Obama gives Brown a rubbish present

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, and get your kicks.

It's Bugle 66.

Have you got your kicks?

Well, good.

Put them somewhere safe, settle down, and we'll begin.

We've got podcasting to do.

We don't want your kicks screwing up.

For the week beginning Monday, the 9th of March 2000, can you get it?

Can you?

9!

Yes, 2009.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann here in the unforgettable city of London and in the unsinkable city of New York.

It's the three-time golden glove winning shortstop, Derek Jeter, in our special soundproof safe.

Derek, thanks for taking some time out from the World Baseball Classics, joining us.

And with him, no-time golden glove winner, John Oliver.

Yeah, but no-time golden glove loser as well.

That's important to mention.

Hello, Buglers.

hello hello andy hello no turtle this week andy

with any turtle so my energy levels have returned to their normal levels is there not an aquarium in uh new york that you could yeah but you're not allowed to dive in unless you what sneak in late at night well even on a snake even if you've been on uh even if you've been on tele

yeah basic cable doesn't get you in toilet net strings network gets you in andy you got you've got to be on 24.

I have a Bill Clinton story part two.

Oh, excellent.

This would gather around buglers, curl yourselves up next to the nearest open fire you can find, even if that involves you setting fire to something nearby.

Now you remember that the last time we left the story I was in a room with Bill Clinton, Natalie Portman, Matthew McConachie and Nomdi Asimoya all-star cornerback of the Eldrim Raiders.

This sounds like it's about to get saucy.

Now there was a general sense in the room before we walked in that Matthew McConachie was going to say something weird at some point.

It wasn't a question of whether he would, but when.

And then around 1.30 in the morning, he piped up and said, i've got a question just for funsies i remember looking across the table at portman and both of us thinking here it comes when we realized that iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction why didn't we just plant one in the sand

at which point all eyes went from mcconachie straight to clinton's face

to see how he would take this maverick question and in his defense he was he was very gracious saying interesting question matthew even though it wasn't And simply pointed out the logistical difficulties of planting a weapon of mass destruction in a country.

And Matthew seemed perfectly happy with that response.

Weird man.

So yes, it is Bugle 66.

Incidentally, if you do listen to Bugle 66 whilst driving on Route 66, you will be eaten alive by the devil.

However, listening to the Bugle on the A66 in Northern England is safe.

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

This week, a special Michael Jackson section.

As Jackson, aged 50, announces that his 10 gigs at the Oto Arena in London in July will be his last in the UK ever in human history, no matter how long the UK exists.

We have a special Michael Jackson in London commemorative section, including Jackson, who, judging by his new chin, has spent most of his last 12 years of gigless inactivity either playing snooker or nodding vigorously whilst too close to a fence or trying to put an ancient Greek helmet on the wrong side of his head, has announced that to raise awareness of his shows, he will be moonwalking the London Marathon in April.

So here are quick do's and don'ts of moonwalking.

Do check who or what is behind you before setting off on your moonwalk.

If any of the following is behind you, abandon the moonwalk.

A bear, a cliff, a pub, enemy lines, the bride or Michael Jackson.

Do do a full proper warm-up before moonwalking.

Moonwalking requires muscles that ordinary walking does not use such as the bugger recep, the squagloid and the anterial jive muscle.

More than 700 people report to action in emergency wards in the UK every day with moonwalking related injuries.

And don't teach your dog to moonwalk.

If dogs walk backwards for more than three metres, they die.

It's an evolutionary defence mechanism.

Also, in the Jackson section of the pin, some suggested questions to start off the conversation.

If you find yourself sitting next to Michael Jackson on a night bus back into central London from Docklands after one of the gigs at the O2 in July, suggested questions are, so, what do you think the IMF should be doing to stabilise the global economy, Michael?

Or, Michael, I like sausages.

What's your favourite food?

And what not to say to start the conversation off?

No offence, mate, but I always preferred germain.

or alternatively this is what you shouldn't say.

Be honest, did you?

Don't look at me like that.

Don't look at me like that.

I just meant did you really expect Billie Jean to be such a big hit when you wrote it?

Top story this week, he was Brown in the USA!

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Great Britain, and of course he could have been Prime Minister of the entire world if he'd been born 200 years ago, came to America this week to visit the political lords, that is, President Obama.

He was, I presume, hoping to kneel at his feet and have some of his magic electability rub off on him.

But sadly, even before he landed, there were stories circulating about him being snubbed by the White House after being denied a public press conference with the President and even lunch.

And this may just be part of a creeping anti-British sentiment from the White House because I was there a couple of weeks ago and I was denied both of those things as well.

No public press conference with the President and even worse than that, no lunch.

In fact, I had to wear a different security pass to my producer and camera coup because I wasn't American, which meant I had to be escorted wherever I went.

I think they were concerned that as a British person I might be coming back to the White House to burn it down again, finish the job we started.

So I demand at least one press conference with the President and at least one lunch.

Reparations, Andy!

I was snubbed.

So what's the general feeling that Brown and Obama didn't really

hit it off?

Because I was hoping it might be like John Smith and Pocahontas all over again.

Well I think the hope is that we can get over this early kind of stumble.

And

it's a special relationship between our two nations, albeit the kind of special relationship that exists between a businessman and a prostitute.

But now there are worries over the specialness of this special relationship.

A White House official referred to it as a special partnership, and the British press went batshit crazy, writing, they don't like us anymore America wants to see other people the best we can hope for is an open relationship in what's going to be a global gangbang and in response Gordon Brown urged us to renew our special relationship kind of like renewing wedding vows and maybe our two nations should go to Hawaii stand on the beach in front of each other wearing linen suits and flip-flops and just restate our commitment to one another do you America take this decaying tiny island to be your global partner to give you a longed-for sense of history and do you Britain Britain, take this superpower as your global partner to help you recapture a time when you were internationally relevant?

If anyone knows of any just cause why these two should not be joined, shut up, Iraq, no,

then I will pronounce you ex-superpower and soon-to-be ex-superpower.

You may kiss each other's asses.

Well, it was

another example, John, in the increasing proud tradition of Britain absolutely crawling to the USA.

One country on its knees, on its knees to another country also on on its knees.

There were quite a lot of knees getting quite aggressively rubbed in the White House, not for the first time.

Gordon Brown delivered an uncharacteristically energetic speech to a joint session of Congress, stating that the partnership between the UK and the US is unbreakable and that no power on earth can draw us apart.

And from that point in the speech, he did start to talk almost exclusively in 80s power ballot areas.

He also didn't shy away from the occasional nauseating compliment saying, there is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe.

And people leapt to their feet, not to applaud, but to run to throw up in the bathroom.

In fact, he was greeted with 19 standing evasions, exactly matching the number enjoyed by Tony Blair when he spoke in July 2003.

And, you know, was the fix in with those standing evasions, Andy?

Or maybe he was trying to beat him because it must have been tempting to throw in another quick line at the end that was bound to get another standing evasion.

You know, something about the stars and stripes being the greatest piece of cloth since the Turin Shroud.

And then scream, yes, 20 standing O's.

Suck on it, Tony.

Suck on it.

Would you say Brown has become more popular in America than he is over here, John?

He's not doing great over here.

In fact, if he wants to win the general election that he's going to have to call at some point in the next 14 months, he's going to have to do at least one of the following two things: demonstrate the ability to levitate, Britain loves magic, or learn to smile without looking like he's got your children held hostage in a locked pickup.

I don't think it went great for him in that people didn't really notice he was

now people a bit more concerned about the 8.1% jobless rates than a man they've never really heard of coming to compliment them for a bit.

There were elements of embarrassment during the trip.

There was the traditional exchange of gifts.

Gordon Brown gave Barack Obama an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannett.

Let's be careful not to rewrite history here.

Yes, we did invent anti-slave ships, but it's worth remembering that we also invented pro-slave ships before them.

And that's probably worth mentioning.

Now, in return, pretty good present, though.

Yeah, good present.

You've got to give him that.

Pretty good gift.

Everyone needs a pen holder.

Especially because I believe the desk in the Oval Office is made from wood from that same ship.

So it's pretty good gift.

Now, in return, Obama gave Gordon Brown a box set of 25 DVDs.

Ouch.

That is not as good.

What were they?

American classics.

So there were Star Wars, Godfather, Citizen Kane.

That is a gift of someone who has clearly seen the opinion polls in Britain and knows that he's meeting someone who's going to have quite a lot of spare time on his hands in the not too distant future.

I haven't seen any of these.

Well, you'll be able to watch all of them soon.

I feel sorry for both of them.

I feel sorry for Gordon Brown, who had to look pleased as he thumped through them, saying, Oh, I haven't seen a couple of these.

How nice to have.

Of course, I probably could have picked most of them up for my local supermarket, but it's nice to have them from you.

But John, the question that clearly all our listeners want to know here is amongst those twenty-five D V D's

Don't say it.

An award's an award, that's what I'm saying.

I also feel sorry for Obama because he must have been frantically looking around the room for something else to give him at that point.

Oh no, that's not your real presence.

Got you.

Got you.

No, instead I bought you this

painting that I hung on my wall.

That's why it's a surprise, because it's on my wall.

That way you'd never guess.

Surprise.

I got you with the DVDs.

I got you.

I'm sure Brown must have been tempted just to nick something.

Did you manage to steal anything from the White House?

No, because I had the security password.

I was under constant supervision.

I couldn't steal anything.

And I went there with every intention of basically taking anything that wasn't nailed down.

And it didn't help that Robert Gibbs' office had nothing in it.

He basically hadn't moved in.

There were no pictures on the wall in the whole of the West Wing because they just haven't really moved in yet.

So there were very, very few stealing opportunities and a lot of Secret Service looking at me with suspicion and contempt.

The visit came in the same week that Obama officially unveiled his budget budget at a cool $3.6 trillion.

I think the official economic term for that, Andy, is a fing load of money.

Ben Bernanke coiled that term.

That guy's got a potty mouth.

But this isn't just a bit of a gamble, Andy.

This is Obama putting on some mirrored sunglasses, lighting a cigar, and pushing everyone's chips across the table.

The only problem is that if the river card isn't a nine, America is going to have its head in a vice by the end of the day.

Now, he's spending it on all the things that he talked about in his campaign, middle-class class tax cuts, healthcare reform, indoctrinating school children into radical Islam, and spending $150 billion on alternative energy, all classic liberal policies.

Yeah, he has also set aside $250 billion in case the banks need to be bailed out again.

Now the banks presumably are looking at that 250 billion very much like a dog looking at a sausage that his owner has left on the edge of a table, having said, good dog, please don't eat that sausage, and then left the room.

Because John, that dog will eat that sausage.

You cannot tell bankers that there's a bailout contingency fund and expect them not to ram their banks into the nearest available economic brick wall and then say, You're gonna have to fix that for us, mate.

Of course, not everyone's in favour of all Obama's measures.

Health insurers seem to be worried that helping the poor could seriously cut into their profits.

The big companies and the rich seem to be worried that helping the poor could force them to pay the tax that the poor won't be paying so much of.

And a lot of people also seem to be worried that Obama's environmentally friendly measures will benefit the poor as much as them, even though the poor aren't paying as much towards them, which really is unfair, John, in a democratic world.

True.

No one is going to have to start paying for this for at least two years.

He's essentially borrowing the business model of people who sell pull-out sofas on TV.

Buy now, start making payments summer 2011.

On top of that, he's made it clear that America is going to have to cut back on some of its favourite luxury items, such as wars.

Wars are like pet llamas, Andy.

They're lovely to have, but you can never believe how much they cost.

And they're really hard to get rid of.

Really hard, and they cause a hell of a mess.

Difficult to clean up after.

World leaders news now, and Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan number one, has been told to shut up yet again.

After King Juan Carlos of Spain in November 2007, now his own doctor has told him to shut the f up for three days.

Due to a throat problem, apparently John the Exchange went like this, President Chavez.

Can you just say R, please?

Ah, America can suck my danglers.

Just say R, please.

Ah,

doesn't it smell nicer now, George W.

Bush, the sulphurous devil has gone?

Look, President, it's just not easy to get a diagnosis when you're bowed mouthing America.

Could you just say R?

I wish I was a little bit taller.

I wish I was a baller.

Get out of my surgery.

I'm not paying for this, mate.

I'm not paying for this.

I did not think Chavez would be so au fait with the works of Skilo Andy.

Chavez said, I'm a little affected by the intensive, continuous, and and permanent use of this cannon I've got here.

And this doctor has told me not to talk.

Andy, I love the fact he calls his voice his cannon.

It's just another reason to love this man.

That means his words are his cannonballs.

How dare this doctor tell him to shut up?

That's right.

It's depressing times for the world, John.

We need all the entertainment we can get.

And he is the most reliable source of entertainment in the world.

Exactly.

How can you do that to the world?

You cannot silence that cannon.

I'll tell you who should shut up.

His fing doctors should shut up.

But to be fair, John, telling Hugo Chavez to shut up for three days is one of the most pointless sentences that's ever been said.

There's as much chance of Chavez staying quiet for three days as there is of Warren Beattie marrying Jesus in a civil ceremony during the 1981 men's Wimbledon final.

Very little chance.

You're talking about like a one to two percent chance.

In January of this year, Chavez spoke to his Congress for seven straight hours.

Wow, that man needs an editor.

Seven hours.

Not even you and me could do that, Andy.

We seem to push Tom closer to breaking point every week.

Don't joke.

That is a tired, beaten voice.

And he's not even had his kid yet.

Getting in practice.

Just imagine me talking, is your child crying.

That is the future, my friend.

Now just put me over your shoulder and stroke my back.

Also in other leadership news, Rush Limbaugh.

Now appears to be seen as the de facto head of the Republicans, John.

He's even made the news over here in Britain.

And,

you know, generally there's a lot of good things about being British and living in Britain.

For example, strawberries, cricket, grumbling, and the high likelihood of a heart attack.

But perhaps the best thing about living in Britain is not having to listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Yeah.

So for our non-American listeners who, like me, probably thought Rush Limbaugh was a rare medical condition involving involuntary convulsions of the upper digestive tract brought about by exposure to concentrated hogwash.

Here is a quick guide to listening to Rush Limbaugh.

If you can listen to him for five minutes, you probably agree with him.

If, after five minutes, however, you're standing on a window ledge 20 stories above the ground with a policeman shouting through a loud hailer, put the radio down, step back from the ledge, we can talk this through, then probably you don't agree with him.

Is this really the future of the Republican Party, John?

Well, I mean, let's hope not, Andy, because you know, you need an effective opposition.

And of his many disputable qualities, Rush probably isn't the best uniter for America due to him being hamstrung by being a turbo-powered asshole.

Won't he have you on his show, John?

A little touch of bitterness there.

He's got big listenership.

I think I hate him.

I don't want to splash that word around, but I think I hate him.

You know, like when you fall in love, you think, oh, this is what it feels like.

The same falling in hate with Rush.

You go, oh, this is that sensation.

I guess you know it when it feels right.

He does have that slight look about him, John, that had he been born a generation earlier and somewhere in Eastern Europe, there would be some absolutely gigantic statues of him somewhere.

Absolutely.

In fact, it is one of the great things that America has managed just to castrate him to the point where he can just irritate everyone speaking into a microphone, rather than speaking into a loud hailer and essentially designing mass graves somewhere.

Thanks to America, as we speak, Russell Limbaugh is not standing up in the hay saying, no, I didn't.

Half a century of instilling corrosively negative body image issues in young girls news now.

Oh, sorry, we don't actually have that story.

Sorry.

Hang on.

Oh, yeah, this is the one I was looking for.

Barbie doll news.

And Barbie is 50 this Monday.

That's right, John.

Barbie or Barbara Millicent Roberts, to give her her full name, has reached the big 5-0.

And to mark this occasion, on Tuesday this week, just gone, in West Virginia, Democratic delegate Jeff Eldridge proposed a bill amendment banning the sale of Barbie dolls and other dolls that, quote, influence girls to be beautiful.

Now, I can't say I'm a massive fan of Barbie dolls, but I think the almost universal response to Eldridge has been, do your job properly, you total penis.

Because it does sound like

delegate Eldridge has had a bit too much spare delegating time on his hands this week and has just ended up getting bored and sticking his legislative oar into a pretty pointless pond.

But also bear in mind that somewhat contrarily, Eldridge, whilst not wanting girls to play with disgusting anatomically lethal dolls, he is also a big fan fan of mixed martial arts, the noble sport of men smashing the living shit out of each other by any means available for the entertainment of the baying masses.

And he is trying to legalize this in West Virginia at the same time.

So his message to his voting parents is essentially, don't let your daughters play with skinny dolls, but do encourage your sons to have their heads coved in by 20 stone tattooed men with anger management problems and a dangerous-looking chair.

The best response to the 50th anniversary of Barbie Andy would be to come out with with a 50-year-old Barbie that people could buy.

Someone they were just post-cataract surgery, having a bit of a problem with her hip and needing to wear hormone patches.

Jeff's preparing yourself for the slow, inevitable slide into the inescapable chasm of death.

Looking at Ken saying, I don't really love you anymore, but in this economy, it's just too expensive to get divorced.

I guess maybe we'll just sleep in separate rooms instead.

Actually, Eldridge has admitted that his bill is unlikely to be particularly effective.

Essentially, his words were that it's his bill is a bit like a loaf of bread in that, quotes, it doesn't have a lot of teeth.

But I guess this story does raise the question, John.

If Hitler had been a girl in 1960s America, would he have played with Barbie dolls?

I guess we'll never know, and I'm afraid that says it all.

Are you sure that says it all?

I'm not sure.

I mean, what does that actually say?

Well, it just says it all.

No, I mean, you just said the same thing again there.

What does it actually say?

All is all, isn't it?

Come, narrow it down.

Are you saying he would have benefited from playing with Barbie dolls?

It would have given given him a sense of the family dynamic that perhaps he lacked?

I'm just saying we'll never know what would have happened.

Well, that's true, but I'm not sure that gives us the insight into Hitler's psyche that perhaps we would have benefited from.

Would playing with Barbie dolls have made him any less genocidal, do you think?

Well, we don't know.

Yeah, now you're saying we don't know.

Yeah, but I'm not claiming that that tells us all we need to know about the man.

Well, I think it tells us all we need to know about Barbie dolls and Hitler.

I rest my case.

I can't work out if that's litigious or or not.

I think it isn't, but I also think it should be.

Against who?

I don't know.

I just feel that someone should be suing someone for that comment.

I just can't work out who against who.

Well, if you're listening, Hitler, let's hear from your lawyers.

What do you got?

Feature section now and shh,

secrets.

The Obama administration fleetingly opened the door on the Bush administration's Chamber of Secrets last week, including the fact that the CIA had destroyed 92 tapes of terror detainees being interrogated.

They previously admitted to destroying two tapes.

So perhaps they just coughed through the 90 part or a fire engine went past outside.

Yeah, it's hard to say.

They were close.

It's only one digit out, John.

And, you know, it's a very easy mistake to make.

I mean, if you have 77 apples and then buy another 15 apples, how many apples have you got?

Two apples.

Now, it's just simple as that.

It's as simple as making a mistake like that.

I could work the other way around as well.

For example, I have fathered, let me think, 92 children, hey ladies.

John has made 92 successful tackles in his football career.

And Florence Nightingale had 92 scrabuchies.

Hey fellas.

Well, when I say fellas, I mean reptile enthusiasts.

A scrabuchie, of course, is a rare breed of Crimean lizards that she sneaked through customs underneath her corset.

And I guess what I would say is

what I would say is, as Jesus H.

Christ himself said, pick up your 92 tapes of potential incriminating evidence showing clear human rights abuses and walk to the incinerator.

We all need to work out: do we really want to do this?

Because there's no doubt there is a lot, lot worse to come.

And do we want to open Pandora's box again?

We may find it more difficult to get shut next time.

And it may be better to seal all the details of what Bush did and put it in an Egyptian-style tomb underneath his presidential library.

In fact, he should be buried down there when he dies too, with all the trinkets of what he's done, like a disastrous king tut.

And it may be better for a space-age Howard Carter to discover the tomb years from now and piece together Bush's life.

King Tut.

Yeah.

Sounds like a really critical monarch.

That's how he got the nickname.

Even at 18 years old, he was very withering.

Call that a pyramid.

That was why some people argue he was murdered.

Just his constant contempt of one of the greatest at that point structures in modern history.

What's that?

Pointy.

Is that a Sphinx or a cat trying to open a tin of strawberries?

Jesus.

Is that a pyramid or did the ground just throw up?

Are you shocking, Titty Carmen?

I mean, a lot of people have died making this structure and I think this is going to stand the test of time for thousands of years.

If I wanted a pointy house, I'd have asked for one.

Of course, some of these interrogation techniques, John, apparently amounted to torture.

But this raises the age-old tree falling in a forest question.

If a terror suspect screams in a soundproof padded cell in a foreign country whilst being tortured, does anyone give a shit?

And I guess the Bush administration's answer to that was no, but I guess the philosophical answer would be,

well, they would if they found out.

And it does appear that they are now finding out.

Your emails now and this one comes from Phil Waddell from Bedfordshire, of course, where I grew up.

He's written in in response to your question of whether Bedford has an official berry.

I'm writing to confirm the fact that, alas, there is no berry of Bedfordshire.

As was mentioned in last week's bugle, we simple folk need not the fruits of the bush, for we have something much greater, the Bedfordshire Clanger.

And he said, did you ever have one, John?

I did not have a Bedfordshire clanger for reasons which are about to become clear.

The Bedford Clanger is a long pastry roll, or sometimes pie, that consists of one end filled with hearty, meaty chunks suitable for hairing up the chest of even the most effeminate and runtish male.

Brackets, is this why you came to the county john oh john i've seen you without a shirt on and it yeah you've been haired up well if anything sounds like you've been eating too many clangers know what no one could claim that i did not have a hairy chest that argument would just not stand up anyway the other end of the meaty chunks is filled with a sweet and heavenly jam and your stomach should already be churning just the very thought of that The idea is that you could have one in your pocket as a sort of meal in one, as the notion of a cheese and ham sandwich and a mullah-like yoghurt in a Spider-Man lunchbox is still regarded with much suspicion in much of rural England.

He says, I've had the misfortune to eat several in my short life and upon retrospect have found them to be ideal metaphors for the passage of time.

The problems of the servers that face a young man and also for several recent wars and global financial crises.

What a snack!

What a snack!

It's a hell of a snack.

It's a satirical snack.

The reason being is thus.

Like all the above, the Beversey Clanger is not nearly as interesting as this sounds and consists of a tough and chewy beginning which you know you'll have to work through in order to get to the sweet and tasty reward.

But a reward which you deep down down know you'll never reach.

As once you get to all the meaty and jammy shit in the middle, you go and throw up in a bucket, swear never to get involved in such things again, and firmly try and forget that such a concept ever existed.

There you have it.

The Beversha Klanger, a pastry, beef and jam-based metaphor for life.

Not the gastronomic capital of the world, Andy Bedfordshire.

No, but what is it the capital of the world for?

Football violence.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's pretty good.

That's what we always get on TV whenever there's an Italy-England football match because there are riots.

Yeah, so I've never eaten a Klanger because because the very thought of it is making me feel sick now.

It is that middle bit is the problem.

Thanks also to those of you who sent in suggestions for the celebrities we should be having join us on the show in our special soundproof bugle safe.

We had James Baker last week.

Of course we've got Derek Jeter in there this week.

Are you enjoying the show, Derek?

Well, I presume so.

It's just great to have Mr.

October in there.

Yeah.

Sinan wrote in and suggested we keep the entire Republican Party in our special safe, even for just half an hour, he said would be a great service to the whole world, which would unquestionably make you two who need redemption after having made a dumb mistake and already looked at death in the eye after cancelling the Hotties Me History, the first great heroes of our century.

This one came in from Shane in Philadelphia, who writes, Dear Mr.

Oliver, plus guest.

Nice.

Not nice.

Not nice.

Yes, nice.

Not nice at all.

Deal with it.

No.

You asked for requests as to what famous celebrity we, the audience, would like to hear in the safe or not here.

But I don't know why you're asking, because I swear to God, in the last few episodes, you've had the great Henry Kissinger in there.

You can't fool me.

I would know the sound that he doesn't make anywhere.

That sweet, sweet sound he doesn't make.

I've been not hearing him on your show for weeks, and I don't know why you're keeping him a secret.

Cheers.

Shane.

Well, we've not had him in the London office, John.

Let's just say Jeter's got some company.

Two men enter that safe, one man leaves.

Well, don't fancy Jeter's chances.

Kissinger is an animal when cornered.

Just ask the Chinese.

So do keep your emails and celebrity nominations for the Soundproof Safe coming into the Bugle at timesonline.co.uk.

And don't forget the new improved website, timesonline.co.uk slash thebugle.

And do keep your contributions into that.

Don't forget you can win a t-shirt for one of the best contributions to the bugle website.

Closing date next Thursday.

Sport now and well obviously the main sport news this week has been terrorists acting like total dicks yet again.

Shamger Ledisque, Mr.

Terrorist.

We're all getting bored.

And other than that, John, I'd say it's got to be the World Baseball Classic.

Been huge news over here.

Obviously people are very disappointed.

Very disappointed that Britain didn't qualify.

Yeah, well.

Again.

But it's got everything.

I'm really excited about this tournament, John, the World Baseball Classic.

It's got everything for me.

The World Baseball Classic.

I live in the world.

I like bass.

I've got two balls and I studied classics.

So count me in.

Oh my god.

Well, you have just ruined the World Baseball Classic for everyone now who heard that last sentence.

Do people care about it in America, John?

The home of baseball?

No, they don't.

They care about the major league baseball season happening.

And this is kind of a kind of pre-season distraction.

They don't care about it unless they're winning it.

Japan won it last year, so who gives a shit about it?

Yeah, well, last time America did quite badly.

Isn't that so, Derek?

Oh, he's gone awfully quiet.

They lost to South Korea and Mexico back in the first World Baseball Classic in 2006.

Now, America losing to South Korea and Mexico baseball, to the casual spectator, seems to me to be a bit like the Caligula-era Romans losing to Saudi Arabia in an orgy competition.

But I think this time my money is on Italy to win, John.

They won the Football World Cup in 2006.

There's no reason why they therefore can't win a World Baseball Classic 2.

Sports people often say if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.

Which is an obvious lie, but if the Italians win all their games, they're going to be in with a shout.

And also in sports news, David Beckham appears to be desperately trying to leave America John is this the end of real football in the United States well it can't be the end of something that never really begun Andy but I think Beckham's making the right decision and not playing on plastic pitches in front of tiny crowds with a team who cannot play football as well as he can

so there you go take that MLS

So that's it for the Bugle this week.

In fact, this episode has been so good that we are retiring the episode number.

There will never be another Bugle 66.

That's right.

Hoist it into the ceiling of the studio, Andy.

And finally, Bugle forecast.

Well, John, I'm afraid we've had some bad news for the future of the Bugle this week, listeners.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that the UK's compulsory retirement age of 65 is legal.

So I'm afraid that I am going to have to step down from the bugle in 30 years and seven months' time.

Mike, I bet you can't f ⁇ ing wait to get one of your new American showbiz buddies in to replace me.

I bet you're ticking off the decades as we speak.

Thanks, mate.

Thanks for your loyalty.

Yeah.

Well, I hope you enjoy the two and a half years you'll get running this podcast without me before you two are confined to the slag heap of old age, decrepitude, and destitution.

I met Billy Cruddup yesterday, Andy, and I think he would love to do a podcast.

He'd love to.

Let's replace you with Billy Cruddup.

See how you like that?

He knows less about cricket, but I'll tell you what, he knows more about almost everything else.

Really?

Well, you can send him over here and I'll take him on.

Really?

Me.

Can you go toe to toe with Mano?

Mano Amano.

Naked as as God intended.

That is the second revolting image.

You and Billy Craddock naked wrestling in front of the fire.

Pinning him down, saying, there you go, Craddock.

Do you want to make it best of three?

That's good enough for Oliver Reed and Alan Bates.

That's good enough for me and Craddock.

So I guess my prediction, John, is who is going to replace me in the year 2039?

I am going to go with the 13-year-old kid who spoke at the Republican CPAC convention.

Okay.

I'm going to go with him.

It might be Chelsea Clinton.

Because I think you've built a bit of a relationship with the Clinton dynasty now, and ex-president Chelsea Clinton will

take over in 2039.

That's a good one.

Well, we'll just have to wait and see.

That's all, Buglers.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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.