Will China rule the world in the future?

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers!

All of you, without exception, are cordially invited to listen to this podcast, Bugle 84, with me, Andy Zoltzmann, here in the city of around 15 million eyeballs.

That's London, and in the city that the Brits picked up in a a swapsey with the Dutch in exchange for a titchy little island in Indonesia called Run.

Good one, Holland.

In New York City, it's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

How are you doing, Andy?

I'm okay, thanks, John.

I'm okay.

Get this, Andy.

Last weekend, I did five shows, stand-up shows, at a comedy club here in New York.

And as I started my final show on Sunday night, there was a woman sitting in the front row right at my feet who caught my eye.

And I remember thinking, that looks an awful lot like Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

and then thinking yes it definitely is and it was Andy and initially it was slightly disappointing because my first thought was I really think you should be busier than this

I want you to be busier.

You're trying to overhaul healthcare in America.

I'm not begrudging you a night off to relax, but this seems like a bad choice.

I think that just shows how much America has changed.

Because a year ago, the idea that someone from the cabinet would be coming to one of my shows would be insane, unless it was to check my immigration papers.

Or just run a little red dot over your heads and just wait for the rest to do its work.

It's pretty weird doing jokes about balls and then looking at Kathleen Sebelius.

You made a bad choice, didn't you, love?

What, what, not having balls

out with her control, I guess.

Anyway, it's Bugle 84 for the week beginning Monday, the 3rd of August 2009.

In fact, as we record the 31st of July, it means it is the anniversary, the 421st anniversary of the Spanish Armada being viewed off the coast of England.

So if we'd been recording this 420 years ago, John, we would definitely have been leading with the Armada story, I reckon.

Probably really sticking it to Spain in no uncertain terms.

You know, what kind of navy is that?

Bigging up big Frankie Drake and his massive balls, massive bowling balls that is, as the big England v.

Spain full contact rowing match was about to kick off in the channel.

But of course if we'd been on the Gregorian calendar...

Yes, Andy.

What would have happened then?

No, what I mean is that would only be if we'd been on the Gregorian calendar.

But we'd probably still have been going on the Julian calendar, which Britain didn't switch away from until 1752.

Unnecessary but lovely detail.

We'd probably been doing a retrospective on what disappointing efforts the Spaniards put up after all their chap.

Yeah.

It's good to have your chronology accurate, Andy.

People really care about which calendar you're referring to.

I found that.

How many times have someone said, yeah, but is that the Gregorian calendar, John?

You say, good question.

The bugle is many things, John, but it is, above all, historically accurate.

Yes, yes, that's right.

175 years ago, slavery was abolished in the UK, John.

1st of August 1834, the government has about £20 million

in compensation.

That was 40% of its annual expenditure in compensation to slave owners.

Now, that is classic British manners.

We're awfully sorry to have to stop you profiting from the abominable exploitation of other humans.

If there's anything I can do to make it up to you, it's my fault entirely for bloody well going and developing an entry-level humanitarian conscience after all these years.

Quite annoying for you, I'm sure.

Will 20 million quid do?

We were such heroes, Andy.

Finishing something that we started.

The law that abolished slavery was repealed by the Labour government in 1998.

What?

But sounds bad, doesn't it?

No, that really does sound bad.

And that sounds like there could be very troubling side effects to that.

Well, I think it was just tidying up some old legislation, but it sounds bad.

Right.

I don't think it was bad, but it sounds bad.

You just worry that there's still something deep down in the British psyche that would start ordering people around again.

Some sections of the Beagle going straight in the bin this week can increase your brain power section.

We teach you how to think more powerfully.

First, you need to order your brain.

Does your brain feel scrambled like an egg?

If so, we'll teach you how to uncook it, separate it back into yolk and white, and build a protective shell around it so you can think clearly like an unborn chicken.

Also, turn your head into an office.

Your brain is your own personal office.

Isn't it about time you started treating it like one rather than trying to memorize lyrics to rap songs or meaningless sporting statistics?

Structure your brain like a filing cabinet.

What's it like now?

Is that just one folder Mark B full of bullshit?

Well put it through the shredder.

Now you've got an empty filing cabinet.

Also, tips on how to stop your brain deteriorating with age.

One, stop drinking lead milkshakes.

Two, stop hitting yourself on the forehead with your open palm whenever something obvious finally hits you.

And three, stop watching TV reality talent shows.

Not that they intrinsically erode your brain, but they will make you more likely to throw a javelin into your own head.

And finally, some brain games.

Pick the odd word out from these ones.

Crocodile, alligator, and J-Lo.

And also.

Did you get it?

Did you get it?

Crocodile?

No, it's J-Lo.

Oh, shh.

She's the only one that's not a reptile.

And another one from these.

Pick out the odd one out.

Scrotum.

Ballsack.

Toolbag.

Did you get it?

Well, it's Bullsack, John, the only 19th century French novelist in the...

Got him!

Well done, Andy!

Well done!

That's of course because Severin Toolbag was only actually published in the early 20th century and Herve Beauregard de Scrotum was technically a poet, although he did write a verse novella.

And also finally a reaction sharpening game.

Hold your finger in front of your face, jab yourself in the eye.

Did you jab yourself in the eye?

If you did, too slow, sharpen up.

Doesn't matter, this is an audio cast, we don't care about your eyes.

And the answer to your question, buglers, is the cricket back on is yes.

Well, I thought I got through that nicely.

Oh, it's just 250 for nine, current score.

Good morning for England.

Top story this week, and...

Welcome to the future.

Well, Andy, we're approaching the summer months now.

Actually, we're probably in them already.

And this is the time where politicians like to celebrate the things they have in some cases tried and in most cases failed to achieve, and then take some time off to spend with their families and or mistresses.

And it seemed also like a good time to look at where we may be, Andy, in 50 years' time as a world and as a species.

And 50 years ago, we were pretty sure that by now we'd all be floating in bubble houses, that we'd have personal robot butlers, a squeezable cheese, and an affordable functioning rocket boot.

And we've only got one of those, Andy.

And it's the one we wanted the least.

Cheese in a tube should never have been on the list.

That was too achievable a goal.

It's almost 25 years to the day since the LA Olympics launched with

that man with a rocket pack on his back.

Yeah.

That was the future.

What's happened to that future?

And we have automatic.

Michael Jackson took off with a rocket pack as well.

Did he?

And he thought, here it comes.

Jacko is the bellwether for the world.

What do you think the world's going to be like, John, 50 years from now?

Do you know probably pretty similar but we'll have had three more Transformers movies.

Will you have been in any of them?

I'll probably have been in the last and worst one.

Your film's been on TV all week here John on the satellite channel.

Really?

Have you watched it yet?

Well if I watch five minutes with my wife

in the middle.

But I've got it recorded so I thought I'd save it for a...

Was I in any of those ones?

No you weren't John.

Oh it must have felt like Russian roulette.

Yeah it just did a bit.

I felt like I could have done with a game of Russian roulette after those five minutes.

Yeah, it wasn't the godfather, exactly.

We'll put it that way.

I mean, would you say it was the worst five minutes of cinema you've ever seen?

Certainly the genuine experienced last year.

I don't really believe in categorising these things so specifically.

It's a tough call to make.

Don't think of the actual worst.

If you had to compare that movie to a piece of violence to your human body, what would that piece of violence be?

Well, it would probably be a Chinese burn followed by a punch in the throat.

That could be worse.

Two stars.

Of course one thing is for pretty sure Andy and that's in 50 years the US is unlikely to be the biggest financial superpower in the world.

That title will be firmly in the hands of the Chinese and China and the US met for two days of high-level talks this week.

Somewhere on the agenda must have been the idea of at some point having an official buck passing ceremony where China officially becomes the most powerful country in the world and America can shake their hands, smile at them and then say to the rest of the world, right, everything's their fault now, and then they can come and join the rest of us, pointing their finger and complaining about stuff.

They'll soon see just how much fun it is blaming the top dog.

As part of these talks, John China and America agreed a memorandum of understanding, which are words that do set slight alarm bells ring.

It's got a slight hint of the old, I have in my hand a piece of paper.

These talks were much broader than the previous talks between the Bush regime and China, which were fixed only on the economy.

Bush only really talks to China about the economy.

Actually, it might be the other way around.

It might only have been that China could only be asked to talk to Bush about the economy, just to try and minimise the length those talks could possibly be.

But a barn from Huzin Tower, they discussed everything, John, literally everything from the environment, the economy, trade, strategic relations, spaceball, which is the best series of 24, and who's the better actor, Carrie Grants or Jimmy Stewart.

So it's good to see a much more kind of inclusive relationship.

Nice conversational tone.

The talks were called the Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

And

after his talks, Timothy Geithner told reporters the United States and China are among the biggest beneficiaries of the global trading system and share a common interest in ensuring that global trade and investment remains open and rules-based.

And you know what, while that's true, it is China who are calling the shots now, Andy.

China holds huge amounts of US debt, more than $800 billion of US Treasury securities alone.

So Timothy Geithner can claim all he likes that it's a mutual decision, but if China had told him to do the press conference with his underpants on his head his only question would have been which way round he was speaking after meeting uh chinese vice premier wang in washington

i'm just going to mention andy that i'm in no way emotionally mature enough to handle the fact that the chinese vice premier is called wang i thought he was the vice foreign minister john is it no vice premier oh okay yeah maybe

i mean either way the man's called wang that's right i mean it's slang for penis i can't handle it andy i can't hear it on the news i can't see it written down in the newspaper without sniggering i will simply leave it at that the man's called wang it's ridiculous do you know if he happened to held any talks with the american secretary of state for political affairs willie burns

i don't know

and did you know if they thought of inviting the low-profile german politician lotter koch to join them as well how many more of these no just those i'm done that's good

also looking at the future john well there's going to be one country that's going to be in the future at some point and that's afghanistan uh along with probably most other countries.

But Afghanistan's future could be a tricky one, John, and that's, I say that, because they say that to know your future, you must first understand your past.

And looking at Afghanistan's past, you might conclude that the future is going to be a colossal pile of shit.

I mean, like looking at the history of zebras, you probably predict that in 50 years' time, they will still be running around trying not to become a tasty piece of Carpachi over a peckish lion.

So it would seem that Afghanistan is not so much heading out of the frying pan into the fire as staying in the frying pan, which is already in the fire and has been for some time.

But hopefully not, John.

You know, there's American and British officials have recently called for moderate Talibans to be included in Afghanistan political life once they renounce extremism.

I don't know how you qualify to be a moderate Taliban.

Maybe you only hate women quite a lot.

I don't know.

I don't know what the margin is.

I think maybe you only suppress them on work days.

Oh, I see, right.

So they get weekends off.

Free weekends for women.

Right.

There's a Hamid Karsai extended an olive branch to those Taliban who are willing to repent and regret in public, apparently.

But there's a great problem with this, John, and that is when you give the Taliban an olive branch, what they generally do with it is whip women with it.

Yeah.

Just for looking like they might at some point be even slightly harlottish.

Whack!

Let's have another olive branch.

Whack.

Can we do this in a football stadium with a crowd and it's more fun?

Whack!

Are you thinking about ankles?

Whack!

Maybe in 50 years, Afghanistan democracy will have shown the way to the world, John, and there will be moderate to medium-strength Taliban in all the world's governments.

We can dream.

British future news and well, British Prime Minister, but not for long, Gordon Brown, spoke this week at a conference in Oxford and argued that technology means that foreign policy will never be the same again.

He said that the power of technology, such as blogs, meant the world could no longer be run by elites.

What is he talking about, Andre?

The power of the blog has fundamentally changed foreign policy.

Never mind the power of the nuclear bomb, Andy.

It's crazyhair dude at blogspot.com who is really holding the world by the wazoo.

Gordon Brown has never read a blog in his life.

Oh, he certainly shouldn't have done.

He said that policies must instead be formed by listening to the opinions of people who are blogging and communicating with people around the world.

No!

Wrong!

Policies should be carefully thought out by committees of qualified experts, not people typing in their underpants whilst eating a bowl of cereal.

Also, if you form policy off the back of what bloggers think, you're going to spend your whole time giving the death sentence to bands people don't like.

Here's another piece of technology news that really hints at what the world will be like in the future, John.

A Swedish couple in Holland, Italy, were trying to get to Capri, the beautiful island in the Bay of Naples.

Yeah.

And they typed it into their satnav wrong and typed Carpi instead, which is a northern Italian industrial town, 400 miles off course.

There, yeah.

And you would have thought that you know, if they wanted to go to Capri, they probably knew that it was an island.

So maybe the fact that they were in the middle of Italy with no sea to be seen might have raised their Swedish suspicions.

But no, apparently not.

They went to Carpi.

It's still in Italy, so it's probably not too much.

They probably still had a lovely meal out of of it but this is the future john sat nav as you well know makes people unfeasibly stupid when we rely too much on technology the human brain basically dies i don't know what you're referring to well i'll tell you what i'm referring to john remember that gig we did together at the henley festival a few years ago when uh when you were still on the right side of the atlantic yeah i was driving down from birmingham you were driving up from london Well, you were in a car with the comedian Chris Addison.

That's right.

I was not driving.

I was not driving.

But you you were in the car, John, and in that car also, reminded of you and Chris and another graduate of a British university, but also a road map.

But no, no, you thought I'll tell you, let's run with Satnav.

Let's run with Satnav.

Going from London to Henley, which for those who don't know it's 30 miles west of London.

You ended up about 90 miles northwest of London.

The wrong side of Oxford.

Because that's what Satna have told you to do, John.

If Saturn have told you to drive off a cliff, would you do it?

Yes!

Because I have faith that it has has my best interests at heart.

This is a country that uses road signs as well, John.

The clues were there.

Not anymore.

This is the future.

We will all be thick as

if Saturn have is legalized, which it has been.

My grandfather, John, could add up six columns of numbers in his head whilst rewiring a plug, changing the carburetor on a Ford Mercury, and reciting the entire Magna Carta.

We don't train our brains like that anymore.

Live in the now, Grandpa.

Well, it's not all bad news, Andy, especially for you, because Jewish people outside Jerusalem who want to post a prayer and the western wall and now have a new way of doing this.

They can use Twitter to tweet a prayer, have it printed out and post it into the wall.

Wow, the 2,000-year-old wall is thought to be a direct lie to God, Andy.

So you can now essentially tweet God.

And I don't know if that is a development that he or she is going to be particularly happy with.

I may be wrong.

It's just I'd have thought that if you believe that God is the creator of all things in the universe, 140 characters may not be enough for you to offer him sufficient props.

Maybe the whaling wall is now about to get as clogged up with inanity as Twitter is.

Thousands upon thousands of messages saying, just cooking a monk fish, hope it tastes good.

Or, when does he transform us?

WTF.

No, I guess it's a good way for God to keep in touch with what we're all up to.

It's about time he modernised on.

We're always giving the kids stick for being stuck in the past.

Leader of the opposition in Britain and future Prime Minister David Cameron got into trouble this week during an interview explaining why he's not on Twitter saying politicians need to think about what they say and the instantness of it.

It can be a problem.

The problem is that too many twits might make a twat.

So he managed, Andy, to use a word that some people find extremely offensive, literally three seconds after pointing out politicians really need to think about what they say.

That is an impressively speedy piece of ignoring yourself.

He said on a radio interview, I believe on Breakfast Radio.

Too many twits might make a twat, which I believe was the motto of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford when he and Boris Johnson were members.

But it also showed, John, that Churchillian rhetoric and wit is still alive and well in the Tory party.

And he also claimed that twat is not technically a swear word.

Right.

Although some people you say do find it offensive, but then, you know, nor is if you say it in German.

So I guess you can't beat that, Tom.

He was using the German word.

Now, regarding the future of journalism, Andy, Walter Cronkite died last week, one of the finest journalists of the last century.

And I don't think there was any better example of how far his profession has fallen than this New York Times correction of one of their appreciation pieces of his career.

I quote this for batum, Andy.

An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite's career included a number of errors.

In some copies, it misstated the date that the Reverend Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr.

Conkrite's coverage of D-Day.

Dr.

King was killed on April the 4th, 1968, not April the 30th.

Mr.

Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane.

He did not storm the beaches.

In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20th, 1969, not July 26th.

The CBS Evening News overtook the Huntley-Brinkley report on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet the Huntley retired in 1970.

A communications satellite used to relay correspondence reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar.

Howard K.

Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of the CBS Evening News.

In 1962, he left CBS before Mr.

Cronkite was the anchor.

Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr.

Cronkite was Moscow Bureau Chief after World War II.

At the time, it was the United Press, not United Press International.

Wow!

Someone has to have been fired for that, Andy.

In fact, I would hope that when they went to fire them, their desk was already cleared, but for a single piece of paper saying, I know, I know.

Well, they say you should not speak ill of the dead, and you should also not speak slightly wrongly of the dead, repeatedly.

Here's another bit of future news that I've found last night, John.

Oh, yeah.

The astronaut Koichi Wakata has just returned from space, having been wearing the same same pair of underpants.

What?

He's been wearing the same pair of underpants for an entire month on the space station and he broke the news to an astonished, frankly disgusted planet.

These new scientific space pants, antibacterial, odour eliminating, water absorbent.

They're designed for space travel so astronauts don't have to change their pants.

I don't know how lazy astronauts have got John.

But surely there's absolutely bugger all to do in space, apart from float around.

I mean is changing your pants really that much of a problem?

But this is the future, John.

Yeah.

Pants that people don't have to change.

It's great for the environment.

You know, all clothes can be compulsorily worn for a year at a time.

People only need to take one shower a year.

You know, we are the only species in the world that changes its clothes every day or a couple of days or every few days if they have some really good sport and they're telling you you don't have time.

But yeah, it saves on pollution from washing powders, saves water, encourages people not to eat too much.

You know, if you've got a pair of pants on for you, you don't want to be putting on a stone.

You know, it might help curve overpopulation as well.

Careless romantic moments, both parties will suddenly think, hang on, we've both been wearing these pants for 11 months, let's take a rain check on this hump.

You know, these pants could save the world, John.

This is the future.

But who isn't going to be interested in NASA pants, Andy?

Your pants designed with space technology.

Who is not going to want to wear that?

I wonder what Neil Armstrong's pants would fetch on eBay.

That's got to go for at least 50 quin, surely.

There's only one way of finding out, Andy, and that is finding Neil Armstrong, wrestling him to the floor.

I mean, the the pants he wore on the moon.

I just thought you meant, you know, some pants.

I could just list Neil Armstrong's space pants and see what the bids go to.

Yeah.

So that's our view of the future and you can find out how our predictions have panned out in Bugle issue 2473.

Alcohol news now and

you may remember last week President Obama managed to get 56 minutes through a primetime press conference on healthcare, safe and sound, then made the mistake of answering a direct question about an African-American Harvard professor who had been arrested for breaking into his own house.

Obama said, I don't know all the details.

He both could and should have stopped right there.

But he went on to say, I think it's clear that the police acted stupidly.

And the assembled journalists simultaneously thought, oh, well, that was a lot more interesting than what you said the previous 56 minutes.

Let's go with that.

And this basically escalated, Andy, and Obama had to release another statement to the press saying, well, because this has been ratcheting up, and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I want to make it clear in my choice of words that I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically.

Yes, you did do that.

You said he acted stupidly.

Obama went on to say, I could have calibrated those words differently.

What?

Calibrated those words differently?

You could almost say you acted stupidly.

And in an attempt to dampen the media going after this story like a hungry dog eating its own vomit, Obama invited both Professor Gates and the policeman to the White House so they could all have a beer together.

Because that is what you want in an awkward racial situation, the introduction of alcohol.

And it got even worse because Joe Biden turned up too.

So now you've got alcohol and the man with the loosest mouth in Washington.

They're lucky it didn't end up in a fist fight.

Or karaoke, even worse.

Instead, the words were measured, or, you know, nearly measured, with Professor Gates saying, Sergeant Crowley and I, through an accident of time and place, have been cast together inextricably as characters, as metaphors, really, in a thousand narratives about race over which he and I have absolutely no control.

And again, like Obama, he could have stopped there.

But no, because he went on to later say, we hit it off right from the beginning.

When he's not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy.

Back to square what.

Beer is the future for all negotiations and

make up talks like that.

In fact, there's a dangerous precedent, of course, the negotiations at the end of the First World War before the Versailles Treaty, John.

All the leaders, I think it was Lloyd George and Clemorso, they all got absolutely hammered in that train in the woods.

I think they had a keg of Harvey's Sussex Ale and the rest is 26 years of increasingly nasty history.

Bugle feature section now, driving.

And well, we all like to drive, John.

It's part of the genetic makeup of human beings, and it has been ever since Carl Benz thought, I'm sick of horses, they smell and they're unreliable.

If only you could put a combustion engine in a horse and replace its legs with round legs, or even better, wheels.

Hang on, there might be something in this.

So driving, as you know, is part of life now, John.

And the big driving news this week has been the comeback of Michael Schumacher, the seven-time Formula One world champion.

He's replacing Felipe Massa, who in the Grand Prix last weekend copped.

A bit of a crash, John.

It was certainly a close shave for the Brazilian.

But luckily, it's not the 1970s anymore, so he survived.

And thankfully, it looks like he'll be fine, which just goes to show the dangers of being a racing driver if you were born in in a city in which the syllable ow occurs twice sao paulo that's where math was from it was a matter of time seven-time champ and notorious how should we put this crank shafter schumacher is back him coming back to formula one is like dan marino coming out of retirement to play for the miami dolphins or bobby charlton leaping out of the director's box to play for man united again albeit less so as schumacher only retired a couple of years ago but everyone is very excited partly because formula one is pretty boring most of the time and also because schumacher was very good at it he was one of the best guys ever at getting a car from A to B provided that A and B were the same point on a motor racing track and you wanted him to go round and round 70 odd times to get there but also because there's a big chance he's going to drive someone off the track and people want to see a fight that's what formula one's missing John

so as part of this feat section I'm going to tell you how to drive like a Formula One star without breaking the law step one drive into a garage sit there motionless for nine seconds then start shouting at people asking why your new set of tires hasn't been put on yet, and where the Formula One drivers have to refuel their own bloody cars these days, winching that this kind of thing didn't used to happen when you were at Renault.

Step two, when sent on an errand to pick up some bread and milk from a nearby shop, drive around a two-mile circuit of streets 78 consecutive times before walking back into your house, putting on a sponsored cap, spraying yourself in champagne, then telling your family in tedious detail how pleased you were with the performance of the car.

And step three: when you crash your car, just leave it where it is, walk off, and expect a crane to come and pick it up for you

there's some hot new cars on the market this summer john oh yeah coupled with a new twist um the japanese manufacturer chiona fujia brought out a nice nippy new one the tarau the world's greenest car that uses just as much petrol as a normal car but every lead to use it projects a hologram of a dying penguin on the road ahead to prick your conscience oh that's nice and the australian car makers victor are releasing the trumper 1902 which is aimed at improving teenage driver safety it can sense when a 17 or 18 year old has just passed their tests to try and impress their friends by driving like a total tool, automatically pulls over to the side of the road, pops up a speaker on the roof, and announces, hey everyone, this driver's got a tiny penis, which is very effective at embarrassing both male and female teenage drivers.

Guarantee that'll happen only once.

Also in the driving session, there's some family games, John, to play in the car and long summer journeys

during traffic jams to stave off the onset of boredom, psychosis or divorce.

This game, game, I Spy, variation on an old classic, see who can go undercover in another person's vehicle during a long traffic jam and return with secret details on that person and their government.

Or 20 questions: accuse someone else in your car of having committed an unsolved crime, then force a confession out of them with a maximum of 20 questions and two physical beatings.

Or perhaps you'd like to try silent slams, taken in turns to slam a different part of your body in the car door.

The first person to scream, faint, or require professional medical assistance loses.

Or perhaps this one, the game called I'm I'm Rick Moranis, taken in terms to convince your fellow passengers that you are Oscar losing actor Rick Moranis.

And finally, a guide to the new International Irritable Road Users Association hand gestures for driving.

These will be recognised around the world.

The first one is two fingers out,

snapping together like a pair of scissors, rising upwards, then plunging down again.

This means you cut me up, so I will take you down.

Then there's three fingers up, then taking the two down at the side, leaving only your middle finger protruding.

Then tilt the middle finger to the side, bring it down, and replace it with your index finger.

This means don't just sit in the middle in the middle lane, trundling along, pull over to the inside lane where you belong.

It's good to hack yourselves, that's something you want to say quite often on a road.

And signal three is hold your hand as if you're gripping a small baguette or a giant pencil.

Then put your hand to the centre of your forehead and move it backwards and forwards in quick succession.

This means you are driving like a unicorn.

In other words, as badly as you would expect something that is both fictitious and hooved to drive.

Actually, I've got a quick where is he now famous driver feature, two drivers under the microscope.

The former world rally driving champion Carlos Saints, where is he now?

Well, he's probably at home googling himself, or maybe trying to buy some Carlos Saints memorabilia on eBay, or maybe he's in his garden running around saying vroom vroom, but running straight into things because he's used to having a co-driver telling him when to turn.

And the other driver in the Where Is He Now feature is the guy who drove his car straight at my fing car on the wrong side of the A26 in Tunbridge Wells at 1am three years ago.

I remember.

Necessitating an emergency swerve and resulting in one very broken wing mirror, a big scrape up the right-hand side of my Ford Focus, and the closest I've ever knowingly come to a table for one Shea dead.

Where is he now, this guy?

Seriously, where is he now?

And more importantly, what the f was he doing?

Why didn't the little shit stop?

Was he trying to clean my car with his car?

Was it a botched mafia hit?

Well,

not unless he'd mistaken me for a top Sicilian cop, which he shouldn't have done.

Unlikely, unlikely.

I just don't have that look.

Or had maybe he'd seen a poisonous bar constrictor about to slide into my car through the driver's side window.

But of course, he hadn't, John.

The clue's in the name.

They're constrictors, not venomizers.

You don't have a poisonous bar constrictor.

And even if it was there, I hardly think they'd be native to Tunbridge Wells.

And the moral of that story is: don't drive like a

your emails now, and this one comes in from Guy Yedwob,

whose name I believe we have praised hugely before, as England lose their first wicket at two for one.

Andy.

Sorry, sorry.

Give us cookies fishing outside Offdown.

Anyway, back to the show.

But Guy, probably assuming that I'd be have half an eye on the cricket, has addressed this directly to Tom.

Nice work, Nostradamus.

I appeal directly to you rather than to John and Andy because you, Tom, are the voice of responsibility on the bugle.

I've just realised that John has not checked on the soundproof safe in New York for several weeks.

Oh shit.

And Henry Kissinger is still in there.

Oh god.

Oh I don't want to open the lid Andy.

I don't know what to find in there.

Did you leave some air holes?

I'd left a few carrots in there and some hay.

At best it's going to honk like a Canadian goose.

Yeah, or he might have hibernated.

Because I think he used to hibernate six months even, even when he was in government.

Please quickly check before it's too late.

We've lost too many celebrities this summer.

We can't afford to lose a world-class diplomat, stroke, war, criminal, delete as appropriate.

You, Tom, and Andy, may already be be came for children, but John has never had to support a living being before.

It proves that I can't be trusted with him.

He's like a pet Kissinger.

I'm worried he's let one of America's most recognizable former secretaries die a horrible death.

Well, we'll report back next week.

Here's an email from Max Stewart, who says, Hello, John.

Hello, Andy, but most likely, hello, Tom.

Uh-oh, this is really starting to become a pattern.

He said, I was taking a tour of Rome this past week.

I could have pointed out that Silvio Berlusconi's office is directly across from a strip club.

I can't honestly say I'm surprised.

Well, it's a chicken and egg situation, isn't it?

Did he put his office where a strip club was?

Exactly.

Or did a strip club think, well, Berlusconi's there.

They keep opening up wherever he goes.

He doesn't stand a chance.

Alright, Silvio?

Yeah, I noticed that you just bought a new condo down there.

Say hello to Cinnamon.

This one comes in from Jennifer Gill, who writes, just thought you should know, I saw a Giuliani 2012 bumper sticker the other day.

Couldn't tell if it was real or homemade, but you have to appreciate the proactivity on their part.

I'm just going to have a quick check to see if you can still contribute.

Join Rudy.

Rudy Giuliani for presidents.

Can still contribute.

Let it go, Rudy.

You lost.

Fair and square.

You're on £4,600.

No way.

Just a quick bit of sports now.

Well, as you know, my life has been overwhelmed by cricket recently as I've been doing my cricket radio series.

And I also write a blog on a cricket website called Crick Info, and I get quite a lot of responses to it.

And this one came in, I don't think it was actually published, but my contact at Grindo sent it to me anyway.

And this is how it reads: You're so mature, I don't know how CrickInfo let you write articles.

I reckon I would be better than you writing articles.

I'm gonna fuck your wife while you write your next article.

People get wound up about cricket blogs, it turns out.

Also, the beauty is the spelling in it is so bad.

Well, let me tell you.

I'm all for free speech, John, and I acknowledge that I'm not everyone's cup of tea.

Indeed, many people don't even think I'm a cup of tea at all.

But come on, this has to be better.

Right, he starts.

You're so mature.

Y-O-U-R.

You know, I can't argue with the sentiments, but no capital letter at the start of the sentence.

He spelt you're wrong.

You're so mature.

Full stop.

He continues.

I, lowercase, should be a capital letter for two basic reasons.

Don't, don't, no apostrophe.

Maybe it's the French word don't, the relative pronoun.

I don't know.

It doesn't really make sense.

Know how CrickInfo let you write articles well sure you can guess how they let me write articles I think the question you're struggling with is why they let me write articles that's the more pressing question that's right yeah how they just you know they just say okay write your article we'll put it on our website it's as simple as that anyway he continues I reckon lowercase I reckon I lowercase again would be better than you how can you misspell the word than

writing articles now writing

he spelt right correctly the first time now writing W R I G H T I

Oh, dear.

Now, right, I guess I could be an article right, like a playwright.

But it's not actually, it can't be a verb, right?

So, anyway.

Then he continues, I'm going to fuck your wife while you write your next article.

Now, I'm no capital letter, obviously, or no apostrophe, so it's just Im, maybe an acronym for the Indian Mujahideen.

I don't know, Islam of the Islamist terror group.

Or maybe I am international chess master.

Not quite a grandmaster, but you know, I don't see that's likely, you know, they're not sexually aggressive people, chess grandmasters.

Perhaps he meant Im, the mythological Norse giant.

And that makes sense, because he spelt Gunnar, just G-N-A.

And Gunnar is also a goddess in Norse mythology.

Oh, that's what it is.

So perhaps he's envisioning some kind of gargantuan threesome he wants to inflict on my poor innocent spouse.

Anyway, I'm Gunnar

while spelt with no H, you write R-I-G-H-T, the third different spelling of right in the space of 20 words.

Indecisive

your next article.

The lad should also know that when I write, write, or write my articles, depending on how you want to spell it, my wife is often in the same room as me, or at the very least, in the next room or just downstairs.

We're also very happily married.

And as if all these were not enough to suggest this gentleman's attempted seduction of my wife is a long shot, a very long shot.

We're talking a 250-yard free kick shot here, John.

She also finds abysmal spelling and grammar a real turn-off.

I just wanted to make sure he's appraised of the situation before he embarks on his attempted seduction.

And anyway, if you want to improve me as a writer, destroying my home life is not the way to go about it.

I need encouragement.

I'm shocked.

I'm really shocked.

You do a blog?

Exactly.

That is the much, much bigger point here, Andy.

You are burying the lead.

So, just time for the bugle forecast.

Is the guy who responded to my previous cricket vlog going to like my next cricket blog a bit more?

Is he going to just downgrade the threats?

I think that's it.

And he's going to have to wean himself off the concept of threatening you and your life.

So, yeah, I think he's going to like it more.

Alright, well, I hope so.

But to be fair to him, I am immature.

He was right about that.

That's it for this week's bugle.

We'll be back again next week.

Come hell or high water.

Actually, either of those would probably stop us recording.

But

provided neither hell nor high water intervenes, we'll be back next week.

Bye-bye.

Goodbye, and good luck.

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.