Does torture work?

This is a Times Online podcast.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers.

Yes, it's the 71 Comeback Special.

That's right after two weeks off.

We're back with Bugle 71 for the week beginning Monday, the 27th of April 2009, with me, Andy Zoltzman, dressed in my Elvis kits here in London and in New York City, USA.

It's John Oliver.

Are you

that's an interesting concept, isn't it?

The borderline virgin.

Yep,

she was she was making all the plays, John.

Yep.

Yep,

she has not been taught that, but she has certainly got the ability to get a smoothie out of a cup and onto her face and clothes.

Oh, really?

How's she getting on?

Does she remember me?

Alright, well, that's the Jews for you.

There we are.

Yeah, well, understandably.

No, that came out wrong.

Understandably, we're supposed to go with the catty bit.

Not that we've deserved it.

Cut that bit out.

Well, John, while you've been living it up with Joe Rivers, I've been having my kitchen done.

And it currently does look a bit like Mike Tyson has been having a conversation with himself in there.

Debris and devastation everywhere.

So this is for the week beginning Monday, the 27th of April 2009.

And John, it hardly seems like yesterday that Honduras was signing up to the old Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

But in fact it is 95 years ago that that happens.

Crumps.

I'm getting old.

I can remember when that treaty had only been signed for 77 years.

And 64 years ago, John, Benito Mussolini, the 22-time Italian fascism champion, was on his way out of Italy for what he hoped would be a nice long holiday in Spain.

Two days in a summary execution later, him and his missus were hanging from meat hooks at a petrol station.

Part of a promotion, buy more than 40 litres of diesel, and get a free dead fascist leader.

Just goes to show, when you're leaving to go on holiday, make sure you're not being pursued by vengeful communist partisans who want vengeance for the brutalities you've perpetrated on them and others over the previous two decades.

That's a piece of bugle advice you won't be given by your travel agent.

Joining us in the Bugle Soundproof Safe this week is His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, who's just broken the world record for the longest ever-serving consort of a British monarch.

57 years and counting of consorting with the Queen for the big Greek, so he must be doing something right, the wily old sea dog.

Otherwise, he'd have been out.

She could have any man she wants.

And legally, that is true.

That was a law that Edward II brought in.

That's right, it's a 14th-century gay king joke.

Kaslam!

Anyway, we'll not be hearing from Prince Philip about what it's been like to have spent 57 years seeing people die for cover whenever you open your mouth.

As always, some sections of the bugle go straight in the bin.

This week, the St.

George's Day section, April the 23rd, meant only one thing to most English people this year: Thursday.

But it was more than that.

It was St.

George's Day, the patron saints of England, and Greece, and Ethiopia, Portugal, Lithuania, Beirut, Moscow, the Dutch town of Amersfort, Boy Scouts, Syphilis Sufferers and sheep.

Probably also the patron saint of burnt toast, lost socks, Don Henley, missed turn-offs, tickly coughs, spare pens, amateur radio enthusiasts, broken coat hangers, contrived sporting statistics, and people who think they might be Napoleon.

So, uh, busy boy, St.

George John, arguably spreading himself a little bit thin.

He might be better off concentrating on England a bit more from now on.

Maybe that's why this country's gone to the dogs.

Yep.

That's right, but it's just he just doesn't make me feel special anymore from George.

So, and also, he's a slightly unlikely hero for the modern day English John.

He was Turkish for a start and gave all his money to the poor, proving that he was in favour of punitive high-rate taxation, so not exactly a daily mailman.

Also in the bin, a shouting section, how to shout for help from different locations, up a tree, from the bottom of a disused quarry, from the baggage hold of an airliner, or from inside the lion enclosure at your local zoo or safari park.

We will tell you the ideal volume, pitch, desperation levels, and word audibility to aim for when you're in a tight spot, and a successful bit of shouting could make the difference between life and death.

Also, how to differentiate between two different shouts.

Beware, off-beam shouting can result in unpopularity.

And for the first time, this week's bugle is 100% waterproof, so it is now safe to listen to the bugle while snorkeling, monsoon observing, or dolphin impersonated.

Or just the two noughts on the end of the four hundred, then there's only one difference.

And two naughts add up to naughts, John.

Obama had turned over the Bush administration ruling that waterboarding illegally did not constitute torture, but was in fact merely inquisitive horseplay, I believe, is the legal definition.

That's a ruling, of course, by the Bush regime, split world opinion into the Bush regime and the world, essentially.

This Kalashet Mohammed Sora does raise the age-old quandary from moral philosophy, John.

Is it worse to waterboard one person 183 times or 183 people once each?

I guess the logic being of waterboarding Khaled Shaykh Mohammed 183 times in a month is that if the fear of drowning didn't crack him, which it clearly didn't, the sight of his fingers going all wrinkly would have been just too much to bear.

Well, this is, I'm not a huge, I'm not a huge fan of Kalaja Muhammad, John, I have to say.

I think he's just too much of a terror for my liking, by quite a large distance.

But the thing with torturing, with waterboarding 183 times, it's like anything, John.

When it becomes routine, the magic has to wear off.

You know, after the first 10 or 12 goes, he'd probably just start thinking, oh, great, a free shower.

How much damage can this do?

And in fact, would that make it okay under human rights legislation if you actually cleaned your terror suspect and washed his hair with a fruit-scented shampoo whilst waterboarding him?

I don't know.

Call Janira if it bothers you, buglers.

And I think also it must be the same for his torturers, John, or as they should probably be called his physical quiz masters.

Fingers on the buzzers.

Sorry, buzzers on the fingers.

Where's Bin Laden?

So the novelty must have worn off.

I guess by the end they were just making him lie on the boards, holding a chocolate bar wrapper over his face and squirting him a couple of times with a hose.

Anything to confess?

No, sure.

Okay, off you hop.

See you again in two.

I thought the Spanish Inquisition was more fun than this.

I'll put the next bit more, and I'll tell you that I do the middle action of the crazy

straight back.

I've remembered the blackboard from my

mistake before

it's done if I remember.

Yep, the former National Security Advisor, then Secretary of State, now of course managing director of the fast food chain specializing in Italian snacks topped with South American birds of prey, condoleezers, condor pizzas.

What, what, mate?

She gave the CIA the green light, apparently.

Also, there was a memo from Donald Rumsfeld, who whinged in this memo about why the use of stress positions like forced standing could not be made more difficult for the victims.

He wrote, I stand for eight to ten hours a day.

Why is standing limited to four hours?

Now, the amount that he stood firstly suggests that even his chair thought he was a total dick.

But it's interesting.

Interesting.

It is interesting, though, that Rumsfeld viewed being forced to behave more like Donald Rumsfeld as a form of torture.

He showed an unexpected level of self-awareness.

And today, Khalid Shake, you're going to have to fail to make adequate long-term military plans and be strategically incompetent for twenty-four hours straight.

Confess, confess.

And now the weather with Cindy.

We should have done the public colour, but we're terrible

to be in the market.

Well, I think it was John.

I mean I've analysed this quite carefully and uh I've looked at the hand angles, angles, the degree of finger bend, the firmness of the squeeze, the vigour of palpation, the time span and oscillation of the shake.

And I reckon you can read into it that it was definitely a sign of Obama caving into the deluded socialist rantings of a crazed despot, resigning America's status as a superpower and saying, There you go, Venezuela, we've had our chance.

You have a go now.

That's not the problem.

But that's not something that

people don't see

much of the song.

I've asked, John.

I have asked, but he just did it at a fringe meeting at the UN.

to be fair he's got to wean himself off it John you know when you've been addicted to something for eight years like Chavez has been to slagging bush off you've got to let it go slowly

we put it onto the back,

I think it's a good idea to be on the

right.

And it will be a handful of dumps at the back.

Once the turkey can still be on the half, and we'll go to the stop touch on it, you'll

I hope he just tuned out.

It's a long conference.

That's got to be a record, isn't it?

Bugle feature section now and the budget.

John, Wednesday was, as always, the most exciting day of the week.

And this week, more than any other week, because it was budget day and uh always the highlight of the financial year for me, John, out came Chancellor Alistair Darling with his tatty old red briefcase, smiling the smile of a man who is about to break some very bad news to a country that already doesn't like him and everything he stands for.

It was the kind of awkward smile you would expect to see on the face of a careless butcher who's just been asked by a concerned parent with a baby pig in her pram to check exactly what he made his sausages out of.

The basic message of this budget is, you know how totally screwed everyone's been saying we are.

Well, they don't know the half of it.

Some people had been saying that the green shoots of recovery were evidence, but it turns out those green shoots had been made out of the purest urine, pissing all over the economy.

So, how does this budget affect the average bugler around the world, John?

Well, if you buglers are all alcoholic, fat cat businessmen and business ladies with a 40-a-day smoking habit and a big car with a leaky petrol tank, which we assume you all are, it's bad news.

A new 50% tax ban for people earning more than 150 grand a year, raising concerns about people leaving the country because of this tax ban, John.

I guess the instinctive reaction to speculation that people are just going to upsticks and leave because of this increased tax is, well, f right off then.

And for any buglers affected by this, who are probably listening to this bugle by having it transcribed by a personal monk then sung back to them by a squad of gold-plated choir boys, do let us know what you think.

Also, I saw a businessman on telly, John, expressing concern that this new tax ban will merely lead to the well-off looking even harder for tax loopholes.

The basic attitude being: I will pay more tax when my polo club fees are paid for by the state.

So, how can Britain economise, John?

It looks like we've got a decade of austerity coming up.

We're going to have to make big spending cuts, which is bad news given that people already have to pay for the right to park a hospital when they're having their kidneys taken out.

John, for me, what we have to look at is outlawing small talk in the workplace.

Because the average office worker spends around 45 minutes a day indulging in small talk.

Cumulatively, pointless general chatter costs the economy billions of pounds a year, which could could easily be plowed back into schools, hospitals, or even better, skate parks.

So this small talk prevention scheme would be simple to implement.

Every employee should have to wear a badge detailing how they are from a range of regulation states of existence, such as great, fine thanks, so-so, and not so good, how their partner and family are, whether or not they had a good evening, weekend, holiday, or operation, who they currently think is best at not being that bad at skating, dancing, or singing on the television.

And if they all wore this badge, John, this simple, cheap, and time-saving device would, at a stroke remove 85% of the nation's irrelevant conversations from a daily schedule.

There you go.

Economic problem solved.

I pretty much did, actually.

Still available in some bookshops if you look incredibly hard.

Usually on a very low shelf.

Alright, so I'll pop in a copy of the Love Guru as well.

Your emails now and well this email came in from Australia from a gentleman called Peter Wilson who in response to my comment that G20 was what an Australian would say when asked to estimate the number of words in the English language.

Peter writes, subject to the Australian Dictionary, as a member of your diminishing Australian audience, ouch, may I present 20 words from our dictionary?

Off Zaltzman.

Peter.

I think he's got his message across there, John.

The interesting thing, John, I had a classics tutor at university who was Australian, who was called Peter Wilson.

Not in words, John.

I mean, certainly after some of my essays that I presented him, he had a look on his face that suggested that was what he was thinking.

I hope it's not from him.

Well, I think he's probably got a fair point, John.

So, Australia, I'm terribly, terribly sorry.

Oh, sorry, I'll put that in terms you can understand.

I'm sorry.

And this comes from Larry Miller in Eugene, Oregon, picking up on something that was in last week's Easter egg edition about what kind of fruit Jesus would be, were he to be a fruit.

And Larry writes, Ask not what kind of fruit Jesus would be.

Obviously, he would not be a fruit, but a vegetable, a cruciferous vegetable.

Well done.

Yeah, it has yet.

It's all changed on the Bugle webpage.

The blog, which I believe I've now been promising for around about six or seven years,

I've written the first one.

I mean, it's short, and

it's there.

You know, it's there.

Yeah.

Bit like and Hitler, I guess.

I mean, not everything that's short and there is necessarily a good thing, but the blog is a good thing.

It's a great, great moment for humanity.

Yep, definitely.

He was all that.

You're probably staring at it these days, aren't you, John?

Well, now we see why the chimpanzee's got a gun.

Deliver it, is that all?

So, some fantastic stuff you've contributed to the websites, including Michael Hirsch, who appears to have made an underwear advert with my head on the body of David Beckham, which I have to say is the single most disturbing image that has ever burnt itself onto the insides of my retinas.

See, he looks like he's got a tattoo of you on his arm.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I didn't really get along that well.

Yeah, so you can see that on the rude slideshow that is on the Bugle website as compiled by Tom.

Who I think, John, I think we've done quite a successful job over the last 18 months of dragging Tom down to our level of juvenility.

Just in time for him to become a father and role model.

And we can now officially announce the competition winners for the Bugle t-shirts, as first mentioned.

That must be a good couple of years ago now, as well, to win the Bugle t-shirts.

The winners are Liz Henley, who set up the loyal listener message board, Sam Grofton, the pilot of the penis-shaped helicopter, which you can also see on the Rude slideshow, and

Michael Hirsch, who put in the photo of me in David Beckham's pants.

Honestly, I thought those pictures had been destroyed.

You're going red.

Well, it's a long time ago.

It was a long time ago.

He was young.

We both needed the money.

Do check out the websites timesonline.co.uk/slash thebugle and also keep your emails flooding in to thebugle at timesonline.co.uk and more of them will be in the next edition of the blog at some point soon.

By soon I mean geologically soon.

Sport now, and no time to tell you about the remarkable exploits of the Afghanistan cricket team.

One of the great sporting stories of the year, so we'll look at that next week.

But this Sunday, John, the London Marathon is back after an absence of a year.

And as another 35,000 people put themselves through 26 miles of mental and physical hell to raise money for charity,

and last year they raised £41 million between them.

I think, John, what this shows is what a generous nation Britain is.

But that that in return for our money, we want to see a friend or relative suffer around four hours of pain.

Will you give me 50 quid for Tanzanian AIDS victims?

No.

What if I run 26 miles?

I'm listening.

Dressed in a woolly mammoth outfit.

We've got ourselves a deal.

Let's hope it's a sunny day.

I want my money's worth.

When you think about it, though, John, asking for sponsorship is really little more than emotional blackmail.

You know, if you don't sponsor me to run the marathon, there's going to be no no orphanage for little Roadkill hedgehogs.

Can you live with that on your conscience?

To me, John, sponsorship is like protection money.

And when I was a boy, I used to have to sponsor a kid in the playground not to beat the living shit out of me every day.

No Paula Radcliffe this year, sadly, in the marathon.

She broke her toe in Albuquerque.

But we've all done it, haven't we?

Well, the bugle forecast this week.

Well, I'm sure most people have noticed, John.

But amongst you, me, and Tom, since the start of the bugle, you are the only one who has not impregnated someone.

So, I guess the forecast this week is

alright, okay.

By the time the bugle finishes,

whenever that may be, will you have impregnated someone?

Okay.

Well, I don't know, I just make this thing about it, it just makes makes you inquisitive as to whether your balls work, but clearly it clearly hasn't affected you in that way.

She predated

she predated the bugle.

For me, it's more do they still work?

Does doing a podcast reduce your fertility?

That was my experiment.

Thanks.

That's all from the bugle this week.

We'll be back next week with a review of Barack Obama's first hundred days as King of America.

How much change has actually changed, and is there any hope left?

Bye-bye, buglers.

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.