Obama: Pay for this or you'll all die!

This is a Times Online podcast.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to...

Well, what's up, mate?

Oh, it's just trying a different form of hello.

Yeah, I don't think it works for you, Andrew.

Really?

yeah

hello buglers.

No it's it sounds informal but it's actually creepy.

Alright.

Hello buglers.

No that's even worse.

You can't say hello as if you're just meeting them on the street.

Oh hello buglers.

Hello buglers.

Fancy meeting you here.

Ha ha here in cyberspace.

Anyway welcome to issue 83 of the Bugle the audio newspaper that has literally got the world talking.

Albeit the human speech did predate the bugle.

So it's probably more accurate to say it has kept the world talking or at least not stopped the world from continuing to talk.

Let's leave it at that.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann here in London and in the city that never sleeps and is therefore pumped up to his eyeballs with industrial strength caffeine just to keep functioning to a basic level.

New York, it's the Jackie Chan of Joviality, John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

They pronounce it quaffy here, Andy.

Cup of quaffy.

You're really starting to blend in.

This week.

That's definitely not true.

This week, Andy, I had a biometrics appointment for my green card.

things

ascertaining that I'm definitely not a robot

I had to give of my fingerprints and well I had to give them copies of them I don't know how to give them my actual fingerprints but I when I was a little boy when I was three I hurt my thumb andy playing running around and someone shut a door on it I can't believe you've never told me this before I know so I hurt my thumb and this there's no nice way of saying that it got hurt my little thumb so it's messed up my thumb fingerprint a bit and the problem is it wouldn't get a a good enough reading from the scanner, which kept rejecting it.

And that seemed to cause quite a bit of friction, which we meet with the immigration people.

As if my thumb is a terrorist.

I just have to hope that my fingers can contain it, Andy.

My thumb hates the freedoms of the rest of my hand.

So I think the whole of my body should be okay, but my thumb can't stay in this country.

Post it home.

Whatever it'll take.

So this is Bugle 83, which means by the end of this GloboCast, we will have done exactly eight times as many bugles as we had done about seven minutes into Bugle 11.

So just to clear that up, this is for the week beginning Monday, the 27th of July, which means it's the 143rd anniversary of the completion of the Atlantic Cable, allowing transatlantic cable communication, John.

That's the kind of technology that makes this podcast possible.

If we'd been recording this bugle pre-1866, we would have needed two yogurt pots and a three and a half thousand mile long piece of string and the sound quality wouldn't have been anywhere near as good.

So thank you whoever put that cable down 143 years ago also 60 years of jet powered airline flight marked on the 27th of july the dehavilland comet tips of the skies in 1949 heralding a brand new exciting age in partially edible food

As always, some sex into the bugle are going straight on the bin.

This week, it's a giveaway section, a free audio postcard home from your summer holidays.

Simply edit it out using a basic sound editing program, burn onto a postcard-shaped CD-ROM, and post it to your family and friends.

These postcards come in three categories: the token audio postcard, dear mum and dad, hello from Florida and or Spain, from Mick and Brenda.

A jokey postcard, dear grandma, guess what?

Jeff got eaten by a shark in the aquarium today.

Only joking, although he was critically injured trying to jump a rented motorcycle over a fjord.

Lots of love, Kim.

Or the final category of postcard is the overly detailed holiday postcard.

Dear Auntie Ethel, today I woke up at 06.32 hours and got out of bed at 06.55 hours.

I then stretched, yawned, urinated, expectorated into the sink, scratched my scrotum, or for our lady bugle listeners who do not have scrotum, should replace this phrase with the words, I scratched someone else's scrotum.

Anyway, continuing, I then got out of bed.

I decided to put some clothes on today, initially socks, then undergarments, then a t-shirt or shirt, then trousers, more socks, and finally my new helmet that I stole from the Archaeological Museum yesterday.

A fascinating museum, if I may say.

Then breakfast, for which I pulled the curtains back and shouted out of the window, What's a guy or girl got to do to get breakfast breakfast round here?

A helpful local counter shouted, Try going downstairs to the breakfast room.

Emboldened, I strapped on my goggles.

With Deirdre offering me covering fire, I sprinted to the breakfast room as advised, wherein I encountered a quandary.

Toast or croissants.

Someone was going to pay for this.

Continue for two hours as you see fit in extremely small verbal handwriting.

Well, Andy, I think both myself and Bugles will notice there is no cricket on.

today because this it's just laser focus that you have yeah yeah well you know it's relative your version of laser focus.

It's interesting, during my cricket show, I've got a new screen on and I'll keep just looking at a thing.

Oh, something for the bugle there.

Oh, there you go.

At least that's a yin and yang to it.

That's right.

Top story this week, healthcare.

Let me interrupt you, John.

The top story this week is England beat Australia at Lords in the test match.

No!

For the first time since 1934, John.

So close.

We didn't just break that 75-year hoodie.

We smashed it like a porcelain honeymoon memento figurine in a divorcing couple's final argument.

What a day for our nation, John.

The greatest day in British history.

How can you lead with any other story than that?

You seem to have lost touch with this country, John.

So close.

To just not letting it affect this.

Just separating this part of your life from cricket, but you couldn't do it.

Top story this week: healthcare or health couldn't give a shit.

Obama's almost comically ambitious aims as president continued this week, Andy, with healthcare.

His aims are now so heroic.

I feel he should deliver every press conference in a flowing blonde wig with his shirt open and a wind machine just blowing his hair back.

Well, a kind of white snake look.

Yeah,

exactly.

In fact, I believe they patented that look.

So you would have to pay some money to White Snake.

But, you know, that's gas capitalism.

Yeah, that'd be interesting.

A member of White Snake has never been president of America.

That's the next barrier for America to confront.

It sure sure is.

Now, and everyone in America knows that healthcare is the political live wire.

You do not touch it.

Look at what it did for Clinton.

When he tried to fix it, he played brinksmanship with Congress saying, look, we either do this properly or not at all.

To which they said, oh, you're right.

You're right.

You're absolutely right, Bill.

Let's not do it.

See you later.

And by later, I mean your impeachment hearing.

The political rule since Truman seems to be that you can talk about it.

You can even express how sad it is that nothing's been done about it, but you absolutely cannot then go and actually try to do something about it.

That is the worst kind of suicide.

But Obama, the daredevil president, strapped on a crash helmet this week, climbed into a cannon and shot himself onto the podium of a live Primetime press conference.

And now, how big a priority is healthcare, Andy?

Well, it's a sixth of the American economy, but let's look at how the TV networks responded to this press conference.

The White House were initially forced to move the press conference forward an hour from when they originally scheduled it so they wouldn't go up against NBC's America's Got Talent,

who had a highly anticipated appearance from Susan Boyle, or that they wouldn't clash with ABC's Wipeout, the game show where contestants get knocked into pools of water by inflatable objects.

And even with the early...

But surely Wipeout, that is just an allegory for the fragile nature of human health.

Well, that's true.

That is true.

And how it's important to have the cushioning equipment.

Yeah.

Because otherwise, your virus, your bacteria

is going to come along and knock you into a pool of death.

Exactly.

So they were really using that as something to go out and continue the conversation afterwards.

But even with this earlier time, Fox opted not to take the press conference at all and instead showed a new episode of So You Think You Can Dance.

And that.

And that wasn't a healthcare-themed episode, Andy.

Really?

Either.

That wasn't an episode where the contestants see if they can dance after long-needed knee surgery.

So you think you can dance?

Good luck.

You need to stay off that for at least five weeks.

I don't fully understand American healthcare, John.

It does seem that there's some debate over whether it makes economic sense for large proportions of the population to die in incredible pain due to being unable to afford not to.

I mean, I guess that comes down to

just the bare-balled economics of it at the end of the day.

I mean, capitalism would say that, yeah, a large amount of people dying or living in complete pain, constant pain, is a real bargain for the consumer.

And so, you know, the supply and demand.

Well, it's interesting you say that, because there are a lot of concerns about proposals to tax the rich to pay for poor people to die a bit less.

Yeah.

Or, you know, at least a bit less painfully.

And the hardline Republican senator Scruton McCoop, he said, what's the point in being rich if you can't sit in a massive armchair thinking about poor people writhing in agony on the floors of their trailers with a burst stomach ulcer or something?

It's supposed to be the land of the free, not the land of the well.

He's got a point.

It's a horrible point, but you know, he has got one.

Yeah, I'm going to admit that he doesn't exist, but I mean, that doesn't undercut what he says.

But if he did, that would be a horrifying thing to say.

But, Andy, on the other hand, CNN interrupted their Black in America 2 programming, so it seems that we can deduce that healthcare in America is less important than people getting nutshots from inflatable boxing gloves or dancing to La Vida Loca, but more important than black people.

So at least we all know where we stand.

I thought there was supposed to be change.

So there's 72 million I read to uninsured or underinsured in America, which I think it's got to be a good start, hasn't it?

Because surely if you're uninsured, there's a very great incentive to look after yourself and live a healthy lifestyle.

Otherwise, you're going to think, you know, if you have got insurance, surely people just think, hey, why not get my money's worth?

Let's get a disease.

And every day's a gamble.

You know, it's the excitement of a casino.

Obama's tone during the press conference reflected the sense of real urgency over this issue and shifted shifted from his signature warm positivity to outright threats this time saying if we don't act 14,000 Americans will lose their health care every day and it wasn't clear if this was naturally happening or whether that was something that he was going to do I'm telling you people every six seconds someone loses their coverage then simply standing back looking at his watch and saying you'll move punks oh and if you don't come around I'm gonna send you a finger in the post from someone you love in six months he's gone from Captain McHope face to Tony Soprano.

This is his new sales technique.

With the current system this bad, you can't afford not to support national healthcare reform.

And his new slogan, buy this or you're dead.

He also said, there's no reason that we Americans should be paying 50% more than every other advanced nation on earth and not be any healthier.

And to me, John, that's a real misunderstanding of what it means to be American.

Surely overpaying wildly to no obvious advantage is really what it means

to be an American.

I mean they've they've paid America at least 10,000% more than Switzerland on nuclear weapons, but over the last 60 years they've both fired exactly the same number of nuclear weapons in combat.

Surely that's even worse value.

Can you explain to me as a layman, a neutral?

I'm half on the side of the Americans, I'm half on the side of the diseases who've got just as much right in a free country to go about their business.

Why is it that opinion is turning against Obama's plans?

I haven't really tried to understand, understand, but I reckon I wouldn't, even if I did.

Well,

that little microcosm is exactly why.

Right, see?

I've answered my own question.

And also, it doesn't help that it's very badly timed.

He decided to halt this national press conference at a time when there is no plan.

So he could try and explain a plan that doesn't exist and which he can't talk about the hypotheticals of without jeopardising the negotiations that are going on at the moment.

So it really was just a man standing on stage giving meaningless allegories and saying, it's important that we're all healthy, right?

Right?

Can I get a witness?

Testify.

There do seem to be a lot of vested interest, John.

And as the debate goes on and on, those interests are really ripping open their shirts to show just quite how vested they are underneath.

There's some real proper kind of Glaswegian vests going on there.

One Republican has reportedly said that the issue could be Obama's Waterloo, because presumably it involves a lot of horses, Prussians, and dead bodies.

I don't know what else he could mean by that.

Maybe it means it's going to be his iconic popular hit.

Who knows?

The Republicans have been lining up to demolish Obama's proposals, but at the same time haven't come up with any of their own.

And apparently, there's a good reason for that.

And that's that any other ideas would just confuse people.

Republican Representative Roy Blunt said, our bill is never going to get to the floor, so why confuse the focus?

He's right, Andy.

What's the point?

Oh, and while we're at it, why invest in education as well?

We're all going to die eventually.

Might as well just lie down and let the worms get a head start.

He is a sulky teenager, Representative Blunt.

I bet he's painted his congressional office black and slams the door whenever he doesn't get his way.

I wish I was never elected.

Amongst Obama's proposals, some of which haven't been fully revealed to the public, as you say, are a new home self-surgery helpline, recorded messages to talk low-income ill people through their own kitchen table operations.

Also, free plastic toy doctor skits for all inner-city urban teenagers to reinforce the importance of healthcare and show how cool stethoscopes are.

Better than skateboards any day, I'd say.

Look out for Tony Hawke's stethoscope mayhem on the PlayStation next year.

Checking people's thoraxes has never been so exciting.

And also fixed penalties of up to $20,000 for anyone who dies due to ill health before the age of 85.

That's surely got to be a good incentive.

Got to hit people where it hurts in their pockets, John.

In their dead pockets.

Although President Obama is leading the drive to reform, he's been very careful to spread the responsibility wide out to Congress too.

Again, wary of what happened with Clinton when the music stopped and he was left holding a pile of shit.

Obama said, This debate is not a game.

This isn't about me.

I have the best healthcare insurance in the world.

And it's true, Andy.

Not only does he have a doctor following around all the time, he also has snipers on roofs picking off suspicious-looking microbes that come anywhere near him, and secret servicemen diving in front of any piece of spittle which goes near him during a particularly close conversation.

In a surprise move, even Walmart came out in favour of compulsory healthcare provision by employers.

This was a particular shock because Walmart has yet to come out in favor of the concept of health.

They like people to be weak and vulnerable.

Seeing, America spends 16.2% of its GDP on healthcare, John.

That is around that twice as much as most other OECD countries, which probably explains why they can't afford to invade China at the moment.

I don't understand how it can be so much.

But someone must be making a f ⁇ of a lot of money out of it.

That's again, Andy, you're answering all the questions that you posing.

Oh, that's good.

Someone is making...

It's not just someone, though.

It is a number of someones who are making a f ⁇ of a lot.

I mean, currently...

America's system is a complicated mix of competing insurance plans, both government and private, but this competition is basically them trying to pass off costs to the other party.

They're essentially competing to see who doesn't have to pay for you to be healthy.

It's like the most depressing custody battle in court.

Parents deciding who gets to not have the child.

Or a game of pass the parcel with you being the deeply unwanted parcel.

And one of the reasons why America's system is as bloated and flawed as late period Marlon Brando is the many financial incentives

for doctors.

Take that, Brando.

You're already sticking it to your fellow film stars these days, Brian.

That's right, because his career in film is probably about as alive as mine.

There's many financial incentives for doctors to take on more patients and add more expensive tests for all of them.

Everything they do just gets put on the insurance.

So Obama raised this issue of doctors seeing people with sore throats and then just taking their tonsils out unnecessarily as it pays more.

And a doctor appeared on the news afterwards to refute this claim, saying, actually, you don't get that much for tonsil removal, so that's a bad example.

That is not refuting the claim.

That's providing more evidence for it.

If you really want to hit gold, you you want to lop out a kidney.

Those things can really make it rain.

Know what I'm saying?

And a two-week holiday in the Dominican Republic on the back of one of those beauties.

Listening to this, John, it really makes me as a British person appreciate the NHS, John.

It's nice not to have to make those tricky life and death financial decisions.

Do you have life-saving emergency tracheotomy or new windscreen wipers on your car?

It's nice not to be put in that position.

Surprisingly rare for countries to have a system that says to its citizens, we'd rather you didn't die.

So we in Britain are quite lucky.

Well done, little Clement Attlee, the post-war Prime Minister, par excellence and his chums for getting that big boy off the ground.

But of course, we still have to whinge about how much it costs to keep other people's friends and families alive, and also about how there is, as a result, insufficient money sometimes when our friends and family need a bit of professionally assisted death avoidance.

But still, it is better than slowly and painfully dying because it's economically sensible to do so.

You see, it's interesting you say that, because opponents of Obama's reform argue against it by saying, we don't want to end up with health care like they have in Great Britain.

And Andy, as a current resident of the Septid Isle, the Septid Isle, how do you find healthcare in Britain?

Obviously, you know, you opted not to use it for the birth of your second child.

Was that a comment on the system or was that just bad timing on your part?

Well, I don't know.

All I can say is I'm not dead, so I've got no complaints.

That's a low bar.

Andy, listen.

As long as I'm alive, it's the greatest healthcare system in the world.

Well, you say we didn't use it for the birth of our son, but they did pitch up shortly afterwards and

you know just checked him over.

They didn't clear up the mess of which you know any birth fans will know there's quite a lot.

Tom nodding his head there.

Birth fans.

Yeah.

But no, outstanding.

Absolutely outstanding.

I cannot recommend the ambulance crew who came to deal with the aftermath of me delivering a child.

I cannot praise them highly enough.

Maybe healthcare should just be run like car insurance.

You get a no-claims bonus for not getting sick.

You choose the level of coverage you want relative to how heavy a vehicle you yourself are.

And, you know, if it's someone else's fault that you're sick, it goes on their insurance.

So if someone sneezes in your direction in the street, you both stop and exchange information.

Or another way of doing it is just a pay-as-you-go system.

So if you go in for an operation, you're not sure how ill you are.

You know, you stick your 100 quid on the table, they cut you open, they say, well, there's this, this and this.

And you think, you weigh it up and think, well, take the appendix out, but, you know, leave the pancreas or whatever.

Because, you know, you've booked your holidays at Cancun and you've got to balance the books.

Well, the number of swine flu infections has doubled in the past week

in Britain.

There are an estimated 100,000 new cases, and the government have responded by setting up a phone line for free drugs so that you don't have to visit a GP.

Now, here's the problem, Andy.

Are people not just going to phone up for that anyway?

Either because they want the drugs just in case, or because they just like free stuff or because they've always dreamed of opening up a personal pharmacy and this is a real foot in the door

well also they had the website they set up for it was receiving two and a half thousand hits a second that's about nine million an hour that's the entire population of Britain in 100 working days people love free stuff they love it and the World Health Organization have said that swine flu is now unstoppable which I think is that's bad that's bad tactics John talking up your opponent like that.

It's given the virus a bit of confidence, and really you want to try and trash talk it.

The WHO is really making things a lot worse.

Maybe it's reverse psychology trying to make the virus complacent, who knows?

It got even worse, wasn't it?

The child actor in Harry Potter, who plays Ron Weasley, caught the bug.

And I mean, okay, that's it.

Now something has to be done.

And

if child actors are getting infected, then we are all at risk.

I just want to make sure it doesn't get to that girl off Little Miss Sunshine.

That would be too much to bear.

Britain is projecting more than 100,000 cases of swine flu a day, new cases by the end of the summer.

So by the end of the year, John, that'll be a quarter of this entire nation dead, just like that.

No.

I don't think that.

No, infected, Andy.

Oh, right.

Infected with my fatalities.

No, just infected with this slightly bad flu.

That's all.

Terror update now, and Bin Laden is dead!

Oh no!

No, no, no, no, no, sorry, not that bin Laden, not the one you're thinking of!

His third eldest son, Sahad bin Laden!

Yes!

You know, that's not nothing.

Same ballpark,

different seats.

Yes, and Sahad bin Laden is dead.

Or likely to be dead.

85% dead, as the CIA said.

I'm not sure if if that's...

that they are 85% sure he's dead or that he personally is 85% dead and they just need to finish off that awkward 15%

of the arm to still waving around yeah exactly like my terror thumb

Apparently he was not a major player in al-Qaeda but was known and was famous because of his surname.

What they're saying is we basically killed Julian Lennon.

He was not targeted but was caught in the strike.

So it wasn't even on purpose.

That's how close we are to getting bin Laden we're accidentally killing one of his kids an intelligence official said and we make a big deal out of him because of his last name look maybe this maybe this can just be it Andy we said capture or kill bin Laden technically this honours that vaith contract can we please just go home now and try to forget that we failed

So I guess, you know, the question does arise from this, John.

Where is the real bin Laden, not the pretend sun version,

Saad, or as he's now called, very sad.

It's getting a bit boring, John.

55% Sard.

50% angry.

It's getting a bit boring all this hiding in the mountains crap, John.

My view is, John, if he's done nothing wrong, he's got nothing to worry about.

So he should come out and just be prepared to go through due legal process.

Yes, yes.

It's the whether he's done something wrong that's going to be the problem there, aren't they?

The surname bin Laden, I think this proves, is a tough one to have.

It's up there with the Hitler moustache in terms of something that looks a long way off making an acceptable comeback.

Bugle feature section now, and the 40th anniversary of the moon landings.

One week late.

We at the Bugle pride ourselves on being one of the first 100,000 world media outlets to cover most major news stories.

As Margaret Thatcher used to say in cabinet meetings, better to be ahead of the game than on the game.

So here we now become the 99,837th media outlet to publish a moon landing's 40th anniversary supplement.

John, it's hard to believe it's 40 years since

those scenes were filmed in that studio, Texas.

It's not that hard to believe, Andy, you just need to look at a calendar and then just add, adds, just subtract 40.

Here is the time.

Honestly, it's easy to believe if you just do basic mathematics.

Of course, in 1961, in May, John F.

Kennedy announced the

mission to put a man on the moon with these words: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon.

He was then nudged in the ribs and continued, and then returning him safely to Earth.

At which point, the whole of NASA said, Oh man, he's just made this project a whole lot more difficult.

We've got to get the bastards back.

God, has anyone got a plan B?

We've got to get the bastards back.

It's just, you know, in the wall-to-wall coverage of

CB's Metal TV venerated as heroes, Andy, it's just, it is, you know, it's refreshing and slightly shocking to

hear a sentence like that.

I get my only regret about the Moonland is Andy and hindsight.

The only real disappointment is that I really feel it was a chance for Neil Armstrong to flip the greatest bird at the entire world that ever happened in human history.

If he just silently

walked down the ladder, not said anything, and then just walks over to the camera, looked straight down, and then just slowly but firmly raised his middle finger down the camera.

Well, it's very interesting, John, because you know, obviously, there's many parallels between the bugle and the moon landings.

I very much see myself as the Neil Armstrong of the bugle, and

you as the Buzz Aldrin of it.

So I spoke the first words of the bugle, and that is all history will recall.

And I see you, the listeners, as the millions of people who worked at Mission Control in Houston.

And Tom, you're very much the Michael Collins quietly in the background with the power to pull the plug and leave us stranded at any time, since you so wish.

What a position of power Collins was in.

He doesn't get a lot of raps for his role in the Moon landings, Collins, but it must have been really tempting for him to play one of the all-time great pranks and just leave.

Pitch up in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the special pod, saying, Ah, Houston, we have a problem.

But he must have wielded amazing power in that space rocket, John.

Hey guys, there's anyone ice cream left.

Can we share it, Michael?

Well, let's see.

Hands up, who wants to walk on the moon?

Me, me, me, yeah, me too.

Okay and hands up who wants to walk off the moon back into my space rocket.

Me, me, please, yes, me please, Michael.

Back in the rocket, please.

Mint chop chip, my favourites.

In other space news, six European volunteers have emerged from a simulated space capsule in Moscow after spending more than three months locked inside.

They were part of an experiment into how astronauts might deal with the very cramped conditions and prolonged isolation of a journey to Mars.

Not a great trip for them, Andy, just basically sitting in a storage unit for three months.

And apparently, even this, 105 days is not nearly long enough to get to Mars and back.

So next year, another group of volunteers will enter the same cramped capsule and be sealed inside for 520 days.

Nearly a year and a half.

That is not glamorous work, Andy.

Their first words, stepping out of the storage container, are not going to be etched into history.

It's not a one-store, small-step a man situation.

It's more a, oh my god, it smelled bad in there.

Yowza.

We go to Mars.

We're going to have to watch our diets.

But it's interesting, John, because America has announced plans to put men back on the moon for some reason.

Apparently, because to use it as a staging post for the eventual aim, which is to put a man on Mars.

Now, bearing in mind the relative positions of the Moon and Mars with respect to the planet Earth, using the Moon as a staging post for a trip to Mars is a bit like building a sand castle just off the coast of Cornwall, about a foot into the sea, and using it as a base for trying to jump across the Atlantic.

And now a moon fact box.

The moon is more than 130 years old.

Pink Floyd's seminal album Dark Side of the Moon was written despite none of the rock group ever having been to the moon, either its light side or its dark side, which explains why the album is so little interest to lunologists.

The term moon, meaning to bear one's buttocks towards a camera or face, originated from the Apollo 10 trip to the moon, when astronaut Eugene Kernan flying in orbits around the would-be planet shouted, hey Houston, it looks like a giant dimply ass from here.

Your emails now and well this is going to be a special email section Andy and extremely special at that because the response to the offensive poem about Mubarak Challenge has been

absolutely awe-inspiring and life-affirming.

Or life-threatening if you're listening in Egypt.

Brace yourselves, is all I'm saying, because collectively, you've all done an absolutely magnificent thing.

Let's get straight into this, Andy.

It's three-year jail terms in Egypt for everybody.

First one, John Rosenthal in New York.

Lyric for a sack of shit, this is called.

Shall I compare thee to a fetid turd?

By pungency, you're surely qualified.

Acoustic deuce plopped from the netherworld, a nutty gift from Satan's own behind.

Oh, fecal pharaoh in the land of sphinx, oh sphincter spewing stool into the Nile, oh shine, for none can match your wretched stink, save Limbaugh's heart.

There's nothing else so vile.

Your dumpy face, when not discharging poo, is clenched, an asshole hoping not to shart.

To claim you're democratically approved is worse than Zaltzmann's finest bullshit art.

The worst offence I've yet to tread upon.

Your film career is nigh as shit as John's.

Oh, yes.

Another, another one.

Some of you have sent in haikus to contribute to this great artistic endeavour.

This one comes in from Ross Carl Jordan Williams, B.A.S.,

who writes, haiku for a mandatory three-year Egyptian prison sentence.

Hosni Mubarak, losing track of Sphinx noses.

What a stupid.

Simple.

But that's the haiku.

Here's another haiku, Andy, from Keith Hunter.

Upon Hosni's death, he will fail as a hottie.

My wang remains still.

Take that, Hosni!

I'm sure he can sense this.

There must be like just a slight flicker in the corner of his skull.

Hold on, thousands of miles away, huh?

People

writing bullshit pose about me.

Yes,

and you deserve it.

Shithead.

I'm just I've always wanted to see the pyramids, John, and now I'm telling you, I'm never going to have the balls to go.

Another one.

This one

comes from Jose Carvallo in Chicago, Illinois,

who writes, Haiku for bellowing fosni no humor, waggles prong at the EU and also at men.

Here's from Gareth Tona, dear Ollian Zaltz.

Oh Mubarak, won't you look back at what you've done to our hearts?

You're number one at favoring your son, now your country's falling apart.

You were struggling to stay alive, the assassination attempts were so fun.

Kenya hates you, can I say?

Your last name's rhyming slang for Scrotum.

Go off and die, no one would miss you.

I bet Ms.

Nightingale wouldn't kiss you.

She'd be with Andy Zaltzman if she was alive today.

And also, the pyramids in Egypt are pointless, methinks.

Your mom's so fat, she went to a fancy dress party as a Sphinx.

So it's time for me to go.

But Hosni, I want you to know: Chavez is better than you, because you don't have a TV show.

Doosh.

And this one is a sonnet that has been sent in by Amy E.

Carter.

No relation to the former US President, she writes, doesn't specify which former US President.

Of course, uh families' names do uh change through marriage over the course of generations, so that's uh that's a completely unilluminating comment, Amy.

Anyway, congratulations on your sonnet, which is this.

I cannot dine with you tonight, I'm sorry, although there's nothing on my calendar.

It's just that looking at your face while eating would make my stomach turn, Mr.

Mubarak.

And if some day you're buried like a pharaoh, your organs stuffed into canopic jars, a thimble with the head of a mosquito will comfortably hold your brain, Mr.

Mubarak.

Though it's been said by disappointed lovers, left sulking quite unquenched in their boudoirs, your brain is actually not your smallest organ.

So perhaps some other time, Mr.

Mubarak.

But before you ask again, please take this hint.

You could benefit a lot from a breath mint.

She continues.

Oh, what the hell, here's a haiku.

Is that a baboon throwing feces of justice?

No, it's Mubarak.

Well done, everybody involved.

and Tom has rounded up some of the the best ones on a blog congratulations Tom yeah it's called the Bugle blog

super blog there

no I've got a bad leg got a bad leg at the moment

I've blogging for six weeks hamstring can't go back too early

Sport now and well here's another email in fact this from a chap called Matthew Faraday who writes subject Bradley Wiggins Andy please talk about Bradley Wiggins in the sports section this week instead of cricket.

Give us American listeners a week off.

We don't get cricket, sorry, but we do like cycling.

Just one week, no cricket.

No tests or wickets or bowling or any of that stuff.

This could be a historic moment for British cycling.

That's really enough to talk about, right?

No cricket.

You can do it.

You know, I mean, that's a point of view.

You know, that he doesn't want any cricket.

That's fine.

It's his right to say that.

But to say the American people like cycling is factually incorrect.

Well, Lance Armstrong, he's American.

He likes cycling.

He loves it.

That is a fact.

That's one American.

So Bradley Wiggins, British rider, currently fourth in the tour de France, as we recall, a heroic effort.

He's pretty good at getting a bike around, I guess.

I'm getting slightly out of my sphere of knowledge here.

But I do know that

he's a better bike rider than

you or I put together, probably.

Outside your sphere of knowledge, Danny.

You've spent this, not just this, but all entire bugles comfortably outside that sphere.

The only thing in your sphere of knowledge is cricketing statistics for the last 200 years.

I think you've really undermined my credibility there, that kind of.

Some people might not have picked up on that.

I don't think that's a danger.

Come on, Bradley.

Keep going.

Just keep those legs going round and round.

That's what it's supposed to do, isn't it?

Yeah, if anything, do it faster.

Yeah.

Up the hill, down the hill, up the hill, down the hill.

Pissing this.

That's basically what's cycling, isn't it?

That's basically the tour de France.

That's Andy's elegant breakdown of the tour de France.

Up the hill, down the hill, up the hill, down the hill, short bit, long bit, short bit, long bit, pissing this.

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

We've got to do a forecast.

Will there be a forecast next week?

Yep.

Yep, yep, I think so too.

Okay.

Okay, that's it.

Let's call that a wrap.

Great, we're done.

Bye.

Have a lovely week.

Cheerio.

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.