Goodbye George Bush and Hello Barack Obama

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 60 of The Bugle, the world's greatest and only audio newspaper for a visual world for the week beginning Monday, the 19th of January, 2009.

With me, Andy Zoltzmann here in London and in New York City.

John Oliver.

Hello Andy.

Hello.

Hello buglers.

Andy yesterday I narrowly avoided being smashed into by a plane.

That plane that crashed into the Hudson River hit just at the end of our block after being attacked by some terrorist geese and a friend of mine at work was watching the news and she just said she was bored.

Only for seconds later an aeroplane to crash into the water about 400 meters from where she was sitting.

So it just goes to show be careful what you wish for in terms of entertainment.

It's nice though, isn't it, for once to be able to crack jokes about an airplane crash straight away.

It's fantastic.

Yeah.

I mean it doesn't quite have the dangerous freesong that it would have done otherwise but yeah I mean it's it's a much warmer feeling.

But also this week Daniel Craig was a guest on the show Andy James Bond

and during the interview Jon Stewart raised this shooting trip that we had in Vegas.

Yeah so he was pointing out that Wriggle had hit the hostage hostage taker in the head, and he said to James Bond, what do you think John Oliver did?

And James Bond said, hit the hostage.

You, Bond?

Not necessarily.

Yes, as it happens, but not necessarily.

That is my dream gone of becoming a secret agent, Andy.

I'd wanted to be James Bond's sidekick, like Robin.

Robin Bond.

That's what I was going to be.

Robin Bond.

I'd help him out, you know, pick up things for him when he knocks things over.

He's often doing that because he's always in such a rush, so I'd pick it up.

James, James, you dropped your wallet.

Yeah,

I can see that working out as the next step on your film career.

Does he listen to the bugle or not?

Do you know James Bond?

Who Bond?

Yeah.

I don't know.

Don't know.

Didn't ask him.

Because he certainly didn't in that last Bond film, he wasn't listening to it.

Well, it didn't appear that he was listening to the bugle.

Well, it didn't appear, but how would you know?

Well, I mean, it just sort of could have been cut out.

They have very small earpieces now.

Yeah, he could have been listening to it on

a sausage dog or something.

Anyway, this is the 60th edition of the Bugle.

It means it's the Diamond Jubilee edition.

So like Queen Victoria and her Diamond Jubilee, I will be doing this edition of the Bugle whilst being pulled through London on a special cart waving at my adoring public.

So Tom, giddy up.

And it also means that it is the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 18th Amendment in America, which of course brought in prohibition leading to America sobering up for the first and only time in its life.

Then realising that actually it didn't quite like what it saw, so it brought booze back.

And the rest, as I say, is history.

As always, some sections of the Bugle are going straight in the bin.

This week, a theatre section.

We help you decide what is the right theatre for you, the pros and cons of Proscenia March versus In the Round.

Also, choosing the right stage, why wood is better than Tarpaulin.

And fire escapes.

We've all got to have them.

We tell you how to make yours look funky.

And theatre or bathroom, how to decide what to install in your new house there will also be a competition for a free fire safety curtain signed by top italian fire safety curtain designer alessandro altabelli and also in the bin this week is the bugles review of the fashion on show at the golden globes awards this week of course the golden globes have been so named ever since uh 50s film starlight jane manfield turned up to them straight from a two-week beach holiday and had a wardrobe malfunction so this year's fashion review well men were really going for trousers this year very interesting, perhaps a sign of the economic times, and there was a real distinct lack of socks from the women which I thought was both disappointing and irresponsible.

You've got to have socks in this day and age.

That's what I keep telling my daughter.

Well, Andy, America is about to swear in its 44th president.

By the time this bugle goes out, it will be a matter of hours until the most historic day in the history of America goes down in history books for the rest of um ah what's the word?

Uh time.

That's it for the rest of time.

Are people getting carried away here Andy?

Yes.

Are they setting themselves up for inevitable disappointment?

Yes.

Are they aware of that quite yet?

Absolutely not.

Now as we were talking last week, the inauguration itself has taken a great deal of planning, but that pales into insignificance when placed to the actual transition of power.

Obama's transition team will have been working solidly for over six weeks since the election to make the change as seamless as possible.

And it can't have been easy with this particular administration.

It's like exchanging the baton in a sprint relay race.

You don't want anything to go wrong, but it's especially difficult when the person who's supposed to be handing it over to you is veering all over the place, running out of his lane, looking like he's going to drop it as he comes to the end of two of the worst runned legs in presidential relay metaphor history.

Are they going to make him piss in a bottle, John?

I do hope so.

Traditionally, there have also been practical jokes played on the incoming administration.

Clinton's outgoing transition team famously took all the W's off the White House computer keyboards, but to give them credit, the Bush administration got their own back by destroying the country over the following eight years.

Who's laughing now, President 42?

I guess Bush's parting prank for Obama is, I don't know, the Middle East.

The $10 trillion debt.

I don't know.

I mean, there's a few really good ones.

If anything, he's taken this tradition a little too seriously.

So that's it.

This is, of course, the last ever bugle in history to take place during a George W.

Bush presidency.

Or at least, well, let's not get over optimistic about this.

It's the last for at least four years to take place without a Bush in the White House.

So nine years late, the 21st century can at last begin properly.

But I'm disappointed, John, as if Bush hasn't done enough damage to the world for one presidency.

With just days left in office, my daughter has contracted chicken pox.

And I blame George W.

Bush for this.

I mean, it was all going fine, and then you think, oh, well, she's probably going to get away with it.

And then all of a sudden, scratchy, scratchy, I blame Bush.

It's just, it sickens me.

Do you have any actual intelligence there, Andy, linking Bush to the chicken pox?

Well, we had the television on the other day, and the news was on, and they had a little snippet from Bush's parting press conference the other day.

And two days later, my daughter came out in spots.

Well, that's the smoking gun.

That's right.

That's more than we had going into Iraq.

Bush has been going on a press offensive this week to try and shape his legacy, appearing with Britt Hume on Fox News, Sean Hannity on Fox News, and with Larry King on CNN.

I imagine Fox were very hurt about that last one.

Apparently, in a tearful confrontation, Bush said that it meant nothing and that he was thinking about Fox the whole time he was with CNN.

But Fox responded by screaming, I don't want to hear all the sordid details, and apparently ran out of the room to throw up.

In his final press conference, Bush showed the calculated and selective remorse that he's been road testing for the last couple of weeks.

He admitted that standing under a banner saying mission accomplished was a mistake, which is like apologising for spelling someone's name wrong on the birthday cake you made them out of shit.

Did he not say in this press conference?

He used the words, we've had fun, which I guess maybe he has a slightly different attitude towards fun than me.

For me, fun is seeing how many oranges I can cram into a single small plastic bag, or maybe seeing how people react when I offer them 20 quid for their dog, or perhaps even dressing up like a hippo and pretending to ski down the stairs.

But for others like George W.

Bush, evidently fun is presiding over the most divisive presidency in history, engendering resentment across the globe and overseeing the descent into economic annihilation.

You know, we're all different, John, and I guess that's what George W.

Bush has proven over these last eight years.

Well, conversely, Obama's initial press conferences so far have had a strange atmosphere to them He's answered questions addressed journalists by their names politely and calmly and has been forthcoming with policy issues and the press corps in turn have just looked stunned It's like they've developed Stockholm syndrome.

They're just not used to someone talking to them like that.

I'm not even convinced they actually like it Bush's press conferences over the past two years have been a relentlessly vapid kabuki presenting the illusion of information being conveyed.

He's even become famous for calling journalists by nicknames in a pseudo-friendly gesture of complete professional contempt.

I'm no great fan of the American press, Andy.

I don't have posters of any of them up on my wall, and I own very few of their albums, but let's spare a thought for what they've been going through, because for eight years, they've been treated like slightly irritating circus animals, doing tricks for kibble, standing on their hind legs to make their bored ringmaster proud.

You've got to wean them off this ill-treatment gradually.

It's like coming up from a deep-sea diving expedition.

If you come up too quickly, you get the bends.

So to help them with this transition, Obama's going to have to force himself to make glib comments based on their physical appearance.

They can't just go cold turkey.

It's too much of a shock to the system.

Can he not just sort of wean them onto one kind of standard generalised nickname for them all, like sugar cakes or something like that?

Yeah,

maybe, maybe.

I mean, he's got to do something because this is not an easy time for the press.

No, he's got to do it quickly as well, or the bubble of optimism will burst pretty quickly.

Yeah, I mean, it's going to be difficult for them to now have to make some pretense of actually doing their job.

In fact, the White House has also released a 41-page document which you can get from the White House website entitled 100 Things Americans Might Not Know About the Bush Administration.

Now, number one was keeping America safe since 9-11, but there are also other beautiful tidbits such as laid the foundation for a future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Now, that is ballsy.

Preemptively taking credit for any future peace which may break out over the next thousand years.

He is preemptively sticking his flag in it.

And another one was stood on principle, refused to put off tough decisions and showed the way ahead.

And that is absolutely true, Andy.

No one could accuse him of not making decisions incredibly, and some might say irresponsibly fast.

And interestingly, in response, America has released an 800-page document entitled 100 Things the Bush Administration May Not Know About What America Thinks of Them, which they really should know.

It's not like America has been coy about it, but maybe the Bush administration wasn't listening or something.

So anyway, America is happy to remind them.

Bush also said that he feels blessed to have led America, and sadly, according to the polls, that feeling is not entirely mutual.

In fact, it's about as mutual as the relationship between a hungry lion and a plump baby zebra,

which the lion then called a press conference saying, I'm delighted to have met little Stripey, and it's been a great privilege to have worked with him.

And I hope and assume that Stripey feels the same.

Stripey, oh, you've gone quiet.

You couldn't shut up five minutes ago, squealing and whinging.

He gave a 15-minute TV address, John, didn't he?

Which I did some calculations.

I reckon that was enough to say, oops, sorry, about 700 times.

Is that what he did?

No, it wasn't what he did.

I mean, it was his farewell address, which goes back to George Washington, who wrote a letter to the American people, which was then published in a newspaper.

And Bush instead stood and looked slightly sad.

And here's the thing.

I'm almost feeling sorry for him now.

He just looks beaten.

It's like that fight between Lennox Lewis and Oliver McCall, when McCall started crying during the fourth and fifth rounds and Lewis just couldn't bring himself to hit him anymore.

Eventually the fight was stopped.

There were points during his press conferences and his farewell speech.

He just wanted Cheney to throw a white towel at him, get him to spit out his gum shield and get a doctor to check him for brain damage.

Well, I think, John, on that analogy, if he traveled around the world, I think he'd find there's quite a lot of Lennox Lewises who would be quite keen to carry on punching him.

The new administration is already busy confirming its lineup in this transition.

The biggest name on the hill this week plonked herself down in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sat down for a five-hour job interview for a job she'd already technically been given.

Isn't democracy fun?

So, instead of an interview, it became a five-hour love fest, an orgy of cloying sanctimony.

It was longer and worse than Dances with Wolves.

Don't say that lightly.

That's both chronologically and artistically true.

And you can probably tell from the tone in my voice, I had to watch the entire thing on C-SPAN.

I watched the entire hearing for work and was begging for someone, anyone, to stage a bloody coup around hour three.

But it was a big day for Hillary Clinton, the moment she dreamed of ever since her previous dream had been shattered.

Bill Clinton was not there in person, but he was there awkwardly in spirit, and his foundation and Clinton Global Initiative were threatening to derail her job by being a perceived conflict of interest.

But, you know, there'll be time to get to that.

Plenty.

Some might say far too much time.

And at least her daughter Chelsea was there, which didn't go unnoticed by John Kerry, who opened up the hearing by saying to Chelsea, We're delighted to have you here.

Since your father served as an intern on this committee, maybe we can make you an intern for the day, chairman's prerogative.

So if you want to come up here later and look out, we're happy to welcome you.

That's the kind of thing you say to a six-year-old, not an accomplished 28-year-old woman with a master's degree in international relations.

I would not bring up White House interns to the two Clinton women.

Clinton read a statement about the aims of the Obama administration, and I mean, it just showed how far she's come.

She can almost say those words now without coming out in hives.

Previously, her eye would start twitching, and a doctor would have to rush in to give her an emergency shot.

And finally, after two hours, the one thing standing in the way of her getting this job was raised.

Although, such was the friendly tone of the hearing, it was immediately followed by Senator Nelson saying, I want to say at the outset that this senator thinks that your husband's Clinton Global Initiative is an extremely positive thing to have in a relationship with a future Secretary of State, and that can only lend additional credibility to your coming to the table as the foreign policy representative of the United States government.

I want that on record.

Well, that is some refreshing honesty, Andy.

Let the record show that I absolutely love the clear conflict of interest that this represents.

Politics would be boring if all departments operated without a cloud of suspicion hanging over them.

Royal Gaff news now, and well, Prince Harry has been at it again.

He has apologised after a video showing him referring to a Pakistani fellow officer in the army as our little packy friend was published.

And

I mean, you do expect a certain level of behaviour from the royal family, but it's just disappointing when they achieve that level of behaviour so often.

Basically, his excuses for this have been: firstly, ah, come on.

And secondly, it's the army, bad things always happen in war.

But I think when you look at it objectively, you've got to acknowledge that Harry's troubles really began when he was born and was signed up basically in the womb to a life of purposeless privilege and incessant scrutiny.

And he's sort of been reduced to brightening up the dull routine of having no real point of existing by resorting to intermittent bouts of crassly idiotic racism, like dressing up like a Nazi and things like that.

But I guess the one shining light in this story, John, is that Harry won't be king, almost certainly.

And if I was in the royal family, which I'm pretty sure I'm not, I would be lining up some extremely fertile looking wives for Prince William.

The more the better, just to make sure he has an heir.

Incidentally, the way you can tell if you're in the royal family or not, apparently, is to drive slowly down the road in a horse-drawn carriage, wearing a crown and waving out of your car window.

If people wave back with fewer than three fingers raised, you're not royalty.

That's a good test, Dan.

It's like the princess and the pea.

That's a good test.

But you know, maybe there is some precedent for this.

Racism can often be hereditary, and this family does have a very strong bloodline of bigotry.

It's each generation's hateful gift to the next.

Harry's grandfather, Prince Philip, is a flamboyant racist.

And even Prince Charles, the future king, if his mom stops being immortal, came under fire this week after it emerged that he calls a friend of his from a polo club sooty.

Come on, that isn't even modern day racism.

That's 1950s hate.

It just goes to show how out of touch the royal family are.

If you're going to be racist, at least bring it into the 21st century.

That kind of racism isn't just offensive and upsetting, it's embarrassing.

Sooty, whose real name is Colleen Dylan, said the prince had zero prejudice and that the nickname used by his friend was a term of affection with no offence meant or felt.

And Clarence House refused to comment on the polo club story, but said that suggesting Charles was racist was completely ridiculous and that the story was probably written by a Jew.

That's not true.

That last word did not say that.

They did mean that.

They did think it.

I speak for the vast, silent, gaff-loving majority of Britain, John.

When I say I want Harry to be king, I want him to be my king because the current Queen, John, is pretty much a gaff-free zone these days.

At least she has been since she stopped having people like the Ceaușescus and the Armines round for tea and trying to set Bill Clinton up with her mother.

Just to see where he'd draw the line.

So I want Harry to be king.

I think King Henry IX would be, without question, a spectacular addition to international relations.

Because, as you say, the gaffing genes are very strong in Harry's bloodline, particularly in royals named Henry, like him.

That's his birth name.

Now, take Henry VIII, for example, who I believe is the current prince's great-grandfather, who gaffed it up big style in the 16th century when he chopped two of his wives' heads off.

Clean off.

Blood everywhere.

That was a blooper and a half.

Before him, of course, Henry II gaffed by accidentally having his favourite Archbishop of Canterbury brutally murdered.

That was a bit of a gaffe.

Henry V, he gaffed.

Of course, he won at Agincourt, but he also invented the passport, slowing people's holidays down by up to an hour sometimes.

And then he gaffed further by contracting dysentery, then gaffed again by dying of dysentery, and then gaffed a third time by leaving an eight-month-old son in charge of the nation.

That is a triple gaffe.

Now, that infant monarch was, of course, Henry VI, who then gaffed on his first day as king by crapping in his royal pants.

I know he was only eight months old, but still not very kingly behaviour.

His first law as king was compulsory boo-boo for everyone, incidentally.

He went on to gaffe so oftenly that gaff fan William Shakespeare himself gaffed by writing three phenomenally tedious plays about him, namely Henry VI Part 3, Henry VI Part 1 and Henry VI Part 2, not in that order.

Henry VI gaffs included 1.

losing the English property of France, which we still haven't quite managed to get back, 2.

Plunging his country into a 25-year civil war, 3.

Going absolutely stark bollock mad, and 4.

Being murdered in the Tower of London, and 5...

founding Eton College, which has produced for the world such reprobates as traitorous Soviet-spired notorious boozehound Guy Burgess, accountancy rogue Darius Guppy, nanny murderer and disappearing enthusiast Lord Lucan, Tory leader David Cameron and notorious multiple killer and human rights violator James Bond.

He was an old Etonian apparently.

There's just something about the name Henry in a royal.

It brings out the tit in you.

But people have been lining up to desperately and failingly attempt to defend him.

Defence Secretary John Hutton told the Commons, we should not lose sight of one very important fact in all this, that Prince Harry has served his country on active service in Afghanistan, and I believe very strongly that there is no better example of public service than that.

But what Hutton needs to be aware of is that it is possible to serve your country and not be a racist.

Millions of servicemen have done it in the past.

The pilots during the Battle of Britain were defending their country in a non-racist fashion, not just doing it because they thought that Germans smelt of bratwurst.

Possible Third World War news now and a single Czech artist has become the third most divisive figure in European history this week behind the guy who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the guy who marched into Poland.

David Czerny has pulled off one of the great artistic pranks.

John, he's put up a massive installation in an EU building in Brussels which has managed to offend basically every single nation on the continent.

He's shown Bulgaria as a toilet, Germany as a motorway shaped a bit like a swastika, and Italy as some possibly masturbating footballers.

This was supposed to be a work of art.

It was a collaboration between artists from all 27 nations of the EU.

It's later to turn out that it was just Cherny and two of his mates taking the piss out of everyone.

Well, it's perfect.

He said he wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself.

Well, he should have known the answer to that before he did it, but at least he can be sure now.

The answer is an emphatic no.

There is a key distinction, Andy.

We like to laugh at each other, not at ourselves.

That's what Europe is based on.

Yeah, so I guess he could have done 27 different versions of this, in which for each country, he just removed their insulting bit of the artwork.

And they would just think, oh, this is great.

This is saying what we're all thinking.

Bulgaria has complained about its depiction as a toilet, and it may get taken down if they keep up with that complaint.

And again, the Czech dissident said, we wanted to prove that 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, there is no censorship.

He said this as the piece was being pulled from the wall.

This has been handled very badly.

Bulgaria should have had to go to court to prove beyond doubt that they are not a toilet.

Heathrow Airport News now, and the British government has given its approval for a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow.

John, I don't understand this story.

There are already two runways there.

One is for taking off, presumably, and one is for landing.

What other manoeuvre can an aircraft possibly need a third runway for?

Oh, Andy, that is a very simplistic interpretation of aeronautics.

Bro,

just pull Yuys, do some stunts.

The government have pledged to cut carbon emissions by 80%, but it's thought that if this third runway is built, this target will become almost impossible to meet.

And of the many interesting protests regarding this, including runway sit-ins and an illegal Edwardian picnic in one of the terminals, only the British, Andy, could have a protest picnic.

Civil disobedience doesn't have to not be delicious.

That's basically what the Boer War was.

One protest included celebrities buying up plots of land earmarked by the government for development in an attempt to seriously delay it.

Celebrities such as Emma Thompson and Alistair McGowan, along with Conservative Green Party advisor Zach Goldsmith, lots of people have bought up all of this land and perhaps this is the next technique for world peace, Andy.

Capitalism can sort everything out.

Celebrities should just start buying up sections of the Middle East.

Purchase the promised land.

God loves celebrities, Andy.

He loves them.

Why else do you think he made Jesus so famous?

Well, I I think, you know, if the anti-war movement had had the foresight to do this, then, you know, we might be living in a happier world today.

If they'd just seen what was coming and bought all of the army's tanks and aeroplanes, then, you know, who knows?

You know, if we're all ready for the invasion, ready to go, and then there's Emma Thompson saying, I think you'll find that's mine.

Give me the keys.

Take your furry dice down.

That's my tank.

But this new runway and terminal won't open for about 10 years, by which time Gordon Brown hopes or perhaps assumes that aeroplanes will be powered by alternative alternative non-pollutative energies, such as wind.

There's lots of winds in the sky.

Surely, just whack a turbine on an aeroplane, it surely would work.

Or sails, if it works for boats, it should work for planes.

I'm not a physicist, John, but as Jesus said, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Although, whether this applies when the goose is a boat and the gander is an aeroplane is a moot point.

Perhaps other green energies that could be used to power air travel by 2020 include flapping.

In fact, Boeing have been working alongside the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds on a feathered aircraft modelled on the Buzzard and also willpower.

I think that can keep airplanes up.

And also on the evidence of this week, John, they don't need a new runway.

They just need to straighten out a bit of the Thames.

Since, and it's now apparently perfectly fine to land aeroplanes on rivers these days.

Swearing news now, and a new report has come out revealing that British people swear on average 14 times a day.

Yeah.

Is that fing all?

I've sworn that much by the time I've got out of bed.

Because I'll tell you, Andy, a lot of people must not be swearing at all because we're carrying the fing can for those.

That's right.

87%

of people admitted to swearing.

The other 13% presumably have not yet learned to talk or are in a coma or are just deeply unpatriotic.

And I speak, John, as someone who's discovered empirically over recent weeks that two-year-old girls are capable of swearing.

They do it

doing quite cheerfully and copying what their mummy has just said to their daddy.

What did she say?

Dick.

And I can't remember what caused this, but my wife, probably justifiably, it usually is, said, you're a dick.

And Matilda looked at me, smiled, and went, dick!

You must have been so proud, Andy.

Oh, I was proud.

Baby's first swear words.

You should publish a book about.

You never forget your first.

Your emails now and well the end of hotties from history has quite rightly brought howls of indignation from buglers in all 25 corners of the world.

Including this one from Daniel Coley, who writes, Dear Dead Men Walking.

How dare you axe the Hotties from History section from the bugle?

It was the only podcast-related thing in my life worth living for.

And more importantly, the only outlet I had to relieve my bottled-up sexual feelings for long-dead historical figures.

You know not who you have angered, gentlemen, especially you, Oliver.

There is an ocean between us, and by the time this podcast airs, you may very well find yourself hanging lifeless from the Empire State Building, dressed only in clown shoes and an ancient Mesopotamian burial shroud.

It's the way I want to go.

You're living on borrowed time unless you find something of greater entertainment value from Hottie's mystery to replace it.

I swear, I will spill some blood if you don't make amends soon.

Consider this your only warning, Andy, for as I said before, John will likely not survive the week.

Vengefully yours, Daniel Coley.

Wow.

Well, that's just a sample of one of the several hundred thousand angry emails we've had about Hotties from history.

Never say never, John.

There have been all kinds of of comebacks.

Elvis, you think of the great comeback special and then that acoustic toroid in the late 1980s?

Sure.

And Jesus, comeback king himself.

Who knows?

There's an email here from Dave Anderson in response to our request for an oath.

And Dave has written an oath, he says, which will solve the financial crisis that he recommends we all take.

And here it is.

If there is an automobile built with its own 50-inch plasma television, I swear I will buy it.

That's right.

Who needs a windscreen?

If there is a breakfast cereal made from miniature custard donuts, I swear I will buy it.

If there is a pill to make my dog's flatulence smell like potpourri,

I swear I will buy it.

If there is a small electronic device that can distract me in some new way, I swear I will buy it.

For I, insert name here, will uphold the office of consumer.

I will borrow when others cower.

I will spend when others hoard.

I will turn the tide of unemployment.

I will bring prosperity to all.

I am Atlas.

I am martyr.

I am saviour.

I am consumer.

Congratulations, Dave.

You can turn this thing round.

That's pretty good.

That sounded like an audition piece, John.

Take you back to your National Youth Theatre days.

Come on, dick pants too, the spin-off.

Is that happening?

Of course it isn't.

This one comes from Lawrence Potter, who writes, Greetings, Andy and John.

I've come to regard the bugle as a reliable source of insightive analysis and sound advice.

Rightly so.

In issue 59, however, you refer to a tiger ordering a glass of shabley to go with his dinner of horse meat.

This goes to a long way to explain while one rarely sees members of the species Pantheritigris working as sommeliers.

I like where this is going.

Depending on the preparation, a better choice to go with horse meat might be Amarone de Valpolicella or a cajor.

Amusingly, Cheval Blanc was drunk at the Banquet Hippophagique of 1865.

Oh, Andy Trebon, which was French and formidable.

Held in the Grand Hotel in Paris.

The 135 attendees, or attendees, included such notables as Flaubert and Dumas.

The menu works its way from horse broth vermicelli via horse a la mud to rum cake with horse bone marrow.

I hope that's true.

Chablis is more typically paired with white fish and foie de mer.

Possibly this might i include seahorses.

Nice point.

Certainly did on my trips to the aquarium.

Oh god, they were angry.

They said you're not allowed to bring your own booze in.

It was cutting into their profits.

Your listeners may benefit from this information in order to avoid any embarrassment when serving horse to guests.

Regards, Lawrence.

So thanks very much for your wine advice and I can only apologize for putting the wrong wine in the wrong joke.

Do keep your emails flooding in to thebugle at timesonline.co.uk or else

sport news now and what recession?

What recession?

Andy, Manchester City are reportedly considering buying Brazilian star midfielder Kaka for £100 million.

Paying him £500,000 a week.

Andy, football is becoming a cartoon sport.

This is utterly ridiculous.

It is.

That is, to put that in context for bugle listeners, £500,000 a week is more than John and I combined are paid for doing the bugle.

I'm not saying how much more.

It is more, but it is about what John gets on the daily show.

That's right, Andy.

Basic cable is a gold mine.

So the question is, has football gone mad?

And the answer clearly is, yes, it's gone stark, institutionalisably bonkers.

If this was still the 1950s, football would now be wearing a special jacket and rocking backwards and forwards in a special chair, claiming it's still a real sport.

You know, John, we've all sometimes get a bit overexcited and pay more than we should for something.

I speak as someone who occasionally gets carried away on eBay and bids, you know, more than I was meaning to, but I've never been a hundred million pounds for a footballer that I then have to back up with half a million pounds a week.

For that amount, he shouldn't be able to just play football, John.

He should be able to mow the pitch with his testicles for that money.

Manchester City's owners from Abu Dhabi have shown that they clearly have more money than cents.

Although, given the amount of money they have, they could be investing this cash not in a single easily breakable footballer, but in a diversified portfolio of long-term investments, green energy research programs and charitable works in the poor areas of Manchester.

And they would still have more money than cents by a massive margin.

That's not the problem, John.

The problem is that they have lots of money and no sense.

Yes.

It's not having less, it's having none.

The increasing trend for football clubs, John, is to be playthings of billionaires.

And that's, take it from me, John, that is dangerous because my daughter, age two, is very like a billionaire football club owner in that she doesn't really know or care about football but can just about recognise it when it's on the telly

and also i've seen how people like her and them can very quickly become bored with their toys

Incidentally of course Kaka is not his real name like so many Brazilian footballers.

He uses that as his footballing name.

His real name is Kakatak Kawakatak.

He's 26 and he loves Jesus an incredible amount such that he gives a large proportion of both his earnings and his goals to charity meaning that last season Christian Aid beat Juventus 1-0.

In other sports the Australian Open tennis is beginning on Monday, John, and 2009 Australian Open champion Andy Murray begins his victorious campaign in the 2009 Australian Open against Romanian has-been Andre Pavel.

It's a two-week inauguration for Murray.

He will beat Nadal in the semifinal and Federer in the final.

And by already winning the final in two weeks' time, John, according to large parts of the British press, he has already become the first British Grand Slam winner since Fred Perry, who won six Grand Slams so long ago that it was in the days before Hitler was regarded as a full-on baddie.

Murray will also become the first British man to win the Australian Open since Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay in the 1770s, put up a net, shot his Australian opponent dead dead, and won six love, six love, six four.

His serve went to pieces as he got close to victory, and there are a lot of double faults.

That's what tension does to you.

I think that's a good point, though, Andy.

I mean, we hear so much about the bad things that Hitler did, but we very rarely hear how catastrophic he was for British tennis.

Exactly.

Well, that's it for sport this week.

Next week, we'll have an update on Andy Murray's winning of the Australian Open 2009, and also an exclusive bugle report from the International Overreaction Championships from our our marginal sports correspondent, Wool.

Just time for the Bugle forecast this week.

John, the forecast is by this time next week, will George W.

Bush have a new job?

But no, Andy, no.

I don't think he will ever have another job.

He does not seem like a man who is overburdened with a work ethic.

I guess some of his references might not be altogether glowing either.

I guess it might be glowing in the sense that they're probably on fire with an effigy of him wrapped around them.

Yeah, exactly.

That's going to be hard to push across the desk.

Oh, here's a reference from the American people.

Oh yeah?

Oh, is that how you spell it?

Gouch.

They got the second letter, right?

Well, that's it, buglers.

Enjoy the inauguration.

Enjoy the end

of the Bush era.

And I do hope that

remains so for

at least eight years.

Eight years without a Bush in the White House.

That would equal the modern record.

We made it, Buglers.

We made it through eight years of Bush, and we're still alive.

I I hope I'm not tempting fate by saying that.

We have a few days left at this point, but we're nearly there.

Hang in there.

We can do this together.

See you on the other side.

So next week's Bugle, John will be in Washington for the inauguration and I will be sampling the atmosphere of Inauguration Day live in Streatham in South London.

Possibly on a park bench with a small child.

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.