Possibly the longest penis joke in the world, ever

This is a Times Online podcast.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to Bugle 69 for the week beginning Monday, the 30th of March, 2009, with me, Andy Zaltzmann here in the ancient Roman city of Londinium and in the historic medieval village of Los Angeles.

It's little Johnny Gherkin himself, John Oliver.

Hello buglers!

There is nothing medieval about the city of Los Angeles Andy other than its basic sense of morality.

I just saw Los Angeles written down.

I assumed it was a little hamlet in Spain.

Well, you are wrong.

I am indeed out in LA.

It is this second bugle from LA.

Last time, I was out in a studio by the beach, which I did in sunglasses, cut off jean shorts and rollerblades.

This time, I'm in a studio in downtown Los Angeles, and I've got a tiny little dog in a bag and shopping bags all the way down my arm.

I'm tottering around on high heels, losing any perspective on the real world.

Well in Rome.

There shouldn't really be too many differences between an LA bugle and a normal bugle.

You'll probably notice that this is a more shallow, self-important, self-satisfied bugle with some cosmetically enhanced features due to lack of self-esteem.

It will seem like a more glamorous bugle, whereas in fact, deep down, it's going to be quite sad.

Well, John, I appreciate you saying that, but what you've just done there is blown any chance we had of getting Hollywood to make the bugle the movie.

Yeah, well, yeah, but this is, just so you know, this is the first $300 million bugle.

So also joining us today in the special bugle soundproof box, I'm delighted to say that I'm joined here in London by none other than the 1960 Olympic 200-metre breaststroke champion, Anita Longsborough, MBE.

Anita, it's great to have you here.

Looking forward to not hearing what you've made of the recent British National Swimming Championships.

Crumbs, I hope she's okay.

I better top her water up later on.

You've got to keep swimmers wet, otherwise, they can't breathe.

I saw a documentary about it.

So, now last week we finished the show

basically betting on whether or not our producer Tom would have had his baby by now.

And well, the answer is possibly.

Last we heard from him about eight hours ago.

That process had begun.

We haven't heard from him since.

So he jumped ship this morning to be with his so-called wife, who claimed to have gone into so-called labour, leaving us completely unsupervised apart from Louis, the stand-in producer for this week.

I did offer to record the bugle live from the delivery suite at King's Hospital in Denmark Hill.

Lovely gesture.

But yeah, well, I thought so.

Because, you know, I know Tom is very dedicated to

the project, if I may refer to the bugle as that.

I don't think you can.

Alright.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense if you do refer to it as that.

The project.

Yep.

I'm just trying to isn't that LA talk?

Isn't that what they refer to as that?

Maybe it is, yeah, maybe it is.

Well done, Andy, yeah, good pitch.

Are you chomping on a cigar?

Is that is it your voice seems a bit weird?

Yep.

The other studio is uh having some work done on it so they can.

Oh, is that why you sound like you're at the bottom of a well?

Yep.

Alright, so I am recording this at the bottom of a well, or

in basically a concrete room.

I think it gives your voice authority that it frankly does not merit.

My voice merits everything it gets, John.

Well, what does it get?

Well, not breakfast when I ask for it sometimes in a cafe.

So, anyway, John, Tom turned down the offer of recording in the delivery suite, but I think he was just being polite.

So, I actually contacted the hospital direct, and it did look like a goer until the deal broke down over my refusal to wear medical scrubs.

But, you know, I've got an an image to keep up.

Also, my refusal to dress my lucky wound.

You know, it's a lucky wound.

Can't dress it.

I don't care how antiseptic your hospital is.

I'll lose my comic timing without it.

And also, I won't let pregnant women anywhere near my recording equipment.

They're unclean.

So, so I'm in.

Unclean in the eyes of what?

The Lord?

The Lord, John.

The Lord.

I don't know what Lord, but I bet there is a Lord who finds pregnant women unclean.

Anyway, this is Bugle 69.

We'll report back next week on the birth.

Bugle 69, John.

In the year 69, of course, there were four Roman emperors.

Two of them were killed.

One bumped himself off to save anyone the trouble of having to kill him.

Let's hope this episode of the Bugle doesn't see quite the same level of politically motivated bloodletting.

Although all I can say is Louis is dressed up like a centurion, so things aren't looking good at this end.

Also, this is for the week beginning Monday, the 30th of March.

That means it will be the 150th anniversary of the patenting of the world's first pencil with an eraser attached to it.

What?

That's true, John.

To my knowledge,

that is the first dual-use thing humanity ever invented.

And that paved the way for things like the clock radio, the two-in-one shampoo and conditioner, the ejector seat.

Wait until that piece of military technology trickles down into the civilian market.

Watching TV or attending tedious business meetings will never have been so exciting.

Also, the pretzel dog.

What a snack.

What a pet.

Probably better in the reverse order.

Also, the landmine milk jug, the barbed wire envelope, and the crocker Bible.

Half man-eating reptile, half-religious tract.

On both counts.

On both counts.

Watch out.

Oh, boy.

Every week you come up with a new convincing case for going to hell.

As always, some sections of the doodle going straight in the beer this week.

The first 10 in a series of audio self-help guides, including you and your cupboards, how to drink without drowning, what to do if there's a sniper in your kitchen, filing for first-timers, how to start a war, why stealing cars is illegal, the psychological effects of shelves, how to tell if you're alive or dead, how to tell whether you're being told off or seduced, and a man's guide to screaming.

And actually, that was 11.

And also in the bin, part 1 in the serialization of the hit audiobook, Can Ducks Duck?

and 50 other meaningless wordplay-based questions about animals, including, why aren't foxes foxy?

Do hippos have hips?

Is my rhino a whino?

What are the correct legal channels for making an allegation against an alligator?

Is it rude to flip a bird to a bird?

What do I do if there's an impala in my parlour?

What do I do if my stick insect gets stuck in a sect?

Oh no.

Would mine Mallard feel more if I dressed it up like 1850s US President Millard Fillmore?

Will excessive reading of Don Quixote make my donkey OD?

Oh no, no, strike two, strike two Andy.

Will an ant elope with my antelope?

Do

woodcocks have wooden cocks?

How big is a Mamba's member?

How come great tits don't have great tits?

Do blow flies, blow flies.

Is my hornet horny?

Do otter lots, total lots?

And is my horse pimping horse?

I'm done.

Top story this week and penises on roofs.

You see, Andy, the bugle is already changing.

It's in LA.

and it's already become attention-grabbingly commercial.

We are dumbing down.

It's happening.

Damn this city of fallen angels.

It's true, this story is indeed about Peter Zonrooves.

An 18-year-old in Britain secretly painted a 60-foot drawing of a phallus on the roof of his parents' £1 million mansion in Berkshire.

It was there for around a year before his parents found out.

And they've said that

they're going to make him clean it off when he gets back from travelling.

What a story, Andy.

A fortnight ago, it was monkeys who stepped forward to take the bugle's coveted top-story slot and provide much light relief to a world frozen in economic fear.

This week, step forward, rooftop penises.

What a story!

Well, this is unquestionably the new story of the decade, I would say.

I mean, there's a global recession, you can take that, you can take your funky new president in America, your looming environmental mega-catastrophes, your ongoing wars, the gradual devastation of everything we as a species hold dear, and even that meteorite that's going to destroy the planet Earth next Wednesday.

That's a bit of a bugle scoop, scoop, that one.

But there's only one story in town in the first decade of the third millennium, and that is this boy painting a massive wang on the roof of his parents' mansion.

Everything else seems irrelevant now, John.

A boy's painted a gigantic Johnson on a big house.

And I think what this goes to show is that when times are at their toughest, John, and when the present is bleak and the future is even bleaker, humankind will go back to basics, back to its roots, and commune with its primeval prehistoric self and draw a massive cock on something.

It's happened since the dawn of time, John.

Look at the Cernabas giants down in the west country in England, started off when a teenage caveman chiseled a giant Willie and balls onto his parents' hill.

His dad was so embarrassed that he drew a giant man around it and pretended it was religious.

Well, so when God was drawing up the blueprint for the human being, John, you know, he created something simple, elegant, without too many vulnerable external protuberances.

All of a sudden he gets a bit bored, draws a cock and balls on it, giggles, goes to bed, oversleeps and wakes to find out that his over-efficient secretary has already sent the drawing off to be made up into a living being.

That's where the problems began.

I'm 31 years old.

Why do I find this story so funny?

We'll put the photo of this up on the website and I heartily encourage you to go and take a look at it because it truly is a work of art.

Michelangelo had the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the heavens.

This kid had a roof and a massive penis.

They're basically the same.

But for me, this story brings up a number of key questions, Andy.

One, what does this do to the house price?

Because

if they find that it's actually added value, then perhaps people have to draw massive penises on their roofs to compete.

These are tough times, Andy, to buyers market.

People used to have the smell of freshly baked bread and coffee to shift a house.

Now it's all about the painted roof penis.

I think, you know, there's another question, John.

What on earth?

What is that question?

What on earth possessed a teenage boy to paint a a massive schlong on his parents' roof?

And I guess the obvious answer to that is that he's a teenage boy and his parents have a roof.

And, you know, nature...

Nature decreed he was going to draw a penis somewhere.

Okay, I have another question.

In retort to that, Andy, I'll point out that simply that they had it for an entire year without noticing, which really makes you think.

Can anyone truly say they are 100% sure that they don't have a massive penis on their roof right now?

When was the last time you were up on your roof?

A penis could be there right now.

How does the lesson go?

Laugh not at the penis on your neighbour's roof until you're sure that you don't have an even bigger penis on yours.

It's like one of Aesop's more obscene fables.

The ones he wrote when he was drunk late at night.

How about you, Andy?

Can you be absolutely sure you don't have a penis on your roof?

I can't be absolutely sure, John, but

I can verify that no penis-shaped aircraft have landed on my roof by mistake, thinking that was a penis craft pad.

But I guess, you know, there's another way of looking at this John as a tangential way of answering your question about whether I've got a penis on my roof and that is that this it could be a fertility symbol you know maybe this lad just wanted to have a little younger brother or sister to play with he was trying to summon the assistant of some primeval divinity to bring fruit to his mother's womb who knows all I do know John is that when my wife and I were trying to get pregnant for the first time we painted a dangler on two nuggets on our roof but unfortunately at the time we were living in a downstairs flat so we had some very angry neighbours from from the upstairs flat asking us to replace their living room carpet with something a little bit less obscene.

Also, the parents here claim that this is their son's doing, but let's be fair.

He's not there to defend himself from this charge.

They could be stitching him up.

Let's play Colombo for a second here, because this case may be trickier than it initially appears.

Could it be they are framing their own son to protect themselves from the truth that they painted a massive penis on their own roof and were hoping no one would notice?

It's the perfect crime.

Or, was this a more supernatural occurrence?

Aliens have been said to regularly swoop down in the middle of the night and create mysterious crop circles.

Perhaps they're branching out.

They finished their crop circle phase and now experimenting with roofs and penises.

Well, I've got another explanation for this, John, and I think the boy is guilty of this charge of painting a massive penis on his parents' roof.

But I think what it is, John, is it's the

pitch markings from the old English sport of the roof game, which is an early form of football which originated on the roof of Eton College Chapel in the 16th century.

Now, the story goes that an infestation of dry rot resulted in the discolouration of the roofing timbers on the chapel in the shape of the aforementioned Anatomia.

And during a decade of flooding, the school was forced to move the entire school operation onto the chapel roof.

Now, they started playing the roof game using

this kind of pitch marking that nature had created on their roof.

And now in the roof game, one team defends the Naj end, named after two semicircular shapes at one end, which look like an ecclesiastical naj, which is a two-headed scepter used by school chaplains in medieval times.

This team was known as the nadges.

Now, the other team defended the end nearest the chapel's main bell, or the bell end, where the dry rot fungi had grown bountifully around the outline of a spare bell that had been left on the roof after the school campanology society meeting, had degenerated into an alcoholic sea of fumbling homosexualism,

as is traditional at schools such as Eton.

So that led to the bell left unattended on the roof on a stormy night.

This team, of course, was known as the Bell Ends.

Now the attacking side had to use the slope of the roof to curl the ball, which is originally made from the stomach of the school's least popular boy, to curl that around the defenders up the long, narrow centre of the pitch.

This process was known as shaving, as the boys would roll up their school gowns or shafts to use as slings to impart extra spin on the ball.

Once a team had reached the end of the main central portion of the pitch, its players would shout the word shaft to signal that the shaving phase of the attack was complete.

On the call of shaft, the attacking team would attempt to score.

For the bell ends, this involved scratching the nadgers or tagging each member of the nadger defence with the ball whilst in the nadge zone.

And for the nadgers, a score

required them to

yank the bell ends.

In other words, to wrestle the defenders out of the bell end area, leaving an attacking nadger with the ball in the unoccupied zone.

Now, of course, neither side scored either a yank or a scratch between 1604 and 1856, making it very like the Eaton Wall game, when a successful scratching of the Nadgers attracted such nationwide press interest that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were invited to pop down the road from Windsor Castle to watch a game.

Whilst observing from above in the Royal Head air balloon, the professional Queen and Mother of Eight were seen to succumb into fits of giggles, pointing at the outline of the pitch and chuckling to Albert, who himself then began to laugh.

Queen Victoria was then seen to apparently grab Albert's nethercocks with her royal hand, provoking yet more laughter as the loving couple disappeared from view into the balloon's basket.

Albert reappeared reappeared briefly, just to sever the cord tethering the balloon to the ground, and the royal balloon floated off somewhat unsteadily, rocking vigorously from side to side to the sounds of lascivious growls from the Prince Consort and ecstatic whoops from Her Majesty.

Nine months later Princess Beatrice was born.

But the headmaster and provost of Eton were so disturbed at the moral and psychological devastation wreaked upon the schoolboys from seeing the monarch thraggling her husband that they instantly banned the roof game from ever happening again.

Having viewed the roof from above, and realizing that it did in fact look quite like a gentleman's exhibits, they covered the old wooden roof with a giant tarpaulin, which currently resides in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest posing pouch.

And the roof game fell into obscurity until it was just recently heroically resuscitated by this brave young teenager from Berkshire.

And of course, the terms nadger, bellend, and shaft remain in popular usage today.

You are a husband and father of two.

I love my history, John.

Is that a crime?

It is shameful upon both of us, Andy, that this story has inspired us so much.

This has been the greatest news of the last 69 bugles.

Well I think John that's you know it's a depressing world we live in and we have to grasp it.

You know not just good news stories but fantastic news stories like this.

Yeah I suppose that's true.

It's just it says I shocked myself last night with how

many jokes I was inspired to write about this.

I have another one just down here saying it's a chalk outline.

It looks like an active crime scene, Andy.

It's like a gigantic penis was murdered on their roof.

In which case, they should leave it alone because clearly it's an ongoing investigation.

So, his parents have said he will have to, the young lad called Rory will have to clean the massive 20-metre prong off the roof himself.

But I guess as he does so, he'll be able to console himself that however long he lives,

whatever happens in the rest of his life, when he finally prepares to meet his maker, his final thought will be, I painted a 60-foot wang on my parents' roof, and he will die a happy man, John.

G20 now and that's not the new name for Gatorade nor is it the announcement of the end of a snooker break by ex-RB star Warren G.

G20?

It's

thank you Andy.

That laughter and applause means a great deal coming from you.

I'm tapping the cushion for that.

That didn't look on that joke, but you know you've nailed it.

It's the Global Economic Summit, which is to be chaired by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The G20 is a group of the world's most powerful countries who collectively represent 85% of the world's economy.

But Andy, they're not happy sitting back with just that mere 85%.

They're perfectionists, these capitalists.

They won't rest until they make it a nice round 100%.

So the G20 will have to discuss big issues concerning the G20, ranging from should the G20 have a new logo?

Should they start the conference with a huddle?

Who's up some karaoke at the G20 leaders' social later on?

Can the G20 get circle tickets for the latest West End show, DNA, a musical about Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA?

Should the G20 have a theme song, or even a uniform that all the leaders can wear to make them look like a team of heroes saving the world?

Maybe a cape, special hats, and some shiny gloves?

I guess once they've sorted that out, John, they can move on to AOB,

which is basically questions such as exactly how f is the world, A, very, or B, completely?

And what's going to get us first?

Economic again or ecological getden?

And which of either should we do anything about?

Big questions, John.

Are there going to be big answers?

I think you're right.

I think there needs to be a big start, Andy.

Each member of the G20 should run through paper-cut-out pictures of themselves, like at the start of the Super Bowl.

From Germany with a GDP, your billions, Angela, the Hammer, Merkel.

Y'all ready for this?

And then she can spin on her head for a bit.

Economics is a very dour, dour subject area, if you understand.

You need to zaz it up.

Yep, that's absolutely true.

And in fact, part of that zazzing, Gordon Brown has been on a three-continent tour ahead of the summit next month.

It's almost like he's on a movie press junket.

He's having to sit in front of posters of the G20 and answer asinine questions about what's the funniest thing that's ever happened to him during an economic summit?

And what was it like doing a love scene with Silvio Berluscone?

Following talks with UN Secretary General Banki Moon in New York, Mr.

Brown said that at the G20 summit in London, doing nothing is no longer an option.

When was that an option exactly?

Who on earth had recommended that?

Who on earth had recommended that rather than attempt a solution, we should just collectively lie back and enjoy the financial sunset?

He also said, John, along the same lines, he said, I believe that now, for the first time, global leaders recognise the need to cooperate.

Now, again, there must have been a few pointers from history suggesting that cooperation between leaders might be a good idea.

For example, basically the entirety of human history.

But I'm glad they have finally twigged.

John, this is the biggest and most important gathering of world leaders in London since the Second World War.

And for me, it's like a dry run for the Olympics in 2012.

Only with 20 world leaders crapping themselves at the state of the planet, rather than sport and people waving banners against corporatised devastation of the world's poor, rather than banners encouraging volleyball players to play volleyball really well.

Guess it's a fine line.

But I mean, how is this message going down, Andy?

Well, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topalinek suggested the US recovery plans were the, and I quote, way to hell.

I don't know if he means that in a good way, Andy.

I mean, is there any way that way to hell can be seen as a compliment?

Oh,

it could be a translation issue, that.

I mean, he could be trying to say way to go.

But the words for go and hell are very similar in Slovak.

That is an option.

Or is hell perhaps a very fiscally responsible place?

The devil is notoriously allergic to running a substantial deficit.

He's at heart a fiscal conservative.

Well, I guess, you know, he's got big energy bills.

He's always had a balance of books.

Yeah, some protesters have promised spectacular action, John, at the summits.

I'm guessing this involves somersaults, juggling, and maybe a motorcycle pyramid.

That's what I'm looking for in spectacular action.

And of course, the media are focused very much more on whether or not some windows will get smashed by some protesters rather than exactly what the world can do to fix the current mess.

Lula, the Brazilian president who Brown met coincidentally in Brazil, blamed the current crisis on the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes.

And I guess he could cite a scientific research paper that came out last week, which suggested that genetically, white people with blue eyes are more predisposed to macroeconomic self-interest and short-termism.

And interestingly, actually, Steve McQueen was actually thought to have been involved setting up the IMF before he died.

So there you go.

I'm white with blue eyes, so I can only apologise to the world's developing nations for what I've done.

The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, to to give them their abbreviated rap name, has suggested that a fiscal stimulus of at least 2% of GDP will be needed to counteract the effects of the slowdown.

So, will you join in with that, Andy?

Will you pledge to spend 2% of your personal GDP on things that you don't really need to stimulate the economy?

Well, John, I've got a three-month-old baby, so we really do genuinely have quite a lot of gross domestic products.

So, I'm happy to contribute some of that.

Some corporations in the city of London, John, are advising their staff to come into work in disguise next week, so that,

or at least in the disguise of someone not wearing a suit, to try and confuse the anti-G20 protesters, or as they're already being called, rioters.

So I think, you know, this is quite good.

They're going to dress down.

They've even been given advice on how not to look like someone who's caused the global economic crisis.

So, you know, the right kind of...

casual shoes to wear that makes you look like you're obviously not a banker dressing up to not look like a banker.

But I think they should take it even further and go the whole disguised hog.

Maybe you could go to work in a fat suit pretending to be ex-German Chancellor Helmut Cole or rent a horse outfit and pretend to be a horse, but not a police horse because then the anti-capitalist horses will attack you.

Actually, we do have a special prize actually for Bugle listeners.

A free six-month membership of the G twenty for you and your country.

That's worth £150 of membership fees.

If you can answer this simple question, what should be done to sort out the world economically, environmentally and politically?

Answer in no more than 20 words and give your answer to a friend in the pub in the form of informed opinion.

There are some consolation prizes as well.

The following books that have just come out are the consolation prizes.

Karl Marx and the Aubergine by C.S.

Lewis.

It's a reprint of the 1948 classic by the man who put Narnia on the map.

Also a collection of short stories for teenagers about macroeconomics.

It was published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Marx's smash hit bourgeois bashing romp, the Communist Manifesto.

And the title story tells of how a magic aubergine called Auberon tried to persuade little Carl that a classless society, although theoretically utopian, could never work in practice.

The sequel, Karl Marx and the Moussaka, is considered Lewis's darkest work.

Also, one of the prizes is Capitalism or Tennis by Warren Buffett and Mats Villander.

The billionaire investor and the three-time French Open winner each put forward reasons why their chosen profession offers the best solutions for a sustainable economic future for the planet.

And also, In Praise of Corporation Tax, a collection of poems by by the staff of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

This is an outstanding anthology of socially responsible business verse from the legendary accountancy firm, winner of the 2008 Norman Lamont Memorial Silver Salver for Financial Poetry.

North Korea being crazy again, news now.

And well, set your days since North Korea last did something not crazy, calendar, back to zero.

Because they are at it again.

According to Japanese and US officials, North Korea have placed what's thought to be be a long-range missile on a launch pad.

Now, there's been outrage coming from the international community, but you know, why the surprise?

Andy, North Korea pretty much hit straight back saying, hey, hey, settle down.

This is what we do.

We're crazy.

We do weird stuff.

You know us.

It's kind of our thing.

We just wanted to see what it looked like on the launch pad.

That's all.

The international community were quick to hit back with stern, generic, empty rebukes.

U.S.

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said that if North Korea launched a missile, there would be, and I quote, consequences.

Well,

of course there will.

Consequences is a broad term, which could include everyone just shitting themselves at once.

That is a pretty likely consequence if they start blasting off warheads left, right, and centre.

And I can tell you that I will be party to that particular consequence.

So I guess we've got to ask here, John, what are the chances that this latest round of missile FTSE will actually spark a global nuclear holocaust and the destruction of humanity?

I'd say still five to one against.

Yeah, it's still not bad.

It's not bad odds.

I mean you take those odds.

I mean you could get a nice return on your money.

Were it not for the fact that if you ever receive that return you're not really going to have much to spend it on.

I mean Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said that plans were being made to shoot down any rocket that threatened to hit the country.

Now, you can understand why the Japanese are particularly jumpy over this Andy.

Not only are they neighbor to North Korea, but they currently hold the world record of number of times your country is hit by a nuclear bomb by a clear two strikes.

That's going to make you a little bit twitchy when it comes to things like this.

I think it's another one, they get to keep it.

That's a Jules Remade trophy joke for any of you Brazilian listeners out there.

So, I guess another question that raises its ugly head at this point, John, is that if the world is destroyed, what would you most miss about it?

I think I would miss,

I mean, probably brioche bread.

Right.

Because for me, it would probably be stories about 60-foot penises on people's roofs.

I think I'd miss that the most.

I've changed in the last week.

My perspective has changed.

Your emails now, and we've had a lot of suggestions for Tom over not what his baby should be called, but what it will be called if he wants to keep his job.

There's one here from Heather Lengefeld who says, Dear John and Andy, tell Tom, who I'm guessing reads the emails before you anyway, that is actually true.

So that's a good guess.

That puts you up the list.

That the baby's name should be Zoltziver.

Part Zoltzmann, part Oliver, in honor of his respective meal tickets.

Let's hope that's not true, or that child is not going to be eating very well for the rest of his life.

Let's just hope that such a name does not result in an inheritance of particularly unfortunate physical traits.

What?

She goes on to say, also, Andy, I've wanted to listen to Bugle 66, but I'm afraid that you're trying to kill me.

I live in Springfield, Missouri, known as the birthplace of Route 66.

I live just blocks away.

Our grocery store is on the route.

I've heard just enough to know that listening to Bugle 66 on Route 66 will apparently open a hellmouth or something.

Are you trying to get me sucked into a hellmouth, Andy?

Well, I'm not trying to, I'm just saying, you know, that in any hell mouth there will be collateral damage.

There's also a great suggestion from Melissa Powers, who writes, read Tom's baby name, simply either gender, Bingley Burt Slaptipack.

She goes on to explain, although she really

needn't, the name speaks for itself.

She goes on to say, giving your kid a boring, typical name isn't going to get them anywhere anymore.

Do you think Barack Obama would be president if his name had been Bob Smith?

No.

My kid's name is Dash Yelly, and I expect he will either be president of the United States or an evil mastermind bent on world domination.

Whichever it is, his unique name has him destined for greatness.

Melissa.

Finally, this from Matt Parker in Toronto, who writes, for Andy Zoltzmann, I'm with you, Andy.

Ray your comments regarding Twitter as the death of civilization.

Twitter is yet another base camp on the mountain of stupidity.

That's a lovely phrase.

It doesn't help that it sounds like some kind of masturbation ritual seals do in groups.

Besides, if I really needed to know what restaurant John Mayer was checking out in LA, or whether Stephen Fry shaved his balls or not, I may as well just forfeit thinking altogether and give my brain back to science at the next available depot.

Regards, Matt Parker.

Oh, thank you, Matt.

Regards is a lovely sign-off to an email as well.

Excellent, so do keep your emails coming into thebugalattimesalign.co.uk, and I promise the blog will be up and running soon.

We've had a few technical difficulties and a few difficulties with me not getting around to it.

Bugle sport now and well what a week it's been in England John we won the World Cup and there's scenes not really seen since the 1966 Football World Cup or more recently the 2003 Rugby World Cup or even probably VE Day.

England won the women's cricket World Cup and that means John cricket as we know, undisputably the greatest sport in the world.

Women, easily one of the two greatest sexes in the world.

And that means that we, as a nation, are the greatest nation in the world.

Right.

That sounds like it makes sense, but I mean, I know it doesn't.

Well, it does.

Thankfully, the final between England and New Zealand passed off without too much violence off the pitch.

There were fears that a New Zealand will might provoke English people to set fire to New Zealand-made cars or attack New Zealand-based businesses.

But thankfully, we won, and so those fears were never properly tested.

Also, this Sunday, it's the boat race.

John, is America excited about that?

No, and personally, I'm.

I would love for you not to have reminded me that that was taking place.

Your old Alma Marty, John?

Yeah, I hope they both sing.

Oxford and Cambridge going head to head, stroke to stroke, or to oar, tedious overseas postgraduate to tedious overseas postgraduate on the shark-infested waters of the Thames on Saturday, or is it Sunday?

I guess history is going to be the judge of that.

I think it would be more interesting, John, if the boats for the universities were crewed by science professors and only the winning crew got any research funding for the next year.

Then I think you'd see some real desperation out there.

Oxford, hoping that their traditional formation, the old one, one, one, one, one, one, one, little one

formation, is going to prove successful.

Whilst Cambridge, whose crew this year includes astronaut John Glenn, who won a NASA ex-astronauts competition to row in the race, beating Buzz Aldrin in the headbutt to the death.

Buzz just can't catch a break, can he?

But Cambridge are actually not using oars this year, they're using a willpower-powered craft called the Huey Lewis, and they're hoping that it will prevail.

I think it's probably all going to come down to who gets to the finishing line more quickly, John.

But I just worry that if impressionable youngsters turn their TVs on and see people rowing a boat up the Thames, they're all going to want to row boats up the Thames, and that leaves us vulnerable as a nation to a U-boat attack.

I'm not watching the boat race, Andy, until they replace the starter's pistol with a man just screaming out the words, release the crocodiles

well they can do that John crocodiles in rivers you know and in the deep center of the Thames John you know it's going to be cold strong currents I think I'd take the boat to beat the croc what I think you want really probably a boat eating whale although it might get beached I guess it depends if it gets the surrey or the middlesex station it all come out of the toss between the boat and the whale it's just so much tactics involved that's what makes it such an unfeasibly tedious event well let's just hope there's no repeat of last year's boat race, which of course ended after several years of fighting with the Treaty of Berena King.

I'm sorry, that was the Boer War.

My mistake.

So, all that's left is time for the bugle forecast this week.

Well, it's a rollover forecast since last week's forecast about whether or not Tom will have had his baby still up in the air.

By this time next week, John, will Tom have had his baby?

Yes, absolutely.

I maintain that he's had it now.

Right.

Okay.

I think he hasn't had it.

I think he won't have had it next week.

Let's hope for Tom's wife.

That is not true, Andy, because as you pointed out, she is already in labour.

I admit it's not looking good.

I'm not saying that's what I want to happen.

It's kind of an emotional cover bet, John.

I want that baby to be out.

And so by kind of predicting that it won't be, if it's not, I've got something to cling to.

So do keep...

Oh, also rolling over is the website competition, which once again we haven't got around to because we've been whitering on about massive cocks too much.

So that'll roll over till next week.

We should have a moratorium for the next ten bugles on the word penis, Andy.

Okay.

We've used the penis quota up.

Alright, well, you know, there's plenty of other ways to skin a cat.

It was fun, but it must stop.

So do tune in for next week's penis-free bugle at the same time.

Don't just try and get the last ones in while you know you can.

This has been, if Virgil had been doing this podcast, he'd have called it the peneid.

Bye-bye, buglers.

Keep emailing us, thebugle at timesonline.co.uk.

Have a great week.

Cheerio!

This is a Times Online podcast.

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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.