study said that there is a consensus that the era of cheap oil is at an end.

The US Energy Centre responded by saying, La la la la la, I'm not listening.

La la la la la la la la la.

I can't hear you.

The UK Energy Centre in turn said, I said the era of cheap oil is at an end.

The US Energy Centre responded, oh, sorry, what's that?

I'm going through a tunnel.

The UK Energy Centre retorted, no, you're not.

You're sitting right in front of me.

There will be no more cheap oil.

And the US Energy Centre screamed, I didn't hear that, I didn't hear anything you just said, and attempted to escape by throwing themselves out of a fifth floor window.

This is standard response time.

Whenever the oil problem is raised, world leaders stick their fingers in their ears and start reciting the lyrics to the hit song Build Me Up Buttercup by the foundations.

As this transcript from a 2004 White House press conference reveals, Mr.

Bush, Mr.

Bush, what are you planning to do to secure energy supplies to America once global production declines?

And Bush replies, And worst of all, worst of all, you never call baby when you say you will, say you will, but I love you still.

Mr.

Bush, that's not really answering the question.

Is your foreign and environmental policy not sending America down a path of economic and cultural unsustainability?

Well, that's an interesting question.

Let me phrase my response in a slightly different way.

Baby, baby, try to find hey, hey, hey, a little time and I'll make you mine.

Hey, hey, hey.

I'll be home.

I'll be beside the phone waiting for you.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

Why do you feel me?

Feel me, I feel me.

I'm gonna come.

Oh, will you let me down?

You're gonna push me around.

I need you

more than anyone, baby.

You see?

Have you got your album deal yet?

It's catchy.

That's the point.

If you start, if any politician started singing that, even the most staunch environmentalist couldn't help but join in.

Why don't you, what are we talking about?

That's a great song, isn't it?

That's a great song.

One of the old-time grapes written by Mike Darbo.

Was he Manfred Man?

Tell me that that was off the internet and not actually out of your head.

I'm not going to reveal that to

my sources.

I think you've answered my question with that.

The new report also warns that most governments, including the UK's, exhibit little concern about oil depletion.

Well, for a start, no shit.

And for a finish, well, here's the problem.

We love oil, Andy.

We're addicted to it.

We like making stuff out of it, setting fire to it, putting it in our cars, and pouring it over our supermodels for high-concept avant-garde fashion shoes.

We love it.

It's only drinking for your next fashion shoe.

Oh, next GQ shoot.

Of course it is.

I'm going to wear a lovely dress and cover myself in crude oil.

I think if I was covered in crude oil, that probably the manufacturer of the clothes would imply that it didn't actually look worse than when I wore them for real.

The problem is also, like any addiction, you really can't see far enough to care about the long-term consequences.

If you said to a heroin addict, you're not going to like this, but I think we've peaked our production of opium and one day there will be none left, they're going to say to you, oh, that's interesting.

Why don't we have this conversation after I've taken all the heroin that's in the world?

Then you will have my attention.

Then.

So what will happen after peak oil?

Basically, demand for oil will outpace production.

The price will then shoot upwards like a woman's eyebrows in conversation with Silvio Berlusconi.

And then oil-based economies will collapse like a badly timed souffle.

And this could lead to a number of things, including increased resources conflicts.

And, you know, John, this has always been this way.

People always say, war's about the oil.

You know, this is not a new thing.

In the days before cars and heavy industry, petrol wasn't worth the ground.

It was still underneath at the time.

In the Middle Ages, the horse, of course, was basically the modern-day car.

And the Crusades were about getting access to the world's most plentiful supply of hay.

And as soon as Saladin and the hay cartels in OHEC yanked up the prices, Richard the Lionheart couldn't get his arse over there quickly enough.

But Jesus pretext was as smoky as screens get.

Of Of course cynics said the Iraq war was all about the oil but it wasn't.

As we know it was about democracy, giving democracy to the Iraqis.

But the Iraqi cabinet, democratically elected, was so grateful at being given the precious if slightly shop-soiled gift of democracy that they in turn very generously passed the draft of a bill to open Iraqi oil to Western companies for the first time since it was nationalized in 1972 by the 6'2 inch former genocide enthusiast Saddam Hussein.

Now this was a controversial bill a couple of summers ago and it was described by a journalist in the Asia Times as quotes nothing less than the institutional raping and pillaging of Iraq's oil resources which is a bit histrionic John because if there's one thing we know about the oil industry it is its scrupulous fairness in redistributing its wealth back into the communities whence it came.

That is why the people of Siberia own Chelsea Football Club.

And it must be a source of real consolation to old Arkady Gregoryevich as he comes back from another hard day at the refinery, sips on his nightly gruel, sits on what's left of his sofa, puts sky sports on and watched Andrei Shevchenko sitting on the bench for two years whilst thinking to himself, I paid for that, that's all the central heating I need.

That's right, the oil companies, Andy, very much practice trickle-down economics, but what is trickling down is urine onto the faces of the poorest people in the world.

The authors of this report also acknowledge that much of the data is unreliable due to the fact that countries and companies are notoriously reticent to talk about their oil reserves.

It's just not a topic of polite conversation, Andy.

It's all they say about dinner parties.

Never ask people about money, religion, or their oil reserves.

It's just vulgar.

It's like a country's penis size.

You wouldn't ask the highest-ranking male official of each nation to whip their schlongs out and flap them on onto the UN conference table.

Part of the attraction is the mystery.

Well, I don't know, John, bearing in mind what you've told us about your recent effort on the daily show.

It sounds like you're pretty much heading that way.

Stop it.

You must have asked Clinton at your special dinner.

I didn't not ask ask him.

Did you ask him in a physical way?

I just asked him with my eyes, with my stance, with my attitude.

And your tape measure.

Yeah.

The UK government, for instance, very rarely mentions the issue in official publications.

We are repressed even about our own oil production.

We just blush and stammer like Hugh Grant, like a cartoon Englishman in four weddings and a funeral.

Ah,

oil production.

Yes, well,

in the words of William Yeats,

one cannot have enough oil.

Yeah.

Look Look at Corgi over there.

Bye.

It's not just oil that's running out, John.

The World Wildlife Fund reports back in 2002 said that at the current rate of plundering, the Earth will be totally and utterly

by 2050.

I don't know if you have those exact words, but they might as well have done in their panda suits.

They claim a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humanity in the last three decades, and only 15% of that can be attributed to Jennifer Aniston's notorious Rampage of Devastation tour in 1999.

But since then, since that report came out in 2002, well, the world basically has responded by scratching its collective nuts and thinking to itself, yeah, we probably should do something about that.

Still, 2050, that's ages away.

So what are the solutions, John, I guess, when it comes to all these resources?

One solution, B, stop breeding so much.

That's not an option because, A, people like humping for whatever reason.

And B, the Pope says that's not allowed.

God, as we know, hates condoms.

He doesn't know why he's got a thing about balloons, too.

Anything that's too stretchy makes him feel queasy.

Apparently, Zeus was the same.

That's actually the best explanation for the Catholic's position on birth control I've ever heard.

God gets nauseous around stretchy things.

It's a phobia he's got.

He used to crack out an earthquake whenever he heard it.

That's that in cotton wool when it's pulled apart.

Oh dear.

So the worst case scenario, John, is basically war, famine, fire, pestilence.

Yes.

Basically dusting off their jockeys' gear and parading around the paddock like they're really mean business this time.

And also, you know, the fifth horseman of the modern apocalypse, a squeeze on the budget for TV panel shows.

And humanity will then be thrust into, quotes, a post-industrial Stone Age under this worst-case scenario.

Theory, all of which, I'm afraid, cast serious doubts over the long-term future of the bugle.

That really puts you in perspective.

I need it, John.

It's the only thing that gets me out of the house these days.

And let's be positive about this.

The Stone Age wasn't all bad, was it?

You know, men were men and women were hot.

Also, people didn't play their personal stereos too loudly in the Stone Age.

There was no Twitter.

That's true.

House prices were affordable.

They were.

Very affordable.

A lot of potential in a lot of those properties as well.

You could paint yourself blue and no one would bat an eyelid.

You know, they were much more open-minded about painting yourself blue in those days.

So, you know, I'm not sure we should be so negative about returning to the Stone Age.

You've made your fing point.

And we need to put this in context, John.

A recent report said that more than half of babies now born in the UK and other First World nations will live till there are hundreds.

Now, is that true?

That is true.

Yeah.

According to this report.

And clearly, bearing in mind these looming problems of the resources of the world, they might live to a hundred, but they won't want to.

Everyone's going to start seeing that King Herod was just slightly ahead of his time.

You would have thought by now, we might have done something about it.

But the problem is, John, we need to all collectively get off our asses.

And until now, we won't get off our own arse until someone else is getting off their ass as well.

And basically, the way the international community has dealt with the environment has been, you first, no, you first.

Okay, let's do this together.

Are you off your ass?

Okay, right, let's negotiate.

Let's do one buttock at a time.

One, two, three.

Hey, you didn't lift your buttock.

Well, I'm not doing it until you do.

Okay, let's hold each other's butts and push upwards at the same time.

One, two, three.

Afghanistan update now.

And, well, Andy, it's on every empire's bucket list.

Host an Olympic Games, have a pizza named after you, and get stuck in an intractable war in Afghanistan.

America just needs the pizza now, and then it can lie back until China takes over and celebrates a job well done.

Does America not have a pizza named after it?

I was thinking about that.

An American's deep pound pizza.

Yeah, that's not a pizza.

That's not, you wouldn't have

a specific pizza.

I was thinking there was the Americana, but I don't think that is, I don't think that's widely held to be a pizza.

Right.

You've got the Hawaiian, I guess.

Yeah.

But that's not American.

Despite five war councils in two weeks, Barack Obama has so far failed to come up with a strategy for the conflict that may help his presidency.

Now, also, whenever I hear the phrase war council, I just can't help but think of people standing on floating discs in a big space chamber.

In reality, if there isn't at least one person on the war council with snakes coming out of their head, it'll be a huge letdown.

The new tactic under consideration, rather than just glaring at a map of Afghanistan and screaming, what the f is wrong with that fing country, is this.

The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down their arms.

They're considering paying the Taliban $20 a day to stop fighting.

Now, hold on.

I thought this group was willing to die for their fervently held beliefs.

Not that they were willing to do that until a better offer came along.

I will lay down my life for this cause unless another cause can come up with an extra 10 bucks.

Well, this is where you're very much mistaken because the Senate report estimated the Taliban fighting force at between 15,000 and 25,000.

Right.

And a report in our sister publication, The The Times, maybe some more of an auntie publication.

Either way, it's probably best we don't kiss it too often.

The report in The Times suggests that only 5% of the Taliban fighting force are committed ideologues.

70% are in it for the money, and the middle 25 were don't-knows in the Why Are you Fighting for Nutcases survey?

So at the lowest estimate, John, that is only around 750 hardline shitbags in the whole of Afghanistan.

A further few thousand who are pretty sure they're shitbags, and you know, 10 to 20,000 who don't actually mind women but are prepared to really hate them for ten bucks a day if the price is right that is a game show that's got out of hand so yeah apparently doubling their wage of ten dollars a day would cost just three hundred thousand dollars a day compared with the 165 million dollars a day the united states is currently spending fighting the war but so hold up why didn't we think of this before andy when a child is acting up you know throwing tantrums and screaming parents buy his capitulation with a lollipop we're essentially just giving them a lollipop and hoping it shuts them up for 15 minutes.

But also it balances out economically because $20 a day is pretty much what the British government is paying our armed forces to fight.

So for every 20 bucks that we take a Taliban out with, we can stop paying one of our own soldiers.

You know, it doesn't sound a lot, $20 a day for a British soldier, but to be fair, it has gone up by more than 20% since the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

How much we value...

our men and women in Europe in Britain.

The Taliban are clearly the most capitalist insurgent group around and if this really takes off, they could franchise this operation all around the world, float themselves on the stock market.

This is a going concern.

Under these calculations, John, as you said, even if they paid them 50 bucks a day to 20,000 Taliban, they would still make a saving of $54.5 billion a year compared with the current war effort.

Oh my god.

So, and also bear in mind, the population of Afghanistan is 30 million, and these are 750 hardline nutters that are causing all this trouble.

The active Taliban makes up only around 0.1 per shitting cent of the population.

Now for the cost of the war, we could be giving every single person in Afghanistan an extra $5 a day, which is more than five times the average household income in Afghanistan.

And that would basically the boost economy would put the Taliban out of business.

I know it's a bit more complicated than that, but it does show that this war is a bit like a £250,000 porcelain figurine of Donald Rumsfeld taking a dump in a hedge.

No one really wants it, and it's really bad value for money.

And it just becomes more and more awkward, and people don't want to talk about it.

But is this a long-term strategy?

It sounds good, but here's the problem: Afghans are known for changing sides back and forth during their long, long, long years of war.

And there is an old saying saying,

You can rent an Afghan but never buy one.

I wonder whose old saying that was Andy.

It's dehumanizing, it's slightly racist.

Was it the British?

Yay!

Was it the fing British?

That sounds like one of ours.

You can just imagine it being said, well, I was puffing a large pipe and quaffing on a whiskey.

So the problem here is clearly the problem inherent in any loan.

It's the small print.

If we check the contract with the Taliban, the bottom of it reads, your health is at risk if you do not keep up the payments on this deal.

The only way this could be more depressing is if the Taliban just refused to take US dollars and end up preferring the Euro, seeing it as a more stable currency.

That would be the final slap in the face.

Seeing as this seems to support the old adage, you know, if in doubt, just throw money at the problem, buglers, please sponsor a terrorist today.

Just a handful of your pocket change could persuade a potential insurgent not to shove explosives and a detonator up their ass and head for the nearest bus stop.

Bugle feature section now, cutlery.

Well, we've been skirting around this issue for a couple of years now, John.

It's time we confronted it head on.

Cutlery, or as Americans might call it, tableware.

What's the preferred term, stateside, for cutlery?

What do they call it over there?

I think they call it food weaponry.

Food weaponry?

Yeah.

In American cutlery news, a six-year-old schoolboy is going to be suspended after he brought his favourite camping cutlery to school.

This kid's called Zachary Christian.

He took this, it was like a Swiss Army knife cutlery.

It looked actually phenomenal.

He took it to school in violation of the school policy of bringing in knives.

And the school had initially said that he should spend 45 days at an alternative school for troublemakers.

Let me remind you: the kid is six, and that's six years old, not six decades old.

Six.

Surely, that would have fixed him, though, wouldn't it?

43 days in a troublemaker school.

Well, that's right,

they were coming down hard.

What are you here for?

I set fire to my teacher's underpants while he was wearing them.

You, I stole the school chemistry lab and sold it to the North Koreans.

You, I sacrificed the headmaster's daughter during morning assembly to make sure the school netball team won its next match.

You, I like camping equipment.

But here's the thing.

They acted appropriately, Andy, because where does this end?

You let one kid in with his favourite camping equipment, all of a sudden you've got another kid bringing in a machine gun saying it's the only way he likes his eggs scrambled.

You have to set the tone.

Draw a line in the sand.

That's it.

It's a zero tolerance policy on night.

I think this is, as you say, fair enough, because it was camping, Cutler he took to school.

Camping.

Who else goes on camps?

Terrorists.

Point proof.

The school board voted not to send him on this 45-day internment.

What a merciful school board that is.

Instead, they suspended him for three to five days.

And looking at America's GNG these days, gross national girth, clamping down on cutlery is not something the nation has taken to heart over the last 500 years or so.

The school in Newark, Delaware has a zero-tolerance policy on knives and also now on forks.

This follows an incident in which two children used school pitchforks to pick up a teacher like a bit of sweet corn and parade him around the school playgrounds before trying to barbecue him.

So the upshot of this total cutlery ban now is that the pupils have to eat at a single communal trough, chomping down on the school's now famous kids' swirl.

The problem is though John, as you say, cutlery is a gateway weapon.

And also, statistically, almost all of those convicted of knife crime have used cutlery at some point in their lives, which is why there's no knife crime at all in China.

Although there's quite a lot of crime involving muggers picking people up between two long sticks, but that's an entirely different matter.

What's your favourite bit of cutlery then John?

What would you do?

I'm going to go with the soup spoon and the...

No, it's ergonomically pleasing and it gets the job done in terms of carrying liquid from one container into your face.

Right.

So my daughter, John, she's now currently aged 2.761.

She's not a massive fan of cutlery.

She prefers the manual shovel eating technique, which is okay with some foods, a bit splatty with soups and yogurts.

So I'm having to bribe her currently with bits of palma ham to eat more efficiently.

You eat that with your spoon, you can have a bit of special ham.

Proven quite effective.

You've got a gastronomically advanced child, Andy, if you're bribing her with palma ham.

She likes palma ham and high-quality unpasteurised cheese.

She's her daddy's daughter.

She sure is.

Holy shit.

And my son, he's currently aged 0.833.

Cutlery, just not a big thing for him.

He just likes banging his fist on the table.

But for me, John, if I had to choose my favourite bit of cutlery, it would be the Splade.

Now, I don't know if you're familiar with the Splade.

I'm not, but I'm imagining that I'm about to live in a world where I am.

And this, you know, I'm going to have to say at the start, this is actually a true bit of cutlery.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't believe you, but really?

Splade.

S-P-L-A-Y-D.

It's a hybrid bit of cutlery, so it's very much along with your spifes and your sporks.

This is the splade, which is knife, fork, spoon, bingo.

Dinner time for one-armed Josephine.

The splade was invented by an Australian guy 60 years ago and now I think you'll agree John it's hard to imagine life without the splade if you've got one and no other cutlery and I spent the last 15 years kidnapped in a darkened garrison with nothing for company apart from your splade.

But the splade can do everything John.

It is an incredibly all-round bit of cutlery.

You know you can cut, you can prong, you can scoop.

Pretty much the Leonardo da Vinci of the cutlery world.

And of course da Da Vinci could do the works, John, sculpting, painting, decorating, DIY, science, loved a bit of science for weekend, helicopter designing, table tennis, pub quizzes.

Well, he invented the pub quiz.

In fact, the Last Supper was originally painted as the picture round in a quiz.

DaVinci also dap hand at belching, John.

They didn't call him the resounding esophagus for nothing.

And above all, karaoke.

Oh, good God.

You should have heard the born to be wild he did after the Mona Lisa won Hottest Babe at the Renaissance Man Magazines Awards in 1509.

Steppenwolf, sounds like like he ate the wolf not just stepped on it.

I've just spent the last couple of minutes Andy looking at pictures of splades and I've got to tell you

I'm a convert.

If we ever take a sponsor it should be the splade bugle brought to you by the splade.

I might get a splade.

Have you got one?

I don't have one no but I mean I'm certainly very much thinking of getting some.

Some?

Wow.

Yeah, well I think for you it'd be excellent because of your showbiz life so I imagine at most mealtimes now you just you're eating with one hand and signing autographs with the other aren't you?

So that would be the perfect bit of cutlery for today's movie star.

If you mean by autographs uh written apologies for my film career.

That was part of my green card application.

I have to write to every single American citizen and say sorry.

Now when you look at other hybrid cutlery, obviously you've got your Swiss army knife as you mentioned.

Well I think that goes beyond cutlery, John, as the old philosophical puzzle goes, when is a bit of cutlery not a bit of cutlery, when it's got a nail farther than two bottle openers incorporated into it, that's the obvious answer.

It's an ingenious device and also a valid explanation for why the Swiss have chosen to remain neutral in so many wars.

Can we have some rocket launchers, please, General Gruyer?

No, you can use your Swiss Army knife.

But, General, but nothing, Private Eminento.

How many uses does the rocket launcher have?

Answer the question, soldier.

One, General Gruyer.

Correct.

How many uses does the Swiss Army knife have?

Right, on my whistle, I want you, Private Racolette, Corporal Vacherin, and Private Appenzel, to charge at that tank, slowly dismantle it, and have a picnic.

General Gruyer?

Yes, Private Emmentole.

can you start using our real names instead of cheeses?

Who's in charge here?

On my whistle, Cheese Regiment, charge!

Your emails now, and this email comes in from Rebecca in Brooklyn, who writes on the subjects, John's Emmy has cheapened all other awards.

She writes, Dear Andy and John, John said recently on the Bugle that his winning of an Emmy Award would cheapen all other awards.

Yeah, I stand by that.

Clearly, this is what has occurred.

How else can Obama's Nobel Peace Prize be explained?

That's true.

Example 2, the Olympics have added golf, thus cheapening all Olympic medals.

Yes, that is also true.

At first, I thought John was merely making a self-deprecating comment, perhaps an expression of humility.

I think we can rule that one out.

Now I see that it was, in fact, a prophecy.

Oh dear, what awards will be compromised next?

Are schools around the world offering gold stars to mediocre students?

Will Michael Vick win the Joe F.

Carr Trophy?

We're not familiar with the Joe F.

Carr Trophy in England.

If it's a trophy for player of the season who has recently served the jail term for dog fighting, I think he's definitely in the running.

Will Argentina give Baroness Thatcher the freedom of Buenos Aires?

Well, I think that's still a bit of a long shot.

Oh, John, what have you engendered?

What have you got to say for yourself, mate?

Sorry.

You know, sorry, but, you know, awards are

subjective anyway, so, you know, I'm glad I can take them down.

I'm glad I've rendered them redundant.

Now we can all get on with doing more important things in our lives.

See, when I win awards, I deserve deserve them.

Yeah.

Like when I won the Penzest Park Cricket Club batting trophy for the 1998 season.

Or like when I won Footballer of the Year, Andy, do you remember that?

I won it more recently, mate.

I just offer much more to the team than you do.

I think you're a bit of a luxury player.

Please, that is.

We both know that's not true.

We've also had a, frankly, creepy amount of responses to the curse of the bugle.

It turns out there's a lot more people than you think out there in the world who want happy couples to break up.

Here's one from Anthony Puckett, which says, I've often thought about riding into you, but the busy day-to-day of a fantasy football player and occasional reader have kept me from doing so until now.

You see, your mention of the curse of the bugle stirred up something in me which I had long forgotten.

You see, I once had a high school girlfriend who was a terrific girl.

Sweet, caring, a little on the dull side.

Oh, how did it break up?

But not bad to look at either.

We parted ways when I left for college after about a year.

and a half of dating.

I found out a few months ago that she had since married and was living a happy life with her new husband and two children who both seem just lovely.

Her husband's a reverend who plays guitar and likes to write songs for her and their children.

They seem like a picturesque family.

I want you to destroy them.

You see, when we broke up, Brooke had in her possession several DVDs that I'd left at her place, including but not limited to, X-Men, Happy Gilmore, Caddy Shaq, Blazing Saddles, and worst of all, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

However, even this I could excuse and allow them to continue on their state of marital bliss.

Were it not for the fact that I discovered when we connected a few months back, their wedding day?

My birthday.

Yeah.

It's not like she didn't know it was my birthday.

We celebrated it together twice.

Needless to say, I want you to use your typical British wit to the full extent of its power.

Namely, I want them to be divorced in one year's time, ideally on my birthday, May 21st.

Godspeed, yours in spite, Tony P in Indianapolis.

Wow.

We We uncaked that bottle of venom in Tony.

Beautifully written email as well.

It's nice to get a sense of the happy life that is now crumbling.

A bit worried that we become a vehicle for personal vengeance.

Yeah.

This one, John, came in from Dean, who does not give his place of abode in an extremely enigmatic way.

So it's got us all interested now, Dean.

Yeah, very good.

What an enigma, Dean.

Who are you, Dean?

Dean writes on the subject of the Curse of the Bugle, dear Andy, John and Tom.

I would like to inquire if it was you guys who, for selfish reasons, preemptively ended Hotty from History Florence Nightingale's proposed marriage to Richard Moncton Milnes, forcing her to remain celibate for her entire life.

Oh, yeah!

Yeah!

If I can't have her, no one can!

Is that wrong?

Well, I can claim innocence of that.

In fact, if anything, it was Nightingale that broke up my relationship with an old girlfriend.

Just kept three of us in the relationship, Andy.

I said, come on, we're going to the museum again.

Thank you for all of those who sent in details of the relationships.

You want to break up, often in a couple of cases, for the sake of hoping to pick up some sexual cast-offs.

I don't think we want to be involved in that.

We're not your pimps.

Have some respect for this organ.

Sport now, and well, John, I'd imagine America is literally on fire with baseball fever at the moment.

Yep, fat and swine flu, but yeah, mainly baseball fever, Andy.

The championship games are starting, just, you know, one series until the World Series.

And the Phillies, who can go f themselves, Andy, I hate the Phillies.

Why?

Well, I'm a Mets fan, Andy, and I hate the Phillies, so I hate them.

And yeah,

I wished ill upon them.

Why'd you wish you?

Things go badly for me.

But don't you hate the Yankees?

Definitely not a Yankee fan, Andy, but you know, I don't hate them like I hate the Phillies.

I hate the Phillies.

He's just swinging his bat, trying to hit the ball, places that people aren't.

It's annoying.

Has this extended to all Phillies?

Do you just hate female horses now as well?

I do.

It just is a real ripple effect.

I know it's not fair, but I feel it fervently.

And they're playing the LA Dodgers.

The Los Angeles Dodgers.

And then the Yankees are playing the Los Angeles Angels.

Yeah.

It's the LA Angels against the New York Yankees.

Do you know the Yankees, John?

Do you know why they're called the Yankees?

I'm about to tell you.

Okay, because in the franchise's first ever major league game back in the 19th century, they got through a record 171 different pitches as their notoriously impatient manager Slooper Grive kept withdrawing or quotes yanking his pitchers as soon as they threw a pitch that missed the strike zone by more than an inch.

So Grive became known as the total yanker and the players as the Yankees.

Up until then they were known as the New York Soilers.

Easily I'll say this postseason, the most intriguing lineup in the divisional final series since 1973 when correct me if I'm wrong, in the American League I think it was the Baltimore Flobs against the Houston Headwounds, and in the National League, it was the Dallas Falluses against the Scottsdale vomiters.

Well, fascinating piece of baseball history, Andy, thank you for that.

Is there a baseball hall of shame?

I think that might be a...

That's right.

It's next to Cooperstown.

Well, that's it for this week's bugle.

I'm afraid, buglers, I've got some absolutely tragic news for you.

There's no bugle next week.

We're having a week off because John's got shit to do.

I've got shit to do.

Sorry, buglers.

Nice to know where we stand in the illicit program.

Well, you know, it's, yeah, I've got something to do.

And

I'm afraid it is going to cut into bugle time.

And I'm sorry.

Okay?

There I've said it.

What would that be, then?

What would it be, Tom?

Oh,

what a spiky tone to your voice there.

Top a shelf, is it, mate?

Alphabetising your MP3 collection, guys.

Do that automatically, you know.

Genre.

I'm genreising them.

I'm having to record something for Comedy Central.

And, frankly, you don't want me bugling next week because my mind won't be on the bugle.

I've got my mind on my bugle and my bugle on my mind.

So I know bugle next week.

We'll be back in two weeks time with a really good one.

Justified.

It's going to be excellent to make up for this week being off.

At least you can make a promise that you can break Andrew.

It won't be the first time.

So I've never been divorced.

That's true.

Maybe you kept that by breaking others.

There'll be a blog next week.

That wasn't a promise, John.

That was a riddle.

That would also be a good way to get out of a wedding vow.

Have a lovely week, buglers.

Bye-bye.

Pip, pip, cheerio.

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.