Obama and his Al-Qaeda style video

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, and welcome to Bugle 68 for the week beginning Monday, the 23rd of March, 2009, with me, Andy Zaltzman, here in the geographically undeniable city of London and in the sweetly fragrant spring city of New York in the cute little country of the USA.

It's John Hoops Oliver.

Hello Andy!

Hello buglers!

Hoops!

Hoops Oliver!

I heard you've been whirling a hula hoop around for three hours away.

That's right, I thought it was a bossball reference.

I was going to say that would be wrong.

In fact floor gymnastics.

I had to go for a medical this week Andy as part of my application for a green card in my ongoing tango with US immigration.

And this in itself seems strange because to argue that you need to be physically fit to live in America is slightly undermined by the size of many of the people who live here.

Unless that's what it's all about.

I'm underweight and they won't let me in until I've piled on enough weight that I need to leave my apartment each morning by being winched out of a window by a crane.

I had to get a bunch of immunization shots and give blood for a tuberculosis test.

Tuberculosis?

Maybe I hadn't been clear enough on my form.

I'm from England, not pre-industrial revolution England.

The doctor I was Cuban, he rolled up my sleeve and started getting ready with his spiky thing and said, looked at me with, you know, real serious in his eyes and went, what do you think of Castro?

I said to him, well, what is the best answer to give?

Bearing in mind what you're about to do to me.

And he looked even crosser and said, I don't like Castro.

I hate him.

And he stuck me with the needle on the word hate.

And he decided to talk about something else, a different subject.

He might have been a bit more gentle.

Anyway, the point is, I'm going to get the results after this.

America really make you work for it, Andy.

This better be worth it.

Immunisation shots.

That sounds like some kind of photo shoot for a strange, fetishistic website.

Well, we'll just do a few immunisation shots now, love.

No, you look beautiful.

It's art.

Are you up to date on your tetanus, sweetheart?

So with me in the special bugle soundproof safe this week, I'm delighted to say we are joined by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Funds.

Hi there, Dominique, how's it going?

Give me liberty or give me death.

Now John, that is a game show I would pay to watch.

And to be fair, you know, it's famous words from Big Pat.

But with hindsight, they do sound like the words of a man who was was really just opening negotiations with himself and was going to haggle himself down from liberty or death.

Deliberately starting with two diametrically opposed positions.

But, you know, he's just kind of making sure that he can keep both his freedom-loving side and his suicidal side happy by reaching some kind of compromise.

Probably allowing himself some liberty, maybe a 9pm curfew to keep himself under control, and some death, maybe taking up smoking or bear wrestling.

So, you know, he's a happy man, basically.

All I'm saying is he was misinterpreted at the time.

And it's also 100 years since Teddy Roosevelt, who just packed up up and moved out of the White House, put his pith helmet in a suitcase, twirled his moustache, and went on a cheeky little post-presidential safari, on which he bravely killed or trapped not one, not two, not three, but 11,000 animals, including 512 big game creatures, including hippos, rhinos, and stuff like that.

512.

Why?

That number, you may well ask.

Well, obviously, Roosevelt wanted to have a straight nine-round knockout competition to find his favourite dead animal.

And I guess once he'd killed more than 256 realistically he had to go as far as 512 or he's left with having to do a qualifying round and that's not really fair on any of the animals he'd killed.

But as so often happens with presidents, their actions spawn traditions and since then every retiring president has had to personally hunt down and kill 11,000 animals, ideally bringing some species to the brink of extinction.

And currently George W.

Bush is on four and a half thousand but only after running a mock in a catary and getting a job in an abattoir.

Well interestingly Teddy Roosevelt famously also said, speak softly and carry a big stick and you will go far.

Explaining why he was much in demand as a mafia sidekick, a burglary advisor and a snooker coach, but less so as a cock for a boat race crew, a helicopter pilot, an astronaut and Hamlet.

This is of course Bugle 68.

As always we have a section of the Bugle going straight in the bin this week.

As it's Bugle 68 we have a special feature section on the number 68 going straight in the bin.

As always we have a section of the Bugle going straight in the bin this week.

As it's Bugle 68 we have a special feature section on the number 68 going straight in the bin and interestingly john 68 degrees centigrade is the ideal temperature you don't need me to tell you this for developing black and white film so for this edition of the bugle is being recorded in the dark with john and i bathing and developing liquid fully clothed though we're not animals uh 68 also the number of inches in height of no less than four american presidents can you guess them Time's up.

It's Harrison, Polk, Taylor and Grant in descending height order.

Actually, they're all equal at 5'8.

What a bunch of averagely tall men they were, John.

So if someone says to you, my my, you must be as tall as James K.

Polk, then if they've sized you up right, you're 5'8, so deal with it.

There's nothing wrong with it.

And if you are 5'8, this week's bugle will include a free, inaudible, bonus, silent joke at the end of the podcast.

68 AD, of course, also the year in which Roman Emperor Nero killed himself.

So we ask this question: if you were a Roman Emperor, what year would you kill yourself in?

That section in the bin.

Top story this week and OMG

The Pope as they call him in Queens papa pa pa pee unit

Do they really job?

No, what kind of church have you been going to?

You know, you know the Pope, the one who does his business in the woods, that one.

He went to Africa this week.

And now, I know that sounds like the start of a joke, but it's actually true.

He's there for a week-long tour, and what a tour it's going to be.

Andy, he's going to be playing all his greatest hits, God hates abortions, gay marriage is wrong.

That one's been very good to him over the years.

And of course, the crowd wouldn't let him leave without that old Catholic classic, don't use condoms.

It's the stairway to heaven of his back catalogue.

And he put his divine foot in his divine mouth even before landing in a plane.

He wasn't personally flying there.

The Pope can't fly, as far as I know, by saying condoms are not the answer in the continent's fight against AIDS.

Here's the thing, Andy, they are.

That's why it's so annoying that he would say something like that.

And when I say annoying, I mean fing annoying.

Now, you want to give people space to say whatever they want.

When it's a man in his supposedly holy, compassionate position saying things like that, you really want to tell him to go f ⁇ ing.

You mean you don't say that because of the position he's in, but you desperately want to.

Of course, some in the Catholic Church, John, say that AIDS has no track with condoms and that your cheeky little AIDS virus looks at latex and thinks, I'm getting through that.

I'll tell you, I'm getting through that, and I'm going to infect.

That is just the way I roll.

Of course, science does take a slightly different view from that.

Pope, of course, is suggesting abstinence rather than contraception.

And I guess at least you can certainly not accuse the man of not practicing what he quite literally preaches.

And I guess you can't really take abstinence much further than being Pope.

These days, anyway, of course, back in the Middle Ages, being Pope was pretty much an excuse for dipping it in anything that moved.

That's it.

I mean, who better to give advice on sex, Andy, than the Pope?

That's certainly a superb area of expertise for him.

I've always said, if I want advice on theology, I'll go to the UN Surgeon General.

But if I want advice on sexually transmitted diseases, I head straight for the pontiff.

You can't buy that kind of experience.

Benedict said that the Roman Catholic Church was, and I quote, at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.

Let's really hope they don't actually represent the forefront, or people are going to want to know where all that AIDS research money has gone.

Oh, they are at the forefront, John.

They're just on the wrong side of it, putting up barbed wire and machine gun posts.

He went on to say, you can't resolve this with the distribution of condoms.

On the contrary, it increases the problem.

And then went on to even object to the use of condoms between married couples.

Okay, that pushed him over the edge, Andy.

He can now go f himself.

As long as as he does it safely.

I think the best way of looking at this situation is that reality and the Pope have basically had a divorce.

Now, I know the Catholic Church has a very strict view on divorce as well, but let's face it, the relationship between the Vatican and reality has been increasingly strained for decades.

I'm not sure they've even been talking for the last few years.

It's best for both parties that they go their separate ways.

And good luck to them.

Let's hope they each find someone else.

I think the Pope may have a very happy future with magic.

I'm not really one to talk about this, John.

I've had far more children than the Pope has.

I've had two to nil, I think.

So that means I've had infinitely more children, percentage-wise, than the Pope.

So in many ways, he's done more personally to curve overpopulation than I have.

But I guess on a broader scale, I have never discouraged the people of the world from taking basic health and safety measures to control the spread of disease and reduce unwanted pregnancy.

So I guess in this one, it's

sort of one-all, I guess.

Yeah.

And this issue has divided even clergy who work with aids patients about 22 million people in sub-saharan africa are infected with hiv and in 2007 three quarters of all aids deaths worldwide were there so to combat this instead of condoms what is the vatican's big plan for combating the aids pandemic in africa they favor non-artificial contraception including fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex and that's it Keep it simple.

It also seems to be a plan from the 17th century when people were too busy dying of plague to worry about dying of AIDS.

And not content to throw Hail Marys at lethal diseases, he also turned his holy eye to the global economy, making an appeal for international solidarity.

Now, you might think, oh, what does that mean?

Is the Pope about to say something interesting?

Well, no, he isn't, because he went on to point out that while the Church does not propose specific economic solutions, it can give spiritual and moral suggestions.

Oh, that's great.

Everything's going to be fine then.

Spirituality is, of course, the cornerstone of Keynesian economics.

I don't blame the Pope for the spread of AIDS.

I think we're shooting the messenger here.

I think there's only one thing to blame for the spread of AIDS, and that is the AIDS virus itself.

Right.

When it's cocky, it's arrogant, it's selfish, has no real regard for the well-being of others.

It's an arsehole, isn't it?

Yeah, well, without wanting to sound racist, I'll go as far as to say as I dislike all viruses.

I'm not a violent man, but if a virus knocked on the door of the bugle officers right now, I would punch it right in the face.

A little shit.

Spoiling people's lives.

Of course, you then get the virus rights campaigners picketing the bugle and trying to shut us down and you have some guy absailing down my microphone wrapped in a save the virus banner but you know no one wants to see that one but I'm prepared to stand up for my beliefs.

Both the French and the German foreign ministers agreed that the Pope's comments was a hugely irresponsible move and when you've united the Germans and the French behind something you know you are doing something bad.

Because to get those two together is not easy.

Throughout history it's basically only been the opposition to the last Iraq war and this.

That's it.

Hope also told a mass in Africa that Africa is a continent of hope, which does seem to me looking at the state of Africa at a bit of positive spin, John.

I guess it's a bit like an estate age in telling you that a property's got a lot of potential after it's just been bombed during an earthquake in the middle of a snake infestation.

Revolution news now and there was another revolution somewhere in the world last week, but where was it?

Well, I have the results here.

the latest revolution comes from is it your home country are you about to have to put a new portrait on your wall madagascar

congratulations to madagascar and commiserations to all the other unstable regimes who entered better luck next time yep madagascar has been very much living up to the first three letters of its name recently

military-backed coup headed by a former disc jockey yes this is what world politics is all about these days John.

The elected president Mark Ravala Manana has been booted out by a commod bless you, by a combination of

upstart 34-year-old ex-groupster Andri Rajo Alina.

Bless you.

Public protests, military backing, and the courts.

So it's a pretty messy situation.

Raj accused Rav of being a wasteful tyrant.

Rav hit back and said Raj was using terror and repression to overthrow him.

It all got messy, the military became involved, and all of a sudden Rav is out and Raj has pronounced himself new head boy of Madagascar.

Now, Now, this, of course, John, is not standard behaviour for a DJ.

Admittedly, I guess most are content just to knock out a few tunes and shout party people make some noise every now and again, or whatever it is they do.

Or, I guess, if they're a radio DJ, just to be aggressively flirtatious with travel reporters and pretend to like obviously dismal pop tunes rather than run for mayor of Antananarivo, start agitating against the government over the perceived selling out of the country to overseas multinationals, garner the support of military factions, sparking violent unrest, then overthrow the president and install themselves themselves as leader provoking uproar and concernation from other nations in Africa and around the world the former DJ Mr.

Rajalina addressed supporters in the capital on Wednesday to promise a return to normal life to security and above all national reconciliation and he then said now here's how deep is your love by the begs you're listening to Madagascar's new government let's talk more music ahead traffic on the wands

on the what's mate on the wands on the one of every time you know 11 21 you get some traffic oh I see right that's standard DJ pattern.

No, I'm not familiar with that, mate.

You'd be an awful DJ.

You're awful.

Yep.

I guess you'd be more a club DJ than a radio DJ because

you don't have to give out traffic information when you're playing club sets.

That's right.

You don't see Karl Cox stopping in the middle of playing some huge drum and bass.

and saying uh the A505 has snarled up a little bit, try and avoid the area.

President or not Rajolina is a 34-year-old former disc jockey and there are always certain things which make you think you're not achieving anything with your life, Andy.

When you realise that your favourite athletes are all younger than you, that some of your favourite musicians had already recorded their best work and died of a drug overdose younger than you.

And then, of course, that someone has overthrown an African country before hitting 35.

I mean, Andy, you're 34.

Yep.

You haven't overthrown a single African country.

I've still got three years.

Not for what I'm trying, John.

I know.

I'm just saying, it's still very, very much part of my long-term plan.

Now, the Daily Show and the bugle are just stepping stones.

I'm coming for you, Tanzania.

But a DJ becoming president, John, this to me sounds like the plot of a mid-budget 1980s comedy starring Michael J.

Fox as the good one.

The DJ who somehow has to lead his country through an economic downturn without once turning into a wolf.

Andy, I'm in LA next week.

I will pitch it.

Pitch it, John.

I'll pitch it.

I'm pitching that movie.

And now a Madagascar fact box.

Madagascar has been an island for more than 50 years.

However, Madagascar is tethered to the seabed with string, and if a shark ever bites through that string, Madagascar will float across the Indian Ocean and smash into the west coast of Australia, starting a war.

More people live in Madagascar than you or I have had hot dinners.

You can see Madagascar from space, and vice versa, so I'm told.

And who am I to doubt these self-proclaimed daughter door astronauts who keep banging on my door to tell me these things?

Well, congratulations to Madagascar and space, but I'm I'm still not going with you and your special rocket.

I've got a family now.

But ironically space actually begins 100 kilometers above Madagascar whereas the African mainland is 250 kilometers away which means that Madagascar is 60% closer to space than to Africa which means that Madagascar is effectively a UFO.

Madagascar is bigger than the Beatles geographically.

No man is an island, but if Madagascar was a man, it would be called Umberto and would at 226,000 square miles be the biggest man in the world.

And also if Madagascar was better at sport, I'd probably know some more interesting facts about it.

So it's only got itself to blame.

Irish Prime Minister Speech News Now.

And the Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowan delivered the traditional White House St Patrick's Day speech and in doing so made a spectacular goof, Andy.

Everyone loves goofs.

But this was a particularly good goof.

The speech that Obama had just delivered moments before was accidentally accidentally still on the teleprompter.

So Prime Minister Brian Cowan just started reading that again,

including a passage that introduced himself.

He started saying, we begin by welcoming today a strong friend of the United States, and then continued for about 20 seconds before realising what had happened.

He should have kept going.

See it through to the end of the speech and refuse to admit that he made a mistake.

That would have been far more entertaining than backing out.

I mean, he might have got away with it, I guess.

And he could even have claimed that Obama had stolen his speech.

But sadly, we did notice

after 20-odd seconds, as you say, or in layman's terms, after the 10th use of the words hope and change.

But I think maybe this was actually deliberate, John.

I think this could be the start of Obama, the prankster president, deliberately swapping people's speeches around.

Because international politics is a pretty serious game these days, so you can't blame him for trying to just, you know, lighten it a bit with a few little gags.

I mean, you imagine Chavez up at the United Nations for his annual bout of America bashing and all of a sudden Obama's done a cheeky little go on the teleprompter and there's Chavez going once upon a time there was a lovely country called America and everyone loved America hang on Obama was at you again

but somehow I just can't hate you as much as the last guy

This just goes to show how infectious Obama is.

He is so good a speaker that people don't just want to emulate him, they want to copy him verbatim.

Hamid Karzai has taken to performing the yes we can speech to anyone who'll listen to him.

And Angela Merkel in Germany has been heard talking about how difficult it was for her growing up fatherless as a black man in America.

Of course, this kind of thing has happened before, John.

Happening most prominently, of course, to Jesus in the recently discovered Gospel according to St.

Keith.

It tells the story of how Jesus picked up the wrong roll of papyrus one day and started reading out the local travel news instead of a new parable.

He began, my children, there's been a donkey pile up on the Bethlehem to Nazareth road.

Up to 20 animals involved in that one.

Police are advising you to avoid the area.

Hang on, I think this is the wrong one.

Oh, yeah, that was this.

No, no, that's my novel.

That's not finished.

This is just some chiclet.

Hey, we all have our secret guilty pleasures.

Right, this is the one: the parable of the gobby barman.

How was your St.

Patrick's Day, Andy?

Pretty sensational, John.

Just, you know, traditional

roast leprechaun.

That's not tradition, Andy, that's barbaric.

I had to film a piece during the St.

Patrick's Day parade, which was, I guess it was kind of like filming a piece piece in hell.

I was groped for 90 minutes by drunk 18-year-old girls.

Oh, right.

And that was absolutely no fun.

Really?

What were you wearing?

I was not asking for it.

Don't put this on me, Andy.

Just saying, Tom, I know you're free to express yourself however you want, but just saying, I don't know why I can't wear Bermuda shorts instead of Speedos.

It's my right.

In other Obama news, Barack Obama has sent a video message to the people of Iran.

John, this this shows that Obama is learning from al-Qaeda's successful marketing tactics.

Clearly, only taking it a step further with a bit more smiling and slightly friendlier rhetoric, which I think is an improvement.

And once again, Obama is breaking new ground for humanity, John.

He showed it's possible for a black man to become president of America.

Now he's shown that it's possible to release a video message without calling for the death of all infidels and the destruction of the Satanic West.

And also without having a load of machine guns in the background.

So it's a definite step forward for the video message as a form of political communication.

And now it's a bugle fitness section.

We've been paying for this fitness section and the for the last 68 bugles and it's the first time we're using it.

It's just not cost effective.

Before we can go into it, the key is for everyone to limber up properly before attempting to listen to

this part of the bugle.

Let's try a quick bugle workout first.

Let's just shake out your downloading finger and tweak it and stretch and bend the knuckle and press.

Good, okay.

Now you've got to get into shape to listen, so let's work the inner ear now and listen and relax and listen and relax and work it.

Right, now you've got to loosen up your bullshit receptors.

I'll just give you a nice little gentle bit of bullshit to warm you up.

Rabbits have no liver.

And let it in and let it out.

And another one.

The Duomo in Florence is infested with scorpions.

And in and out.

And finally, let's crunch those audio quads and work it and pump it and honk it and groove it and shake your money maker

work those sonic delts

because we all got to stay fit John otherwise we will die and there's a number of different ways Andy I don't want to I don't want to break it to you I mean we will die anyway really

oh no Oh, it's alright.

No.

Now isn't the time to have this discussion with you.

I should meet you got a point because otherwise Harold Abrahams will still be alive.

He was Olympic champion.

Most parents teach their children to deal with the concept of death by buying them pets

and watching them die.

Are you going to use the Harold Abrahams advocate, for example?

That's not the entire reason for buying a pet, John.

Of course it is.

You don't just buy a pet, take it home, put it on the kitchen table and just start battering it.

No, he's not battering it.

Watch it.

Watch it.

He's just saying, look, this child, love this animal and watch it die.

This is what's going to happen to all of us.

That's what a pet is for.

Before nailing it to a board and ripping its liver out.

You had strange parents, John.

Very odd attitude towards animals.

There are a number of decent ways to stay fit.

One, eat nothing but whale blubber.

In itself, of course, whale blubber is not particularly healthy.

It's in fact quite fatty.

But the work in acquiring, you know, the process of personally hunting down, wrestling and killing a whale, stripping its blubber, and then swimming home again, that should get you into shape.

So that's one good thing to do.

You can take take up a new sport.

I'll suggest ultimate fighting.

That's pretty all-round exercise.

And if you can't get yourself into a decent UFC club, I guess you could just find your angriest neighbour and provoke him by hitting him on the head with a chair.

Or stealing his bin.

Yeah.

Well, actually, just provide a nice cleansing bout of lawless brawling.

So you you basically you get that exercise for free.

A number of different forms of exercise that I can also uh recommend.

Uh sockser size.

Uh change your socks twenty-five times a day.

that will stretch out your hamstrings and also probably improve your abs.

And there's fret a size

which you give yourself plenty of stuff to worry about and you know the process of fretting you know you burn off a lot of extra calories you maybe leave your house unlocked walk down dark alleys things like that you know the nervous energy the kind of extra pace that you walk with in an effort to get home quickly before your house can get burgled that adds up to a lot of calories used and two bits of fitness safety advice don't play squash in a line enclosure and never bench press a coffin at a funeral without prior permission from the deceased's relatives.

So that is your bugle fitness section.

May you all live long and healthy lives.

You're welcome.

Now warm down.

Your emails now, and we've had a few suggestions of who to put in the soundproof vaults.

And this one is from Sigourney Binder.

who says, yo bitches.

How I feel about that?

I mean, you've got my attention, but I'm not sure I appreciate the manner in which you've got it.

What's this shit with the sound vault thing?

You've had three Americans already.

How about a bit of balance here?

I suggest that the next A-list celebrity you foster in your sleek, all-electric government-endorsed soundproof safe should be retired Welsh politician and qualified horsemanure pH analyst Lord Colin Wellridge Oysters McNeill, UK Minister for Communities and Sport between 1909 and 1916.

McNeil is more than deserving of this grand honour as you both owe him your freedom.

Without this awe-inspiring political powerhouse, the Great War would surely have gone the other way.

In 1915, McNeil unleashed a barrage of revolutionary policies in order to create a streamlined efficient Britain.

First, he acquired much-needed resources by radically reducing the number of balls used in snooker.

The purple, beige, gold, steel, spiked, rubber, congealed, flame, and rainbow balls were all dropped.

as well as 27 of the reds.

He's also responsible for reducing the overall number of administrative staff required for an official game of snooker to one referee by consolidating the duties of the pastry chef, card sorter, regional managing director, corner pocket guards, coin tosser, salad tosser, ball tosser, bald tosser, toss guard, rear gunner, and wireless operator, therefore freeing up more than 11 million men for active service.

Finally, he increased the efficiency of shift workers by lowering the average length of a snooker game to less than a day through an increased tax on metallic brass.

What?

Making operatic shot retake rules less likely to be enforced at an amateur level.

Unfortunately, in 1916, McNeil's

lesbian affair with the Duchess of Falkirk, he was hounded out of office in disgrace before he could be congratulated for these changes or improve morale further by implementing some way of making cricket less boring.

Yours sincerely, Sigourney Binder.

Andy, do you write emails under the pseudonym Sigourney Binder?

No, I don't, but I wish that I did.

Yeah, I wish I had written that.

Because Because that is...

That challenges your bullshit.

Yeah, that makes me feel that I've been slowly underplaying that.

I'm not sure any of that is true.

Was he even...

Was he even the minister?

Does that man even exist?

No.

Really?

Oh, hang on.

Let's look him up.

I don't think so.

It doesn't exist.

Doesn't exist.

There is a Scottish boxicle, Colin McNeill.

Because the whole thing is a lie.

Now, this one comes in from Anne Anderson, who writes on the subject, John, about those concrete lions.

She writes, John, thanks for including me in in this, Anne.

I feel really welcome in my own podcast.

Before you get carried away by the concrete lions,

for those who didn't hear it, John,

have you got that flat or not?

No, I went down to look at it again this week.

It's a bit weird that it's on Wall Street.

Yeah.

And it's a bit too expensive.

But it did have concrete lions.

It had the concrete lions.

Right.

I did love those lions.

So John was looking at this flat with concrete lines.

Anyway, Anne Anderson writes, before you get carried away by the concrete lines, and I admit it, appeal to the tin plate dictator in all of us.

Amen.

Please make sure that the listing agent was not trying to sell you the New York Public Library.

Sure, it may look roomy and stylish, but there will be people treaching through your living room all day long asking for directions to the Stephanie Meyer novels.

Also, there's a bit of a ghost problem in the basement, which may or may not affect resale value.

So that's it from your emails for this week.

There will be more next week.

Thebugle at timesonline.co.uk, that's where to send them.

And I promise I will get around to the vlog this week.

Tom's shaking his head.

He reckons I won't.

I've been very busy this week, and my little boy's been quite squawky.

But it will happen.

Yeah, you're crying, wolf, again.

Yeah, well, you know, wolves don't write blogs, John.

Well, you clearly don't read TerryTheWolf.blogstock.com.

Also postponed is the results of the website competition because we've overrun again.

And Tom is about to have a baby, so he really wants to get out of the studio.

Sport!

The Milwaukee Bucks forward, Charlie Villenueva, got in trouble last week when he sent out a Twitter message during half-time of the game they were playing against the Celtics.

His message was, in Dahlocker Room, snuck to post my tweet, we're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at de half.

Coach wants more toughness, I gotta step up.

Coach was very upset, Andy, when he found out about this afterwards.

But here's the thing, Villanueva finished the game with a team high 19 points and they ended up beating the Celtics.

So maybe rather than being cross he should be encouraging this behaviour.

Let the guy tweet all the time during the game.

On to court now.

Kevin Garnett driving the lane on me.

Better smack that shit down.

We'll tweet in a minute.

In a minute.

Smacked that shit down.

Dribbling the ball now.

We'll probably put it in the basket in a minute.

But this isn't the first time that sportsmen have Twitted whilst in the process of playing sports.

In fact, Ricky Hatton, the British boxer, blamed his defeat to Floyd Floyd Mayweather in late 2007 to the fact that he was Twittering throughout the fight.

Ouch being punched in the face repeatedly.

Ouch, ouch.

He keeps hitting me.

Ouch.

Doesn't seem fair to punch a man while he's typing a tweet.

Ouch.

I'm not really familiar with Twittering on the grounds that I've been properly educated.

But...

Hold on, hold on.

Let's go through that right now, Andy.

I don't think that is the mitigating factor.

I'm not a big fan of Twitter myself, but I do not believe that it's an educated.

Doesn't Stephen Fry do it?

You can't be more educated than him.

Yeah, but he's just doing it to look cool.

Wow, your argument is collapsing like the Parthenon.

What being blown up by the Turks?

I'm skeptical of Twittering.

For me, it's hard to hear radio presenters and people like that asking people to send in their tweets without feeling that civilization is, to all intents and purposes, dead.

More than that, it's in fact a key step in the de-evolution of the human race back to single-celled organisms whose feelings and thoughts can be simply but completely expressed in single phrases on the internet.

Mark my words, this might seem like harmless fun now, but if in a billion years time we're all amoebas telling each other, I've got a sore ectoplasm today, or planktons tweeting, uh-oh, eaten by a shark, well, don't come running to me to ask for your dignity back.

Also, well, what a weekend is coming up next weekend for Sport John.

It's the beginning of the Formula One season.

They've introduced a new system where the drive with the most wins is going to win the title.

I do believe it should be the drive with the most crashes.

If they really want to get people watching,

it should basically be high-speed dodgeums.

Of course, in the old days, it was very much the driver who could stay alive the longest who was ultimately crowned title.

Oh, no, that's not necessarily true, though, is it?

No, no, of course.

Jochen Rint won it dead.

Dead.

He drove the last...

He drove the last race and a half dead.

And also next week's the boat race, John.

Well, it is, of course, the world's dullest event of any kind, sporting or otherwise.

I actually rode the course last night, John, and

I had to say the Thames is in lovely condition.

They've really prepared it nicely.

Is it still quite watery?

Yeah, very, very watery, and that's really what you want in a rowing race, John.

Is it over-watery, though?

Is there too much water or is it just the right amount?

It's a little bit much at the moment.

There's still a week to go before the race, so they're just, you know, they're just going to evaporate the top layer off and you get

the nice rowing water underneath.

So, that's about it for the Bugle this week.

Just time for the Bugle forecast.

And the forecast this week, John, is by this time next week, will Tom, our producer, have had his baby?

Oh, what do you think?

It's due in, well, three days, as we record on the Friday.

So it's due Monday.

Dune Monday.

And if it is born on Monday, it will have to be named Bugle 68 after it.

Well, there's no previous form, so I don't.

Yeah, no previous form.

What about were you out early, Tom?

I was bang on time.

Bang on time.

You arrived on time, as the 80s song proclaimed.

I'm going to say, yes, there's a baby next week.

Really?

I'm going to say no, I think he's got a clinger.

Really?

Yeah.

I think he's going to hang on in there.

Say that again.

There are definitely nicer ways of saying that.

I'm going to say a preemptive, Tom, congratulations on your baby.

And if you don't have a baby by this time next week, don't bother turning up to work.

Also, we can forecast, if he does have it, will he have delivered it himself like a real man?

Or will he have taken the wimps option and gone to a hospital?

On a subway, I met a little baby called Georgia, strapped to a man.

Her father, she just strapped herself to a man to get around.

That wasn't her kind of public transport.

And yeah, this man sat down and he said, I didn't deliver this like Andy did.

Your heroism is making its way around the world like a very ill-known news story for a lot of.

And of course, we do have the Bugle bugle competition in which you can name Tom's baby for him.

That's right.

Do email us thebugle at timesonline.co.uk, and it just remains for me to say, Dominique Strauss Kahn, thank you very much for joining us.

Okay, we're gonna have to release him now, Andy.

Stand back,

I'm sure he's pretty angry.

That's all from the bugle this week.

Thanks for listening.

Bye-bye.

Have a tremendous week.

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.