Iran goes for the world record for show trials

This is a Times Online podcast.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, bunglers.

Sorry.

Hello, Bulges.

Oh, man, my typing's gone off.

Hello, Buglers.

So there we are.

Got it.

Welcome to Bugle 88 for the week beginning Monday, August 31st, 2009.

I am...

Ah, it's coming.

It's coming.

Andy's Altsman, bingo.

And I'm in London, England.

And in the city that has brought the world such diverse wonders as the Brooklyn Bridge, the Woolworth Building, eggs, and tomato sauce, New York, it's the Monsignor of Mirth, the Generalissimo of Jollity, the sat-trap of satire, the chief executive of Chuckles, and former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, Sonny Liston.

Sorry, I've just been told Sonny couldn't make it to the studio in time, so said it's our regular backup guy, John Oliver.

That's right.

Sit down, Sonny, and stay down.

Knocked him spark out.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Welcome to Bugle AJ.

Andy, I was down in Philadelphia a couple of days ago.

And, you know, Philadelphia is a city not only famous for its dogfighting quarterbacks or its fictional boxers, but also for its cheese steaks, Andy.

The most famous of which are probably sold at pats and geno's two old stores that are directly opposite each other and i tried one from both this week andy i bridged that divide i experienced the montagues and the capulets the israelis and the palestinians of cheese whiz and do you know what they were both delicious

i slightly preferred geno's but didn't feel that pats should be denied the right to exist it was inspirational to see the two rivals living peacefully side by side if the world could just take its lead from the relationship between Pats and Ginos, this planet would be a far more peaceful and obese place.

A cheese steak.

Yeah.

What is it?

Is that a steak of cheese?

No, it's like a shredded steak in a roll, a hoagie roll with

onions and cheese whiz.

Cheese whiz?

Yes,

you know, like cheese out of a chip.

It sounds disgusting.

That sounds like a burger.

It's not a burger.

You'd be wrong on that.

You've got a minced up steak with cheese on it in a bun.

Yeah.

That's a burger, mate.

They just misspelt it on the menu, I think.

It's just their idea of independence.

Just before we came on air, I received a text from my brother who says, hi to John.

Hope he is enjoying the land of soulless lardies.

It would be easier to rebuff that had I not just told a story about cheese steaks

and eating two of them.

On the same day?

Same meal?

I mean, are we talking starter and main course in two different restaurants?

It was basically lunch, and

I tried to, but that did then see me through dinner.

I didn't then eat again for the rest of the day.

Anyway, this is Bugle 88.

88, of course, John.

The number of keys on a piano.

So let's hope this bugle doesn't fall flat.

I'll certainly be able to keep sharp.

Oh, boy.

But also try and not see everything in black and white.

I think that's the key.

So tune in.

I think it's going to be grand as long as we set it up right.

And then it could get electric.

I've a real good feeling that we'll hit the high notes.

Gee, hope it doesn't get too CD this week.

Eh?

Hey, that wouldn't be good.

Otherwise, there'll be people in the streets burning FEGs of us.

And they'll say I'm a total penis.

Now, I don't want to put a damper on things.

Sorry, am I sounding bored?

Oh, that'll be a no then.

So now to the rest of the show.

Yep, it's time we got started.

Okay, I'll stop now.

Stop it!

Stop it!

I'll stop now as an octave mercy.

I'll talk!

Normandy!

Normandy!

We're landing at Normandy.

So for the week beginning, August the 31st.

Four months left of this decade now, John.

Let's see if we can make something useful out of it.

Also, the anniversary of the death in 1422 of King Henry V, the mastermind of England's big away win against France at Agincourt and the European Extreme Archery Championships.

And England got a new king when Henry V died, Henry VI, who was nine months old when he took the throne, John.

Now, I think we'd all agree that nine months is too young to become head of state.

You know, my son now is eight months old, and he's a lovely little boy, sure, but with all due respect to the kid, if he was head of state, I would be worried for this country.

If you're good enough, you're old enough, Andy.

Yeah, well, I'm just saying, he's not good enough, and I'm guessing neither was Henry VI.

But it must have been quite tricky for England when they had a nine-month-old baby on the throne.

You know, Your Majesty, the war in France isn't going too well.

Can we have your permission to send more troops there?

What do you mean?

Ah, what?

Well, just stop throwing a cucumber on the floor.

This is serious business.

Oh, no.

Does anyone know how to stop the king crying?

What are we used to do with Henry IV?

I know he was an adult, but a king's a king.

Surely the same thing works.

Hang on, I think he's making a call on the French issue.

It looks like he's thinking about it really hard.

So that face means he's doing what?

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no.

I'm not taking it off.

Alright.

Better call the Royal Turd Interpreter.

This gauntlet could have a key economic decision in it.

Oh, we need a break.

We do need a break.

We do need a break.

And

we are having a break.

Can I break this this early in the show?

We are taking the next two weeks off.

But there will be one bonus bugle and a fate space filler, Tom said.

He can't be asked to put two together because he's also going on holiday.

So, this is the last real bugle for three weeks.

So, in the bin this week, an exam results section, the GCC results come out, John, and the results are that Britain is cleverer than ever before.

Right.

Don't take my word for it, take it from the examination boards.

GCE grades have hit record levels.

More than one in five students have been awarded an A star or an A or the next grade down, A-O-K.

It appears this nation is awash with teenage geniuses.

That's what happens when you have an overactive education system.

It's overachieving.

So, in the BIN history of exams, we look at whether standards have fallen, and we set you some genuine exam questions.

This is from a real 1967 O-level paper: Find a Previously Undiscovered Papyrus of a Lost Classical Text, Translate It into Iamic Pentameter, and provide explanatory footnotes in early New High German, two marks.

Whereas this is from a 2009 GCC paper, either draw a face on an apple or list three things you can do with a willy.

50 marks.

An incident, this is from a 1916 high school exam paper, question one.

If you reach the end of this question without enlisting in the army, travelling to the front, and being shot dead, you failed.

You may march into the face of certain death.

Now, no cheating.

Also, for those who haven't had the exam news they wanted, we profile some famous celebrities who've made it to the top of their chosen professions despite having no GCSEs, including Jesus, Joseph Stalin, Yoko Ono, the legendary legendary racehorse Arkel, cartoon character Mickey Mouse and the Aztec Civilization.

Also in our new active sports series we give you tips on how to excel in a new sport this week, cockfighting.

And the key is to utilize your height and reach advantage over the cock.

You just don't want to get into any kind of one-on-one pecking contest because then they're going to have the edge.

So really I think as a human you should have the advantage.

Use your feet and fists.

Yeah.

And you know a bit of trash talk as well.

You know undermine your chicken opponent's notoriously fragile avian confidence.

Start shouting things like I'm gonna rule this rooster and what'll you do now and go cluck yourself.

Top story this week world update.

The bugle is indeed going on a holiday as of next week so that Andy and I can have a break.

And if you've got a problem with our buglers, go f ⁇ yourselves.

88 free bugles, what more do you want from us?

So anyway, just like when you go on vacation, you know, you try and clean up everything so it's tidy when you get home.

Now we too are going to try and tidy up all the news that's going on around the planet so that we can mentally relax when we were both rollerblading shirtless down Muscle Beach.

So, guys.

Arm in arm.

Exactly.

So get ready for a whistle-stop tour of global news.

It's going to be like if Phileas Fogg had challenged us to a race around the world in 80 days.

Except instead of actually circumnavigating the earth, we just stayed in one place and made fun of it instead.

Fire up the balloon, throw out the sandbags, here goes.

Iran update.

This week, Iran finally staged their show trials of the protesters arrested for objecting to their election being rigged.

And by show trial, I of course mean that they just wanted to show the world how great their trials are there.

They're proud of them, Andy, and, you know, rightly so.

They staged a nice trial.

There's an old saying when it comes to political prisoners: if you got them, flaunt them.

Yeah, this is the latest in a series of show trials, well, the biggest and best of them yet.

The defendants include the ex-intelligence official and regular Ahmadinajad slammer Said Hajarian,

who confessed in the quote box that he'd quote, committed big errors through my inaccurate analyses of recent elections.

And he could now be facing the death penalty if the prosecutor gets his way.

Does seem to our delicate Western taste quite a harsh sentence for inaccurate electoral analysis.

Yeah.

You know, maybe it's just helping to inculcate a culture of excellence in political punditry.

You know, a one-strike and you're completely out system.

I think maybe the standard of journalism in this country could help them could benefit from such a system.

Same here.

You know, Dan Ruther should have been crucified, technically.

The point is, this is not before time, Andy.

Thank goodness.

Those protesters are now in custody.

The streets are now a far safer place for the roving besieged motorcycle militias who were so tragically repeatedly forced to drive into crowds of people while waving baseball bats.

If nothing else, Iran prioritises combating downtown traffic congestion.

Ahmadinejad is a freedom fighter too, in his own way.

He believes that people should have the freedom to drive through downtown Tehran without having to avoid large groups of pro-democracy supporters.

Hajarian was severely disabled following an assassination attempt and subsequent stroke in 2000, but doesn't seem to have learnt his lesson and is in trouble with the law again.

And as a result of his disability, he had to have his confession or part of it read out by another defendant.

This was a real missed opportunity to lighten the mood of this show trial.

Judge, riff it up a bit.

You know, I sighed Hajerian, committed big error through my inaccurate analyses of recent elections.

And I've got a poster of Armadina Dad in my bedroom, which I've defaced with my wife's lipstick to look like a woman.

And I'm a huge fan of Israel.

I think they're absolutely fantastic.

And I think secularism is absolutely the way to go for Iran.

And I've popped the old nuclear secrets in the post of Washington.

Bang to rights.

Let's get on with the trial.

The trial was absolutely electric television.

It was like the OJ trial all over again, except with an even more predictable outcome.

And about 100 OJs.

That's true.

And in fact, the defendants all sat in prison-style pajama uniforms in the Tehran courtroom.

And if there was any question as to how this trial was going to go, they were already wearing prison clothes.

That really must have spoiled any sense of surprise as they were handed them by the guards before.

Hey, why don't you just put these on for the trial later?

It'll be more convenient that way afterwards.

I mean, for you, convenient for you, not for us when we take you back to prison.

If we do that, if we don't, I don't know what the verdict's going to be.

Well, surely pajamas are good.

Because a lot of trials get bogged down in legal technicalities, you're quite adult.

You know, you might want to have a little snooze.

suits and tie can be quite restrictive true why not wear pajamas true you're right now this was just the latest in a series of mass trials and nothing makes you feel more special as an individual defendant than participating in a mass trial it's like one of those mass stadium weddings they do when people try to get into the guinness book of world records even though it's legally binding you can't help struggling to take it quite as seriously maybe iran should push for the guinness world record for bigger show trial at least that would give the protesters something.

Ayatollah Khamani weighed in on the issue like only a supreme leader can, reading a statement on TV saying, our enemies were given a slap in the face by the Iranian nation, but they are still hopeful and they are pursuing the issue.

A slap in the face?

I think they'd have taken a slap in the face.

What they've actually been receiving is 10-year jail terms and the occasional death sentence.

If that's his idea of a slap in the face, I dread to think what his version of the nutshot is.

We should point out a couple of key points of legal procedure for those not familiar with Iranian justice.

A show trial is not the same as a TV legal drama series.

That is a very important distinction to make.

I mean, both they have certain similarities.

Both may have been planned, scripted, and directed months in advance.

But a show trial differs from a TV legal drama in that the outcome is only in doubt in a badly produced show trial, whereas the outcome is only not in doubt in a badly produced TV legal drama.

So I hope we've cleared that up.

This show trial, I guess, is more like an episode of Colombo.

We already know who's going to be found guilty, but it's all about the journey.

And also, we have to point out that a show trial, very different to a horse trial, tends to be a three-day event in which competitors are forced to do ludicrous things and suffer apparently random penalties for minor offences and really harsh sanctions for any refusal.

Whilst the horse trial, kaboom.

In even Grimmer News, a member of a parliamentary committee reportedly says it's investigating claims of a mass burial of protesters.

Wow, Iran Iran are really doing everything in bulk now, Andy.

I guess that's a sign of the recession, just responsibly making cutbacks in luxury areas such as jurisprudence and respectful burials.

China update now and whoa has some exciting news for China fans and that is that the Chinese government has announced plans to try and reduce the use of executed prisoners as their major source of organs for transplant.

Currently executed prisoners apparently provide around two-thirds of all transplant organs in China, and the government is planning to launch a voluntary donation scheme.

In a way, there is already a voluntary donation scheme in place.

It's just if you wanted to voluntarily donate your organs, you just had to nip out, run around the street shouting Hu Jintao is a prick and then let the justice system do the rest.

It's it.

That's an indirect way of donating.

A spokesman acknowledged that due to a stigma of donating organs voluntarily, they are over-reliant on death rough prisoners.

That's a very strange situation to find yourself in.

They don't need to advertise for donors, they need to advertise for people to commit capital crimes.

Michael needs a new kidney to survive.

He's living on borrowed time, but just one convicted murder by you could give him that kidney and a second chance at life.

Please, think of people like Michael and go out on a killing spree

and save a life today.

There are about 1.5 million people waiting for transport operations in China, and that, as you say, that is putting huge pressure on the legal system.

Looks they have to force through these trials at breakneck speed.

Will the defendant please stand?

Right, he looks pretty healthy.

I think we've got a goer on this one.

Right, evidence, blah, blah, blah.

Well, he looks guilty.

Off you go.

Might as well take him straight to the hospital and do him there.

I don't know, just pump him full of drugs, maybe strangle him with a stethoscope or use one of those buzzing machines on his head.

You know, the old

clear

things.

What are they called again?

Yeah, use that.

Okay, next case.

Apparently, the Chinese government has said they're going to try and move away from this practice of using executed prisoners.

Move away?

This isn't going to be like quitting smoking China.

We're going to try and wean ourselves off using the organs of executed prisoners.

Maybe cut down first rather than trying to give up straight away.

And please, nobody use the organs of executed prisoners around us because that's just going to give us the urge to do it again, too.

China apparently is responsible for around 70% percent of all world executions and if you get the words of that sentence a bit mixed up and tinker around with them what you get is china executes 70 percent of the world every year

it's a sobering statistic

it sure is an inaccurate one but a very sobering one in other new in in other china news china is still very pissy about the dalai lama

Andy, that man can annoy them with pretty much anything he does.

This time they're angry with Taiwan for inviting him into the country to comfort victims of Typhoon Moricott.

That's how much they hate him.

They don't even like him comforting people.

He literally can't breathe in without them feeling he's doing it just to provoke them.

What is it?

It's maybe just something about his calmness.

Just really winds people up.

He just won't react, that's the thing.

You can hit him with a stick, and he'll just stare back at you.

I know.

I've done it.

I'll do anything for a laugh on the daily show these days.

California update now and the governor of California, Arnold Schwateniger, I know, is holding an online garage sale in his latest effort to balance the US state's budget.

The great California garage sale will see 6,000 items including everything from cars to coat racks auctioned off on two websites both eBay and Craigslist.

Things have got bad there, Andy.

He's also going to be driving around the state selling stuff out of the back of his governor's car and running away if the police seem trading without a license.

Apparently, he's even autographed some of the cars on sale after a suggestion from a voter that a car signed by him would sell for more than a car not signed by him and that that could therefore provide more revenue for the state.

But you know, he can't stop there.

He should be signing things around the cop.

He can personally drag California out of this monstrous deficit simply by autographing every single object in the state.

People are going to be waking up in the morning and find that Arnie has daubed his signature across their windshield.

Where does this end though?

Personally, I would buy a car for more money if it had the imprint of Arnie's balls on the roof of it.

So what he needs to do is ask himself this.

Can he afford not to press his balls onto the heated roof of every car in every showroom across the state?

Or does he just not love California enough?

Well, I don't know, John.

Maybe California just doesn't quite have the same taste in car roofs as you.

Maybe they'd rather dolph Lundgren's balls were on there.

What a way to rescue a struggling economy.

Yeah.

California's 85 billion budgets has a deficit of 26 billion dollars.

That is a lot, Andy.

And so they're having to come up with imaginative ideas.

On Monday, a vote on a plan to release 27,000 prisoners early in an attempt to save money was delayed in the California Assembly.

You've got to hand it to them.

They are trying everything.

And, you know, those prisoners are learning a very valuable lesson there, namely, that you are only ever as guilty as economic circumstances dictate.

Or maybe Arnie could just try and auction himself.

I reckon there'd be some Japanese businessman who'd pay a good, you know, a good 500 million just to have Arnie around the house.

If footballer Jolly and Lescott is worth 25 million, then Arnold Schwarzenegger must be worth at least 20 times that.

Science update now, and a major breakthrough in science could be on the cards, John.

Scientists claim to be on the verge of being able to rid certain inherited diseases from people using a new technique, swapping genes between unfertilized human eggs

before the embryos are implanted into the womb.

They've been researching on the old scientists' favourite monkeys, and this could be a huge breakthrough.

But you've got to feel sorry for the monkeys, John.

It's pretty unfair on them.

They're the ones who do all the hard yards and these things, wandering around with shampoo in their eyes and electrodes on their knackers, just to find out whether germ-line gene therapy can effectively alter mitochondrial DNA to prevent certain hereditary diseases.

And yet, will they get first dibs on the technology?

Will they?

John.

I'm sure monkeys aren't fans of appalling genetically inherited diseases either, but they're not going to benefit from this and I think that's disgusting.

I think if we're going to use animals for experiments, then we have to let them benefit from it.

Some people say we shouldn't tinker around with nature.

This is always kind of brought up with these debates such as I think we've touched on this in the bugle before.

And I guess the response to that would be, well, we wouldn't have to tinker with nature if nature wasn't such a total

your emails now and we have an email here from Luke Stibbs who says hello John and Andy in order of proximity to Canada.

Hello as well Tom.

This is it.

The Pandora's box is open with you and the emails Tom.

Hello Luke.

Yeah don't don't start something you can't finish Tom.

How's a bit of rich coverage from someone who self-proclaimedly ate two cheesesteaks in one city?

Good point.

Did you get through them both?

Yeah, he says, I was browsing the internet listening to the icons of the bugle when I came upon this awe-inspiring bacon sandwich from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

There is no bread in this sandwich.

Instead, it's been replaced with slabs of fried chicken.

This monstrosity has been named the Double Down and is on sale only in the southern United States.

No shit.

Instantly, I changed my iTunes at the Las Vegas special where the American and his brother kept repeating double down in places the phrase made very little sense.

I now understand that they meant the sandwich, not the gambling turn.

And in case you don't believe me, here's a link.

And he refers us to consumerist.com.

Have a brilliant day, Luke the Crusher Stibbs.

That's good.

It's good to chuck a bit of a nickname in you when you sign your email.

The Crusher.

Which it gives a touch of the old professional wrestling about it.

Well, I mean, it looks like an incredible sandwich.

I think they've chosen a bit of a chucked a bit of cheese into that as well.

But it does look really spectacular.

No No breads, two pieces of fried chicken.

I mean, technically, I suppose that is reducing the carbs, but

what it reduces with one hand, it increases with the other.

Atkins would like it.

Atkins would like it, but Atkins is dead.

Due to having lived on double-down sandwiches for the last 30 years of his life.

This one comes from Joe Boyle in Cleveland, Ohio, who writes, Dear John and Andy, during the last episode, the American was on and the subjects of cricket came up.

Just one quick question: What the f is cricket?

I'd figured it was some sort of game where you hit a ball with a stick and run somewhere, and if you're really good at it, you win.

But apparently, it can last up to five days.

He's basically right, though.

You do hit a ball with a stick, you do run somewhere, and it does last five days.

That's it, he knows.

That's answered his question.

And it's basically, I mean, you know, to go in a slightly more depth, I guess it is

an activity that lays bare the various complex layers of the human condition if you watch it through the right pair of eyes.

So, I mean, it's you know, it's part hitting a thing with a stick and running around, it's part really achieving what all great artists and writers throughout human history have attempted to do and understand the nature of life, but doing it in the form of a five-day sports match.

It's the spawning equivalent of Debbie Gibson's Electric Blue.

No, that is 2020, you're thinking of, John.

Oh, sorry.

Underrated album, as well, from Gibson.

Certainly, her best.

Well, this little interesting PS on an email about Florence Nightingale, and I'm afraid it's a lovely email about a very touching moment of a girl in a school class giving big raps to big old Flo.

Good.

What a hottie she was.

But we can't open it.

We can't open it.

We just managed to slam the lead shut on that Pandora's box a few months.

We can't open it up again.

So this PS says, and I think this is referring to you, John, because I can't believe it's referring to me.

And that is, PS, you have totally nailed the 14 to 15 girls' market no i have not i cannot make this legally clear enough i have not nailed that market once at all or even thought about it i refute that claim yeah what's i refute that claim it's a valuable market john you could be the new miley cyrus oh you're right

she's not looking any younger is she i just need to put yeah that's right she isn't she's kind of growing out of the role of hannah montana maybe it needs someone to step into it i'm the new hannah montana you might need to shave down a bit okay do keep your emails coming in over our break, and we'll have a full roundup of your emails when we're back.

The email address is thebugle at timesonline.co.uk.

Sports section now and sport is this week's feature, and in particular, cheating in sports.

Now, we expect cheating in politics, business, law, love, comedy, every basically every angle of human life, but not sport, apparently.

And this has blown up this week, John.

A spectacular story as we trailed last week.

The story of Harlequin's rugby club, the team I support, and the Bloodgate scandal, the fake blood use in an effort to jump through a loophole in the substitution regs to get a player on to try and take a crucial kick towards the end of a close Heineken Cup quarter final back in April.

Now,

this story has rumbled on like an undercooked curry, John.

All we know is that,

it was a mistake in the first place, as any undercook carry is, and we just know that it's going to end in a massive pile of shit.

And let's start at the beginning, John.

Take me back.

Take me back, Andy.

Harlequins need to get their star kicker back on.

He had a knackered knee.

They'd taken him off earlier on.

They pretended he wasn't injured because you have to not have come off injured in order to be able to go back on when another player gets a blood injury.

They didn't have a player with a blood injury, so they then gave a player a blood capsule and said, bite this, and come off.

There are a number of problems with this John a it's cheating b rugby is all about cheating it's a basically a sport in which it is almost impossible to play legally but obviously this was slightly worse because it was you know slightly premeditated the worst thing about it John is they used blood from a joke shop

is that true this is true they bought blood capsules in a joke shop in South London they weren't even using

yeah they could have used pigs blood from a butcher they could have used stage blood which actually is designed to look like blood not joke blood that is designed to look like joke blood.

So initially, it's a bit of mid-level cheating.

If they said, yeah, when it was first kind of raised, they could have said, yeah, fair call, and just copped a minor punishment.

As it was, they decided the thing to do was to cover it up.

And it then became a sort of perfect storm.

Starting from this slightly off-the-cuff cheating, it has become a spectacular shitstorm of disciplinary action.

When they tried to cover it up, then the player was handed a massive ban.

You can look up the details on the internet, but it is the biggest embarrassment in Harl Quince's history.

The player, Tommy Williams, lovely little player, John.

Let's get this straight first of all.

Lovely little player.

Okay.

Well, first, he dropped it, and he had to pick it up again.

And this is a match that's being filmed from about

the saddest thing I've ever heard.

He spat out a hammer house of horrors quantity of blood like a jundering teenage vampire, then gave a pantomime wink to his teammate as, for some reason, he hobbled off the field.

Hobbled off with because of his mouth injury.

Yeah.

See, this is the least perfect crime ever executed in this sport.

They've done it so badly.

Is it not a pioneering move, Andy, though, to introduce blood capsules into sport?

Is there any sport that would not benefit from blood capsules, even tennis?

Snooker.

Snooker would be phenomenal to have blood capsules in Snooker.

As part of this perfect shitstorm, it has turned from a small bit of cheeky underhand naughtiness into a cracker toa-sized.

And if everyone who tried to exploit a loophole was fired from their jobs, Monaco would have a population of zero for a start.

But the amazing thing is, John, to get a blood injury in rugby, all you need to do generally is just play rugby for about three minutes and someone's going to, you know, smash your face in deliberately or accidentally.

So I don't know why they didn't just wait.

Or they could have said to Williams, right, we need you to get a blood injury, but we need it to be real.

So go up to that opposition player.

Pick the biggest one on their side and call him a fairy.

And there you go.

Blood injury straight away.

And you might get the the opposition player sent off as well.

That's how rugby works.

Oh dear.

Well I'm sorry Andy.

Which are you more ashamed about?

That they cheated or that they cheated badly?

That they cheated badly.

Every rugby club cheats.

I would encourage buglers who've not been following this story to read the full details.

It is a classic example, A, of how not to cheat and B, of how not to deal with having cheated.

So I guess the lesson that rugby wants everyone to learn from the harsh punishments that have been handed out to Harlequins is if you're going to cheat, do it properly.

And also in, well, this isn't so much cheating, the big story from the World Athletics Championships about Casta Semenya, the South African 800-metre runner who won the women's 800m and then faced accusations that, well, she wasn't a woman.

From, for example, the Italian athlete who'd lost...

Oh, boy.

Now, I know Italians have

certain fixed opinions of what women should do.

Clearly, running 800 meters in 1 minute 55 is not one of those things.

So anyway, at the IAF, they dealt with with this incredibly badly.

They broke the news that they were making Semenia have a series of gender tests the day of the final rather than waiting a bit.

A little bit of delicacy from an 18-year-old who'd grown up kind of assuming that she was a girl because it's very complicated this, John.

These series of gender tests is not as simple as getting a doctor to say, right, whip your kecks off, love, and let's have a look.

It's not even as simple as asking, which do you prefer?

Shopping for shoes or sport.

You know, it's much more complicated than that.

I think, without question, this was the most ineptly handled case of an athlete's gender being questioned of the whole of the last month.

And the president of Athletic South Africa, Leonard Tuaney, hit back at the critics of Semenia, who doesn't help her case by having the word semen in her surname.

But anyway, she said, this girl has been castigated from day one.

There's no scientific evidence.

You denounce my child as a boy when she's a girl.

If you did that to my child, I would shoot you.

What?

That is standing by your athlete.

That is.

Wow, I admire that.

I don't know.

I mean, I've just read this.

I don't know if he was doing this whilst cocking a rifle.

And now, some other examples of cheating in sports.

At the prestigious 2000 Guineas horse race at Newmarket in 1979, the winning horse, Tap on Wood, ridden by American jockey Steve Cawtham, turned out to be a Kawasaki Z650.

Cawtham had strapped a real horse's head to the front handlebars with a tape recorder in its dead mouth to play neighing sounds throughout the race.

Example two, Russian high jumper Jelena Schlesarenko won the 2004 Olympic final by projecting a hologram of herself clearing two metres and six centimetres.

Also, example three, the night before the women's final of 1973, reigning champion Billie Jean King dressed up as a ghost, broke into her young opponent Chris Evett's bedroom and haunted her.

Evett, who was notoriously terrified of ghosts, was unable to sleep and lost the first set 6-0 in the haze of fatigue and fear.

Billie Jean took the title in straight sets and then went on successfully to haunt Yvonne Goudagong before the 1975 final by tying cotton threads to everything everything in her room and bolsterge

the living crap out of the young Australian who went on to lose six love, six one.

And example four, in the well-to-weight Greco-Roman wrestling semifinal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Finland's Marco Acel beat Artur Jehashov of the Ukraine.

But it later turned out that it was not Asel who had fought, but a grizzly bear that Asel had borrowed from the zoo in Helsinki.

Tranquilised, shaved, and forced into wrestling kits.

The female bear called Noreen was more than a match for the terrified Jehasov, winning 10 points to Nila and nearly eating the Ukrainian.

However, Asel had to fight the final himself after Noreen gave birth to cubs in the dressing room and said she wanted to hibernate.

Acel then lost the final to Cuban Filberto Ascui.

Asel's ruse was revealed when his urine tested positive for being bear urine, but he was able to keep his medal after claiming that he'd been prescribed a bear as an over-the-counter treatment for a common cold.

Asel is now an MP in the Finnish parliament, where his signature trick is to growl at his opponents.

He is an MP.

That's the only true bit of that story.

Vacation time, Andy.

And the final bit of famous cheating and world sport is professional cycling.

So we've managed to do the whole sport section without really talking about England winning the ashes.

Well done.

Well done, Andy.

The greatest moment in the history of the children.

No, no, no, no, you're talking about it.

Alright, we were a bit jammy.

So, well, that's it for the bugle for a couple of weeks.

There will be a bonus bugle next week with some of the bits that were so good we couldn't put them in previous bugles.

So finally, bugle forecast this week is tomorrow, Saturday, I am playing my first cricket match for three years for the mighty, mighty Penshurst Park versus Chittingstone, a big local derby in West Kent.

You don't get any bigger than that, John.

Yeah.

It's like the Yankees against the Red Sox, but more so.

Yeah, it's huge.

More so.

It's huge, Andy.

But the last time I played cricket, John, I had no children, so that's a while ago.

Right.

Wow.

So I guess that the forecast is having not played cricket for three years and then going to play cricket, how am I going to cut one in the macadamias and spend the next two weeks bent double?

Yep.

Why don't we predict how many runs you're going to get, Andy?

Alright, I'm going to say 14.

14?

I'd probably take 14.

Yeah.

I'm going to go with 120.

120.

Got to be confident.

Okay, well, let's see.

I can't show Chittingstone any weakness.

If they're listening to this podcast and I say, well, we aren't going to get out maybe five.

Not.

I can't show them that.

It's 120.

Not out.

Anyway, enjoy your break, buglers.

Consider this a holiday for you as much as us.

Yeah, absolutely.

Give yourselves a couple of weeks off.

Yeah, to re-engage with the world responsibly.

Bye-bye.

See you in a couple of weeks.

Bye.

This is a Times Online podcast.

For more podcasts, go to timesonline.co.uk forward slash podcasts.

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.