G-G-G-G-G-GEEEE 20

This is a Times Online podcast.

Hello, Buglers, and first, an apology.

We at the Bugle would like to issue a formal official apology for last week's Bugle.

The Bugle has, over the course of the past 30 or 40 years, but in particular over the last 18 months when it has existed, come to be seen by its 6.8 billion weekly listeners as a vehicle for only the finest, most erudite, most piquantly observed satire.

However, it has been brought to our attention that a vast wave of edition 69 of this podcast was given over to a story about a teenage boy painting a 60-foot penis on his parents' roof.

It's also been brought to our attention that myself and John addressed this obviously non-globally relevant story with the relish of two snakes discovering a long bendy bobsled.

And we did so at a time when the future of the world's economy and environment were balanced on the most buttery of knife edges, when disease and starvation stalked the planet like the two little shits they are, and on a day when some people, somewhere in the world, probably injured their own penises.

We acknowledge now that this was not only insensitive, but that we've also let the bugle down, and in doing so, let down also ourselves, our families, our Oxbridge education, the world world in general, and satirical comedy in particular.

We apologise unreservedly and have tendered our resignations to each other.

John has, on Grateful's report, turned down my resignation.

I, on the other hand, have accepted John's, and the matter is now with the courts.

So, for the time being, we are both still here, and we can say, all we can say in our defence is that, come on, a kid painted a 60-foot wang and nadges on his parents' roof.

What would you have done?

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

So here we both are with Bugle 70 for the week being Monday, the 6th of April, 2009, for the G20 Bugle special.

With me, Andy Zaltzman, the burnt-out remnants of the city that saved the world this week, London, and Back Where He Belongs.

No, I don't mean a state correctional facility for people who misuse apostrophes.

I mean in the biggest of all the apples, New York City.

It's the Jackie O of our times, John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

I would like to completely distance myself from that apology.

I don't mean, I'm not sorry.

I'm not sorry for those penis jokes, Andy.

It would have been a crime against comedy not to deliver a 10 to 15 minute diatribe against that boy and that painted wang.

We did the right thing.

I feel it in my in my bones.

Right, I'll die a happy man.

And yes, indeed, I am back from LA, Andy.

I made it back.

I survived.

Oh, that's great.

Because thousands don't make it out of LA alive.

Literally, thousands.

I mean, most of them are old and live there, but the point stands.

The point does stand.

Now, the weirdest moment of the week, Andy, was in my hotel elevator when I pressed a button, you know, in the normal fashion, stepped inside, looked up and saw that I was sharing the elevator with someone, looked up at that someone, and it was LL Cool J.

Andy, I was in an elevator with LL Cool J.

I don't think either of us thought that would happen, especially me.

And it turned out I have surprisingly little to say to LL,

which is strange because no one's a bigger fan of Lisa Got a Big Old Butt than me.

And surely there was an option of us just rapping along to that together.

It would have been a good icebreaker or indeed a colossal ice former.

Lisa Got a Big Old Butt, of course, won the Olympic javelin for Estonia in 2004.

That's right, that's what inspired him to write the song.

And we should say, welcome to the world, Emma Wright.

Tom indeed had his baby.

Born the traditional way, Andy, in a hospital delivered by medical professionals.

It's not that difficult.

It's not that difficult to step inside modern medicine.

Hospitals, medical professions, they are a waste of taxpayers' money when that could quite easily have been done on the kitchen floor with completely untrained staff such as myself.

So it does actually I won the previous week's forecast on it.

She wasn't out by recording time last week.

Okay.

Although she's now out, so you make it one all with last week's forecast.

so it does turn out Tom could actually have produced last week's bugle instead of rushing off to be with his missus, but I guess that's the 21st century for you, John.

We're as soft as a species now.

I remember when my daughter was born, I begged the pit owner to be let off my night shift so I could go to the hospital, but he said you do that and you're sacked.

But, you know, I'm not saying it's a better or worse thing, John.

I'm just saying it's a different thing.

But anyway, congratulations to Tom and Mrs.

Tom.

They win as a star prize a copy of my book signed by me and a tapestry depicting John Scenes and the Love Guru.

What a way to be welcomed to the planet.

Emma, don't worry, life does get better.

So, this is for the week beginning Monday, the 6th of April, 2009, which means happy new tax year to our British listeners.

They come round so quickly these days, John.

And also means it is exactly 100 years since Peary and Henson allegedly became the first men to reach the North Pole.

So, to commemorate their historic exploits, in the Bugle Soundproof Safe this week, we have Arctic explorer Ranolph Fiennes and a polar bear.

So, we'll hopefully be hearing from both of them later on in today's show.

As always, some sections of the Bugle Go Straight and the Bin this week, a lifestyle section, including features on how to wake up without disrupting your sleep.

A diet feature on how to cut down on your food intake without cutting down on the size of your portions.

Simply eat your meals on a top-of-the-range earthquake simulator.

And why too much lettuce can harm your sex life.

Well, have you ever tried to seduce someone whilst eating five lettuces simultaneously?

Also, some fitness advice.

Take up the javelin to shed those extra pounds.

And some legal advice: how to escape a judicial sentence for throwing a javelin through your neighbour's greenhouse while he was taunting his tomatoes.

That's what makes them grow redder and juicier, like a man with an angry face.

And also, DIY advice: how to repair a broken greenhouse.

And also, an audio swimming guide in the bin.

Just pop down to your local swimming baths, beach, reservoir, billabong, or flood.

And ask the staff there to pop this on a public address system.

Get in the water.

Now kick your legs.

Now wave your arms around a bit.

Oh, yes, don't forget to breathe.

Lift your mouth out above the water level before you breathe.

That is the key.

Now call for help.

For God's sake, call for help.

Those sections in the bin, also in the bin, a section on how not to deliver purchased goods on time, an exclusive feature by the company that I ordered my replacement computer cable from on Monday.

Stop taking your personal gripes to the air, Andrew.

Well, it arrived this morning, John, four days later.

It's next day delivery, they said.

It's been a really tough week.

Really tough.

There's times when you just wonder whether it's worth going on.

Top story this week and

did you learn that off LL and early?

He's just an inspiration to be around.

I feel like I'm living a hip-hop lifestyle I wasn't living before.

He's part of my life now.

Neither of us can ever deny that.

This week, the most powerful 20 politicians in the world gather together to combine the 20 pieces of single magic amulet which they carry around their necks and summon the god of money.

At least I'm guessing that's what happens.

I don't understand economics.

Finally, London has taken its rightful place at the centre of the world again for an entire week.

It's been like a power vacation for London, Andy.

A week of returning to your former glory.

The G20 summit took place this week with the 20 most powerful leaders in the world gathering in the London Conference Centre.

And Andy, how did it feel being so close to that kind of power?

Well, John, you just felt that, you know, if you could have left your house without the danger of being rioted to death, it would have been a great thing to see.

Did you feel more powerful because it was happening, Selka?

Can you passively absorb leadership like second-hand smoke?

That's addictive.

Yes, I think you probably can.

I think by the end of this week, I've got a little bit more Obama about me.

Yeah.

Touched more Berlusconi, which the wife is not that pleased about.

It's always a good thing, though.

And

maybe just a little tweak of the old Angela Merkels creeping in there, too.

I don't know what that means, but I'm sure it'll clear up.

Maybe that's why so many...

Maybe it doesn't, John.

I've bought the skirts.

Maybe that's why so many leaders struggle to cope with not being in power.

They need to wean themselves off their addiction, maybe with a power patch.

So yes, the G20 has been here, John.

The G20, as you said last week, is not what a snooker referee says after Warren G has knocked in a 20 break, nor even what an Australian would say when asked to guess the number of words in the English language.

Nor even is it the seventh option in a multiple-choice quiz question about the number of proteinogenic amino acids encoded by the standard genetic code.

For f's sake!

Nor even, John, is it the response you would get when checking in to stay at a complex of French holiday homes and asking which of the several different properties you will be staying in, Gide 20.

Nor even, nor even, John, is it a newspaper headline from 1947 about the childishly excited reaction of 78-year-old French author André Gide on hearing the news that he'd won a Nobel Prize?

Gide went eee.

Oh, Emma, look at the world you're inheriting.

No, it is, as you said, a fact, in fact, a group of the twenty most self-important nations in the world and some of their friends and favorite world institutions that meet every so often to save the world from themselves.

So there were some fantastic photo opportunities this week, John.

We had the teen photo of the G standing in front of the three-word slogan, stability, growth, jobs, obscuring the rest of that slogan, which was, oh, just three of the things that we have royally fed up.

Also, I guess a better slogan might have been world opportunity to overturn previous stupidity, or whoops for short.

Also, there was was one fantastic photo that you may well have seen of Obama, Berlusconi, and Medvedev posing like it was a publicity shop for a gross out road movie, screaming like teenage actors, rather than the gross out economics conference with the future prosperity of the planet at stake.

Well, I guess that's what the camera can do, John.

There were some very strange moments in those photo opportunities where the leaders are made to stand next to each other and engage in painfully awkward small talk.

And when he was sitting

with President Silver of Brazil, Obama said, this is my man right here.

I love this guy.

And no one in the room, including the Brazilian president, seemed to know what the f he was on about.

Obama decided to break that tension by going on to call him the most popular politician on earth because of his good looks.

And as Silva's translator relayed what was being said to him, a look flashed across the president's face that seemed to suggest, bit weird, bit weird you said that.

Charismatic, but weird.

That's what you are.

That was a little bit odd.

Well, he did kind of come across in that moment a bit like a TV talent scout trying to butter up some young actor.

Later, when he was sitting down with the Indian Prime Minister Manamood Singh, the Indian Prime Minister asked Obama for his autograph for his daughters.

It seems quite a sweet gesture until he realised, oh, oh, that's right, yeah, it's for your daughter, is it?

Yeah, it's not for you at all.

Make it out to my daughter, please.

Her name is Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

She's going to be so excited.

And can you sign another 20 but make them out to blank?

I'm going to put them on eBay to raise money to combat things like American companies trying to patent basmati rice.

Well, maybe, I think that's quite a good scheme, isn't it?

If you've got his autograph, then you can just fake it on a load of trade deals and

peace treaties.

But it actually got, it seemed like a sweet gesture, but it actually got more awkward when he said back to President Obama, oh, you also have two daughters, don't you?

Do they collect autographs?

Obama said yes, and they just stared at each other.

Did that actually happen?

No.

No.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened up the conference by saying, I fear global collapse.

Oh, nice commencement speech, Moon.

You must be a hoot at weddings.

Did you never hear of Open with a Joke?

Oh, glad that everyone could make it to the marriage of Tony and Sharon.

Of course, statistically, this union is likely to fail, which I find makes the vowels ring a little hollow.

Still, have a wonderful day.

Muzzletop.

From the news coverage here, John, and I don't know what it was like in America, you would have expected that London was on the very precipice of destruction from the protests that were there, and that but for a police cordon, the entire square mile would by now have been raised to the ground by hairy and or not hairy anarchists armed with enough placards to batter the entire capital to a quivering pile of squished-up rubble.

So I actually had to hide in a special anti-capitalist bunker in my garden with my two terrified children and three terrified wives.

But in the end, all that happened was a guy threw a bit through a window, basically, basically, and several thousand people expressed their intense dissatisfaction with the state of the planet, of which you know, the media was more interested in the former than the latter.

Also, some city workers leant out of their windows, waving wadges of cash at the protesters,

showing that, if nothing else,

if nothing else, these city workers have escaped from the current financial catastrophe with their lack of dignity firmly intact.

Actually, I saw that in response to that, some protesters waved placards around and screamed, eat the pankers.

Eat them?

Wow, that escalated fast from regulation.

Is that the next step?

Regulation, then cannibalism.

Well, it's one or the other, John.

They've got a choice to make.

And some of the bankers, it got even worse, were apparently betting money on how many arrests there were going to be.

One said, I'll make money if they arrest more than 140.

Because there was even a quoted spread on Bloomberg at 130 to 140.

And they were also paying out on deaths.

And if more than 20 demonstrators are injured by horse charges.

F you, bankers.

Go f yourself.

I think they've proven they will never learn.

A market's a market, John.

That's the system correcting itself.

You're right.

One of my favourite slogans was people screaming out, abolish money, Andy and that's a high-stakes negotiation strategy.

What do we want?

The complete liquidation of humanity's method of commerce.

When do we want it?

By the end of the next financial quarter.

Is that reasonable?

Of course it's not.

This is really just designed to gain attention rather than function as a practical suggestion.

Is that surprisingly self-aware for a political message?

I suppose it is, but you just have to be in the current climate.

That's just opening negotiations, John.

Farewell give ground.

Demonstrators also hoisted effigies of the four horsemen of the apocalypse representing war, climate chaos, financial crimes and homelessness.

Those are really some of the backup four horses of the apocalypse.

Turns out there's actually seven horsemen and they rotate.

It's good to see the substitutes getting a run out off the bench for once.

They're in the the shadow of the big four.

Also, it was good to see Russell Brand getting so much coverage on the news, Andy.

That man can make anything about him.

People did seem a little bit surprised over in America about the level of violence taking place, but what the world has to understand is that when it comes down to it, British people just really like smashing things.

It's not always about politics.

When you're this repressed all year round, sometimes intense emotions come out without you really being able to understand them.

That's why you get ridiculously overblown scenes at events such as the World Cup and Princess Diana's funeral.

Gordon Brown seemed to enjoy himself more than usual, John, partly because trying to deal with massive international problems gave him a couple of days' respite from failing to deal with massive domestic problems.

And he said that the G20 leaders had to supply the global economy with the oxygen of confidence, which I guess is preferable to the cocaine of overconfidence that appears to have created this mess.

Although

I've seen the hit TV series 24, John, and what I do know from that is that when you've got someone,

John.

When you've got someone or something that's about to pop its clogs after taking the kind of prolonged and brutal and morally questionable battering that the world economy has taken, you don't give it just oxygen, you whack a shot of epinephrine straight into its veins to jolt it back to life in order to batter the last dregs of usefulness out of it.

And that, I think, is basically what the rescue package is doing for the world economy.

The G20 was pretty flashy for what was essentially a business meeting about finance.

And really, they should have made it a a conference alongside normal conference lines.

They should have all had to wear name tags and do team-building exercises, eat terrible buffet sandwiches, and get drunk, photocopy their boards, and make out with each other at the end of conference disco.

It would have been good for Medvedev and Obama to fall back into each other's arms in a series of trust exercises, or do some potato print painting and then think of 10 compliments to say about the other person's work.

What kind of conferences do you go to, John?

I don't know, I've never been to one.

I think that must have become painfully obvious.

Obama Obama also reportedly broke up a spat between President Hu Jintou of China and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Apparently they were having a heated argument about tax havens.

And I mean, come on, you know what they say, Andy.

Never talk about politics, religion, or tax havens.

You and I have had some of our biggest arguments about tax havens.

And it's not clear how Obama did this.

Maybe he slapped both of them across the face and told them to grow up, or sent both of them to the naughty corner, or just simply turned the hose on them.

What the famous Obama hose, John.

Yeah, yeah.

He always carries a hose around.

He's like that guy in No Country for Old Men, except with a hose.

Of course, in the past, humanity has managed to dig itself out of potentially disastrous holes by doing things like having massive wars that bring the species to the very precipice of extinction.

But frankly, the G20 have decided not to take that option.

Instead, they issued a statement acknowledging that the crisis affects, quotes, men, women, and children in every country.

And I think reading between the lines, what they mean by that is people in the world.

So I guess that's you and me too, John.

Oh, that's good.

Men, women, and children, it's only the transsexuals that have escaped the credit crunch, by the looks of it.

They've also pledged $1.1 trillion to sort out this mess.

Now, my initial reaction following the size of recent bailouts was to say only a trillion dollars, which is not a sentence I thought I'd ever say, particularly given that I'm not a waiter in a Zimbabwean restaurant complaining about an ungenerous tip.

Bang!

There it is.

Still got it.

Still got it.

Still got it.

The Zimbabwean dollar has still got it.

Essentially, John, the G20 solution to the problem of too much money having been thrown at stuff in the past is to throw more money at stuff.

And quite a lot of it is made-up money.

And I guess they're just going to wait to see what happens.

They're basically feeding more debt to the dragon of debt that is currently breathing its noxious fumes all over the world economy.

And this debt dragon, John, to me is like the ancient mythological Hydra.

And that whenever you try to bail it out by chopping one of its heads off, it grows two more heads.

So, this rescue package is essentially dependent on keeping chopping heads off in the hopes that eventually the heads of the hydra will get hungry and start eating each other.

All I know, the John, is that if Hercules had to kill the debt dragon instead of the Hydra as one of his labours, he would probably have an 11-1 record instead of the 12-0 perfect labouring season that made him so famous.

The G20 have also promised to clean up the banks.

And again, Hercules thought he had it tough when one of his labours turned out to be to clean the stables of King Augias, which contained quite literally thousands of animals and had also never ever been cleaned.

Now, John, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that thousands of animals make a lot of, well, shall we say, shit.

And you can see that big Hercules faces similar problems to the world's leaders trying to clean up the Orgean banking sector, which has also never been cleaned up and is now inundated with decades and decades of financial excrement.

Hercules pulled off this gig by diverting two rivers through the stables to clean up the crap.

The G20 have now diverted huge streams of money to clean up the mountain of financial shit generated by the bankers overeating.

But I guess just as in Hercules' day, there were fishermen downriver wondering where all their water had gone as their fish, and thus livelihoods disappeared due to Hercules' somewhat selfish and short-term solution to the dirty stable problem.

So with the G20, there may well be people in the future wondering where the f all their money went.

I never thought about Hercules that way, that he was guilty of criminal short-termism.

Well done, honey, for seeing the bigger picture.

Yeah, exactly.

People keep going on about what a hero he was, but you know, come with a guy who ate his own children.

The Obamas also met up with the Queen while they were in London, Andy.

And you may remember from a few weeks ago that the president had gotten into a bit of trouble after giving Gordon Brown a selection of DVDs as a gift, none of which actually work in the UK.

Bad presents.

Bad present.

But this time, he was meeting with the Queen, the big Q.

Andy, and he was ready because he presented her with an iPod.

What the f, mate?

What?

This is a queen.

Is she a 13-year-old girl, Obama?

Did you also give her her first cell phone as well with some minutes tied onto them?

Apparently the iPod came engraved and loaded with show tunes.

Oh, so she's not a 13-year-old girl then.

She's a 45-year-old gay man.

But the Queen was ready, Andy.

She was ready for this gift because she hit straight back by presenting the Obamas with a silver-framed picture of her and Prince Philip.

Oh,

that is a terrible gift.

The Queen wins.

That's a big W for the big Q.

She's been around this game too long to lose to a rookie like Obama.

A picture of the Queen of Prince Philip.

You do not want that.

I don't know.

Depends what it's from.

So, John, what do you think the long-term prognosis is?

Will this G20 Summit prove to have been a G-Wiz or a G-Swiz?

Will we have learned our lessons, John, from the mistakes?

Well, I think the omens...

don't entirely look good.

There seems to be quite a lot of pretend money flying around again.

You know, when Evil Evil Knievel crashed his motorbike for the first time whilst trying to jump over something stupid, did he learn from his mistake and decide not to take what most of us would acknowledge as the sensible course of action and stop trying to jump his motorcycle over stuff?

Or did he keep trying to jump over stuff on his motorcycle?

Well, John, he kept jumping and he kept crashing.

And then he kept trying to jump further and he kept crashing harder.

And then he taught his son to jump and crash too.

So I guess if we're looking at Evil Knievel for points on the damaging culture of economic daredevilry that has beset global economics, it doesn't really look good long term.

Although I guess in Knievel's defence, it should be pointed out that when he crashed, it was his own pelvis, ribs, or head that he broke.

He didn't land safely on a mat, then run over to some people in the crowd and start whacking them with a sledgehammer, which is essentially what those behind the credit cruise seem to have done.

Now, Knievel smashed himself to pieces, John, in pursuit of a ludicrous goal.

His goal of being able to write jumped over canyon on a motorbike on his CV.

But no one else suffers, apart from the odd cameraman that he crashed into.

What are you suggesting, Annie, that we all learn the lesson of Knievelian economics?

I believe Knievel is a warning trumpet to the world on the economy.

That's all I'm saying.

I guess uh they're also trying to put an end to this culture of risk in introducing a strong regulatory system or in layman's terms some official measures to stop people in smart suits behaving like total

and I guess the G twenty's aim has to be to get these people to behave only like partial

let's be realistic and then the world will benefit

other news now and well political expenses have been the big story apart from the world's eyes being entirely on London this week.

Home Secretary Jackie Smith, John, was left red face after she inadvertently claimed expenses for two adult films watched by her husband.

Which...

Why just by her husband, Andy?

Well...

Did Jackie not enjoy the pornographic featurette as well?

Well, how do we know?

She's certainly not said as much in public, John.

Well, that's...

I mean, that seems politically wise, but, you know, personally dishonest.

And the look on her husband's face when he issued a press statement about the issue suggests that this was very much, shall we say, an act of unilateral self-sufficiency.

Oh, no.

But there's no suggestion that Jackie Smith made this claim on purpose.

You know, maybe by claiming that her husband was conducting critical research on her behalf as home secretary into important home office matters, such as whether crime rates are reduced or increased by contrived dialogue and loveless copulation, or whether the compulsory transmission of low-grade Grubble movies into prison cells could help reduce the rates of reoffending, or even whether there are any conclusions about controlled immigration to be drawn from the biomechanics of a gentleman grueling his character into a lady's bodicea.

No, this claim was an accident, John, related to confusing billing, leaving only the slightly concerning image of the Home Secretary's husband harumphing his plonker on taxpayers' money.

And, frankly, following last week's efforts with the piddler on the roof story, we should probably give this one a bit of a wide berth.

You have to feel sorry for him, Andy.

He's currently the most famous porn watcher in Britain.

And I'm not sure that there is a worse way for your wife to find out that you've been watching pornography.

Even worse than catching you doing it.

Essentially, her being told by a parliamentary oversight committee.

Also, here's the other side to this story, Andy.

Should the taxpayer not consider paying for this?

Because being the spouse of a politician is a difficult life.

Their husbands and wives work long hours in a high-stressed job.

Is it not reasonable that we should provide them with some pornographic inspiration to which they can, if I may quote Rob Riggle for a second, whittle it down to nothing?

Well, I think so.

Ultimately, it saves the country a lot of money because, you know, otherwise, who knows, maybe there'll be marital strain on the Home Secretary's personal life, leading to a

kind of tension.

She resigns to spend more time with her family.

And

we have to pay to have new headed note paper made at the Home Office.

so we'll we're actually profiting from this john i i think the bugle should offer to pay for both of those pornographic movies for mr jackie smith

i think it's the least we can do okay well john you you can sort that out then okay i'm gonna i'm gonna do it this is a fun if mr jackie smith email in and we will not only pay for those two pornographic movies you watch, we will pay for a third to take the sting out of this story and the fact that we're using it to mock you further.

Fill your boots, lad.

Fill your boots.

The third movie is The Love Guru 2.

Andy, you do not play a character like Dick Pants and not at some point appear in a pornographic feature.

But it has focused a lot of attention on what MPs can and do claim as expenses.

There's been a lot of controversy over the second homes allowance.

Jackie Smith herself basically claimed an allowance for her own house after claiming that her sister's flat was her main place of residence.

Also, Tony McNulty, the employment secretary, got in a lot of trouble.

Well, he was hauled over the media's media's coals last week for claiming several thousand pounds of expenses on his parents' home, which he said he did a lot of constituency work from.

It does give a rather cute picture of a 44-year-old government minister living at home with his mummy and daddy, packing him off to parliament with his packed lunch, a pair of gym shoes, and a change of clothes, just in case.

You know, better safe than sorry.

The House of Commons can get pretty aggressive.

Bugle sport now and well, what a week for sport it's been, John.

The England football team has beaten Slovakia and Ukraine in a devastating demolition of the former components of the communist bloc.

This follows on, of course, from recent victories over Belarus, Kazakhstan, Croatia, and Germany, and Andorra, who were really the hotbed of it all.

So, not content with winning the Cold War, John.

We're now rubbing their noses in it footballingly as well.

Also, big sports story of the week, of course, other than Harlequins going to the top of the Guinness Premiership, lining up for their Heineken Cup quarterfinal, John, glory days at the stoop, is the Grand National, the world's biggest horse race.

The biggest horse race in the universe.

I'll go so far as to say it begins and ends on Saturday.

That is last Saturday, if you're listening to this anytime after Saturday the 4th.

There have been plans for a tougher course, the Grand National, covering 12,000 miles from Khartoum to Liverpool.

But these were shelves off the TV company showed a little interest in showing the whole race.

So it's back to the same old aim tree faces again, John.

And I have to say, John, I think it's a bit of a shame the way that horse racing's gone so professional because the horses just don't talk to the fans like they used to.

You used to be able to get a bus to the race course and sit next to one of the horses and be able to, you know, just chat to it about the course.

But I guess, you know, it's a different age we live in.

But obviously, everyone's going to be on and have a gamble, so here are the Bugle horsescopes.

What the stars say about your horse's chances in the big race.

Well, John, horsescopes, of course, fairly limited as most horses are born at the same time of year as each other in kind of folding season.

So I'm just going to do a horsecope for Pisces horses, Born between the 14th of March and the 14th of April.

That seems like a kind of good horse-bearing time.

You must surmount several large obstacles if you are to achieve your goal.

A small man may urge you in a direction you do not want to go, but you will be well advised to follow his promptings.

Beware failure, it could have dire consequences.

So there you go, there's your horsescope.

And let's just hope there's no repeat of last year's controversy when a terminally ill couple, Jim and Lethal McConnell, decided to save themselves the cost of a plane ticket to Switzerland by dressing up as a pantomime horse, taking a tumble at beach a second time round and lying on the ground twitching their legs.

It's the only way to do it humanely.

Your emails now and uh this first email comes from Carl Mattson in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

That's of course Andy the home of Rael Salt Lake, the Major League Soccer team.

Of course it is John.

Of course it is, and who had a huge result uh beating uh Columbus crew 4-1 in their last game.

And good luck good luck to Rael Salt Lake in their next game against DC United on April the eleventh at 6pm Eastern Standard Time.

Are you coming for a job as a football presenter in America now, Tom?

Of course I am.

He says, dear John and Sandy.

John, John, can I just ask, are Rail Salt Lake so-called because of their connections to the Spanish royal family?

Because that's why Rail Madrid was so called.

Yeah, of course they are.

His subject is the bugle and parenting.

And he says, dear John and Andy, in order of geographical proximity, I feel a thank you is in order for helping me motivate my three-year-old to clean up his toys.

He comes to me to work every day, so naturally he listens to the bugle with me every Monday morning and he has become quite a fan.

That's probably because the humor in the last two weeks has been pitched right at his level.

The other night I was syncing my iPod to load the latest edition of the bugle they're on and he asked me what I was doing.

I told him that I was getting the new bugle and he said and this is absolutely true oh yeah I love the bugle.

Later that evening when it was time to clean his toys from the floor, he did what every three-year-old is want to do and informed me that he needed to still play.

So I did what any loving, understanding, reasonable parent would do in this situation.

I threatened threatened to take away something of value excellent parenting i remembered that he'd been excited that we could listen to the new bugle the next morning so i told him if he didn't clean his toys up right then then no bugle the trains have never flown into the basket quicker i'm not sure what it is about the bugle he so enjoys whether it's the rampaging chimp stories the the giant penis painting stories or the weekly brazilian footballer references whatever it is thank you gentlemen for helping me extort cooperation from my toddler thanks again Carl Mattson.

You are welcome, Carl.

And I guess we don't know the name of your child, but hello, Minnie, Carl.

Put your toys away.

And he finally says, P.S., should I be worried that he keeps coming to me with his crayons asking where I keep the ladder?

This one comes from Danielle in Melbourne, Florida.

I'm sure Melbourne's in Australia, but anyway, if that's what makes you happy, Danielle, she writes, more building, stroke, penis-related humour as the subject.

Dear John and Andy, 60 feet, is that it?

Florida has a 345-foot-tall penis in the middle of its capital city.

Quite a claim.

Quite a claim.

Where are you measuring from?

I don't know.

Where are you measuring from?

Well, it's probably from the bottom of the massive statue of Jeb Bush's feet to the top of his head.

You're pressing the measuring stick really heavily down into the ground.

I'm referring, of course, to the Florida State Capitol Building, Sick continues.

The almost 40-year-old building was designed by architects working for the firms Edward Durrell and Reynolds Smith and Hills.

Either these architects were complete idiots, or they pulled off the greatest and most juvenile prank ever.

The Capitol building is actually three separate buildings, the Senate and the House, have their offices in twin domed buildings, either side of a tall central tower.

The house is the governor's offices.

It's almost fitting that some of the biggest dickheads in Florida get up every morning to go to work in a giant $43 million penis.

Unfortunately, I've yet to personally witness that beautiful piece of architecture.

But I hope someday to make a pilgrimage to Tallahassee and pay my respects to the most elaborate joke of all time.

It is good to have an ambition in life.

It is absolutely worth it.

Again, we're going to put the photos of this up on the website and it really is.

It's an enormous building with two basically with basically two balls either side of it.

And the inspiration does not stop there, Andy.

Sam Grafton says, dear Andy and associates.

Although I've been a loyal listener for some time now, I've refrained from communicating with your worthy selves, and I felt I had little to contribute to you two outstanding purveyors of nonsense and bullshit.

However, in episode 69, you discussed an area in which I'm an unquestioned authority.

I mean, of course, penis-shaped aircraft and the chance that they were lapped on Andy's roof.

Oh, this is getting good.

You see, I'm a pilot of the most egregiously penis-shaped of modern aircraft, the mighty CH-46E Sea Knight Helicopter.

Seeing close pictures.

Again, go to the website.

It will not let you down.

It's a few seconds out of your day and it will get you through the rest of the week.

I mention this because if I ever find myself flying over the rooftops of London, I may be compelled to slide my glistening fuselage into the inviting confines of Mr.

Saltzman's warm and ideally shaped rooftop landing zone.

I would do my best to resist this compulsion, but when you spend your days looking at the world from the front end of a gigantic wanger, It is sometimes difficult to exercise restraint.

Fair warning, lads.

Tumescently yours, Sam.

Sam, I salute you.

And he's enclosed some pictures of the underside of his helicopter in the air.

And do you know what?

It does look like a penis.

It really does.

Oh, boy, the world is an infantile place.

Sam, two things.

One, thank you for your service.

And two, thank you for your gift to humanity.

Now we have some terrible news for you buglers.

There is no bugle next week.

In fact, we're having two weeks off.

One for Easter to commemorate the unjust death or rightful execution of Jesus Christ.

Delete as appropriate.

And the following week, because John's got to go to some gala red carpet bash for something or other.

What is it?

Not true.

Not true.

My brother's getting married.

The world premiere of his new sister-in-law.

Is there going to be a red carpet?

I don't think so, but I think there'll be a carpet of some colour.

I'll let you know.

So, no bugle next week, but there will be a special one in two weeks' time.

The one week late Easter egg bugle supplementary edition special full of goodies.

So, there is a light at the end of what I admit must be the darkest of tunnels.

So, I guess

the forecast for this week, John, by the time we do the next full bugle

on Monday, April the 27th,

will the G20 have saved the world?

Yes.

Yes.

Definitely.

It will all have worked.

I think no.

I think the world will have been destroyed by then and I guess we'll have to see whether we're recording the bugle on Earth or just drifting through space.

Also, it's worth mentioning that if you, like Tom's new baby Emma, have missed most of the previous bugles,

it is worth mentioning that you can get all of them on the Times website.

They're not on iTunes now for some technological bull reasons that no one really understands but they're all on the times website so if you want to listen to the past 69 acres of lies then

you can do that on the times website yeah timesonline.co.uk slash thebugle it's all there it's all there literally everything you need to know in the world is on that fades that's all for this week we'll speak to you again uh in two weeks and then again in three weeks bye bye

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.