Karadzic's Scooby Doo disguise

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 38 of The Bugle, the world's greatest audio newspaper for a visual world, for the week being Monday, the 28th of July 2008.

Which means that the day, the year, and the edition number of the bugle all end in 8, which means that the world is 23% certain to end this week.

Sorry, that is clearly partly our fault.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann in the beautiful city of London and in New York City, it's Mr.

John Oliver.

Hello, buglers!

Hello, Andy.

How are you doing?

I'm okay, thanks, John.

I had a slightly awkward encounter a few days ago with Will Ferrell.

I don't know if you saw the show.

He was a guest on the daily show, and as he's walking down the corridor to go on, I can see he was wearing a Chelsea shirt.

Right.

And I've met him before, but I certainly don't know him.

And as the interview was going on, all I could feel was this rage swelling up in my stomach.

And afterwards, he came over and say hello, and I said to him, oh, so you support Chelsea then?

And he said, I don't know, I just like soccer in general.

I haven't really chosen a team yet.

And I found myself saying, well, you have now, Will.

You've chosen Ferrell and you've chosen badly.

And now you have to live with that choice.

What a strange thing to say to someone who is in a very different tax bracket than me.

He looked slightly concerned.

I could feel the hooligan in me coming out.

It is Monday the 28th of July this week which means that yesterday, Sunday the 27th, was National Sleepyhead Day in Finland, in which the laziest person in the house is traditionally thrown into a lake.

And John to me, this is the problem when a country has too many lakes.

They look for flash things to do with them.

This discrimination against the lazy is the 21st century's version of the persecution of the early Christians by the lions.

It's got to stop.

It wasn't by the lions, Andy.

The lions were just following orders today.

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

This week, a special bugle forgery section.

How to pass off a brand new sofa as an 18th-century chaise long that once belonged to dead French Queen Marie Antoinette.

It's amazing what you can do with a couple of baguettes and a dead alligator.

Also, how to fake the early works of the great masters.

Remember, even Rembrandt drew stickmen when he was a nipper, and his first self-portrait is basically just a circle with two dots for eyes.

Also, in the bin, a free bugle audio direction to help you find your way around town this week left here.

Next week we'll be giving you right at the next set of lights then first left.

Top story this week, Radovan Karadic.

There was big news from the old world this week when it was revealed that ex-Bosnian Serb leader and warlord Radovan Karadic had been captured.

And warlord has to be one of the coolest, albeit morally reprehensible, sounding job titles available.

Either that or warlock.

I think I wanted to be a warlock when I was a little, Andy, until I realised the amount of paperwork that was involved.

I just love the idea of riding a pitchfork.

You were a pretty good warlord in your time back in Britain before you were hounded out of the country.

Yeah, that's a part of my life that I don't like to dwell upon now, Andy.

I did what I did.

Do you want to regret Rianne?

Well, I can say is the streets of South London are a lot more relaxed since you left.

Yeah, relaxed, but a little more unruly.

I ruled with an iron foot.

So, Karadich was the most wanted war criminal in Europe and was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and has been on the run for 13 years.

Now, Richard Holbrook, the U.S.

diplomat, tried to explain his significance as a figure to Americans by saying, this is a historic day.

One of the worst men in the world, the Osama bin Laden of Europe, has finally been captured.

Here's the thing, Holbrook.

I think you'll find that bin Laden is the Osama bin Laden of Europe.

He's pretty much the bin Laden of everywhere.

When you've committed terror attacks on that scale, I think you have earned the right to be the touchstone by which other assholes are judged.

Holbrook also described Karacich as a major thug.

It does seem that the Hague War Crimes Tribunal might rule that to be something of an understatement.

So, where has this internationally renowned douchebag been hiding all this time, Andy?

It must have been somewhere pretty impressive to evaded capture for over a decade.

Was it in a cave?

An underground bunker?

maybe inside an invisibility cloak?

No, none of those.

Instead, this modern-day Scarlet Pimpanel chose the master disguise of becoming a bearded new age doctor and practicing medicine under a false name in Belgrade.

That was it.

His plan to avoid capture was just to grow a beard and hope for the best.

Come on, that's not even Scooby-Doo standard.

When they caught him, he was heard to be screaming, I would have got away with it too if it wasn't for that pesky war crimes tribunal.

Yeah, Karadic apparently has become a self-proclaimed expert in human quantum energy, which is a bit of a sideways career move from genocide.

Maybe he's learnt his lesson.

But perhaps that means he would have liked to use the quantum energy power chip golf glove, which, according to its own website, can really improve your driving as well as your short game and your ability to order ethnic cleansing.

It does seem from Karadic's example that there is no better place to hide than directly under the nose of the authorities dressed up like an off-duty Santa Claus.

So since 95, he's been renting an apartment in Belgrade and using the name Dragan Davich.

And he's been making a living practicing alternative medicine.

And pretty alternative, seeing as his specialist area was mass genocide.

You just don't get that in mainstream medicine, Andy.

This is very good news, basically, unless, I guess, you're a Serbian nationalist musical writer.

And you were just putting the finishing touches to the score for your hit new stage show, Radovan, What a Man.

In which case, I guess you'd be pretty pissed off and have to write a a new ending.

But for everyone else in the world, it is the good news.

And he's apparently going to defend himself.

Good idea.

Because I think what history shows us is that there's one thing that genocidal despots generally don't lack, and that is self-confidence.

Arguably, they have it to excess, and this is part of the problem.

Always entertaining.

You stick a despot on a witness stand, and the fireworks will flow.

Well, he's great at this guy.

Perhaps this is his escape plan.

He's just going to put on a false moustache and glasses and then just walk free out of the courtroom.

His capture been linked to the new Serbian government which took power a couple of weeks ago and apparently wants to get a place in the EU.

And it just shows what an incredibly powerful continent Europe is, John.

Yes.

That's when a membership of EU is up for grabs, then basically anything goes.

And I think maybe looking at this, if we really want a peaceful world, we should offer al-Qaeda a place in the European Union.

Because I reckon if we did, they'd probably have bin Laden in the post by sundown if they thought they could get some decent agricultural subsidies out of us.

Either that if we learn one thing from this, is that if we want to find bin Laden, we should start checking acupuncturists in the Washington DC area.

It's possible that he's been selling aromatherapy candles for the last year out of his own shop in Philly.

Karadic's lawyer expressed disappointment and complaint about the way in which his client was arrested.

He said people showed him a police badge and then he was taken to some place and kept in the room.

And that is absolutely against the law what they did.

It does seem a little bit petty, John, for someone who is basically going going to spend the foreseeable future watching videos in The Hague and saying, yes, I suppose that is me and that one as well.

It does seem a bit petty for someone who I guess most people would agree has really overstepped the mark legally with his mass killing foible for them to turn around and have a go at the police on a matter of technical procedure.

It just seems a little rich.

In all the wonderful details of this story, the one that trumps the whole bunch is the revelation that he also had a bi-monthly column in Healthy Life magazine.

Let me run that by you again, as it can be difficult to take in the first time.

A man charged with ethnic cleansing worked for Healthy Life magazine.

Although, to be fair, they as a publication have always been a safe haven for despots.

Idiar Meen once had a column writing about earwax candles and there is still a letters page to this day called Ask Mugabe.

For those of you who don't know a lot about Radovan Karagic, here is a Karajic fact box.

Radovan Karajic is an award-winning poet, an expert in psychiatry and alternative medicine, a qualified fugitive and a convicted embezzler.

But it seems now that he will probably be best remembered for genocide and human rights violations.

Karajic presented a game show called Radovan's Carrot Tips on Yugoslavian state television in the 1970s, in which he advised housewives how best to use carrots in traditional Slavic stews, salads and carrot cakes, all with a subtext of Bosnian Serb nationalism.

Karajic sometimes thinks that he might have been really good at baseball, but he never actually played.

But he thinks that if he had played, he'd probably have been a useful third baseman and modelled his batting style on Mickey Mantle.

But Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona thinks that Karagic might have made a better shortstop and would be better off concentrating on getting on base rather than going for the big glory shots.

Ironically, Francona's father was called Tito, also the name of Tito, the former leader of Yugoslavia, who ironically managed to keep a lid on the kind of nationalism from which Karadic ultimately made his name.

That's just one of life's little quirks.

Terry Francona incidentally thinks that the Bosnian war was bad and wishes everyone could have sorted it out peacefully.

Radovan Karacic thinks the Red Sox aren't quite the force they were last year.

It seems those two will never get along.

Other news now, and President Bush and Wall Street.

Bush, who will not be president for much longer, just hang in there.

Everyone, it's not too long now.

In fact, think of it this way: children conceived now will be born into a world where he is not leader of the free world.

There's a lot of thought.

Actually, that's interesting because I've got my second child due out

on December the 19th.

Oh no.

So he's going to.

Oh no.

His or her first month will be blighted by the continuing dying embers of the Bush era.

Can he or she not can you not just convince them to just stay in a little

compromise with the American political system?

Maybe they can bring the inauguration forward a couple of weeks and we can meet you halfway.

Bush was caught saying something really quite unpleasant at a fundraiser when addressing a room full of people after he asked for the cameras to be turned off.

But here's the thing, and if anyone says, and can we turn the cameras off for this, the very last thing that you want to do is turn off your camera.

If anything, you want to turn another backup camera on and maybe have someone capturing the moment in watercolour as well, because something good is on its way.

He talked about the economy in glib and eventually incomprehensible terms, saying, there's no question about it, Wall Street got drunk.

That's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras.

It got drunk and now it's got a hangover.

The question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?

That aspirin Andy

makes no sense.

Now, he has been consistently mocked for his speaking style, but that is taking it to a whole nother level.

I definitely know what he's trying to say there.

To be fair, I get the implication, but he ends up sounding more like a Lewis Carroll nonsense poem.

Later on in the video, he starts ranting, Beware the jabberwock, my son, the jaws that bite, the claws that catch, beware the jujub bird, and shun the frumius bandersnatch.

I think it's a bit harsh though, John, for everyone to be so critical of Bush to slam a guy for a few little words he may or may not have said, or in this case, did actually say, in the privacy of a political fundraising event.

Because we live in a cynical age, John, and like a German research scientist looking at X-ray scans of people's stomachs in an investigation using barium-coated sausages to see how the digestive system works, we do tend to see the worst in in people.

Let's take a moment's silence now,

just so that Andy can think about what he did with that joke.

That was a long walk to a laboured punchline.

I know, I prefer to think of it as a kind of severe balusteros golf hole.

You know, I might have hit the drive into the car park, but I pulled off a great shot onto the green and I ended up with a solid tar.

But I think we live in a cynical age, and I've had enough of this cynicism, John.

I think it's time to take President Bush at face value for once, just because he and the truth have had a bit of a stormy, distant relationship over the years.

I'm going to give the leader of the free world some credit and assume that he was just telling us the bald truth.

And in fact, it is the most logical explanation for the world's financial crisis that Wall Street did actually just get drunk.

Because how else could you explain so many of the world's leading economic brains conspiring to screw up the entire world economy through idiotic schemes like lending lots of money to people with no money?

That's the thing.

If Wall Street did get drunk, Andy, whose fault would that be, I wonder?

Would it have been anything to do with the drink specials that bartenders Bush and Cheney were ramming down their throats, encouraging them to do fiscal body shots and looking the other way as they balanced on their head and drained a financial keg?

Even this crass analogy is an understatement, because Wall Street not only got hammered, it also snorted an unfeatable amount of cocaine, threw up in someone's garden and screamed something racist at the cab driver on the way home.

Wall Street is a bad drunk, Andy, because it it is not a pleasant person.

But something even worse actually happened later on.

He was making light of the foreclosure crisis, saying, and then we've got a housing issue as well, not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house right now, to peals of great laughter.

And there is, Andy, really, no funnier piece of material as

stuff on people losing their houses, especially when it comes from the mouth of someone who was mainly responsible for it.

Moving on from the current president to the future one, and Barack Obama has been wowing the famous old continent of Europe, which, of course, is the continent that's given the world political leaders such as King Zog of Albania, Gerald Batliner, the former Rigerung chef of Liechtenstein, and Hannah Spirit, former leader of the pop group from Fascist Political Organisation S-Club 7.

But Obama said that sometimes America and Europe have drifted apart, most notably, of course, over the divisive issue of Iraq, and also due to the movements of the world's tectonic plates over several hundred millions of years of divisive prehistory.

So will Obama John set in motion a shunt of the US back towards its true Euro-African origins and move the Earth's crust?

I mean, we know this man has a lot of influence over people with his formidable rhetorical skills, but can he persuade the Earth to reverse its last couple of billion years?

Well he's elevated rhetoric and he is truly inspirational and uh well if plate tectonics can't feel that then they really have no heart whatsoever.

Uh what uh interested me John was the difference in um coverage between Obama and uh McCain

who I also I think came to Europe but no one quite knows'cause there's no actual T V footage of it.

But uh apparently he was giving a speech yesterday yesterday that was interrupted by one T V network to report on the rescue of a bear cub in California.

That shows the difference in media treatment of the two cubs.

That's true.

That is true.

Exploiting African natural resources news now and apparently the Saharan Sun could provide all of Europe's electricity.

A huge £35 billion super grid in the Saharan desert could give Europe all the power it needs.

By the middle of the century, the plan's been backed by Gordon Brown and Sarkozy.

Presumably also this could also power most of Africa as well, but that's by the by because that sun belongs to us, John.

We discovered the sun.

Africa is lucky that we have leased it to them to heat up their deserts.

Yeah, talking of which, they owe us quite a lot of rent for that sun that's been shining on them.

But no, we'll talk about that later when they're got back on their feet.

And it's good news as well, I think, from the Sahara's point of view, because frankly, it's about time it got off its fat, sandy arse and did something useful for the planet.

The solar-powered field would be an area slightly smaller than Wales, and you'd apparently need just 0.3% of the light that fell on the Sahara in the Middle East to power the whole of Europe's energy needs.

And the Sahara gets a lot of sunlight, Andy, and very intense sunlight.

So would this make the Sahara now the richest region on Earth?

Because if the future means that the more sunlight you get, the richer you are.

That's bad news for Britain, Andy.

We're going to be down at the bottom of that table keeping Norway company.

Some people aren't in favour of this.

People said we've gone to to all this effort to ensure access to oil.

We owe it to everyone who've given their lives in these conflicts not to just cave in at the first sign of alternative energies being genuinely viable on a global scale.

So we have to be strong in the face of threats like this to our oil-based economy, John.

Other green technologies and developments include attempting to harness the power of sexual tension because, let's remember, there are a lot of teenage boys in the world and also quite a lot of female French teachers.

And we just need to hook those two up to a generator and watch the sparks fly, albeit only in one direction.

Also, another green technology is a giant treadmill in Africa for migrating wildebeests to run over.

That apparently could generate enough power to send Argentina into space and back again.

And also, they are trying to harness the power of swearing.

And in my house, I reckon that could probably keep us going for the next 50 years.

Bugle feature section now and a relationship section.

Tomorrow, Tuesday will be 27 years to the second since Prince Charles and Princess Diana TM got married, uniting the warring houses of Windsor and Spencer and ushering in a new era of peace for war-torn Britain.

Of course, it didn't quite work out quite as well as the commemorative cup and saucers would have you believe.

But that's often the way, John, with relationships like this.

Let's not forget Prince Charming and Cinderella.

That didn't work out too well either.

Once the excitement of the wedding was over and it was down to the daily grind of married life, Charming increasingly found the powerless ceremonial duties of a modern royalty both tiresome and vacuous.

And although Cinderella looked damn hot in a ball gown, her working-class roots soon shone through embarrassingly on major state occasions.

She was won to making lewd comments to foreign dignitaries and dancing overenthusiastically whenever the royal band started playing I Will Survive.

Charming descended into alcoholism and depression as the magic of their early courtship wore off, and he soon resorted to teasing his poorly educated wife about being rubbish at Scrabble and undermining her fragile self-confidence by telling her that as the years went by, she looked more and more like her sisters.

Cinderella sought comfort in the arms of a pumpkin who'd been turned into a tennis coach.

And once the inevitable divorce was finalised, both had become characters of ridicule in the gutter press.

Cinderella ended up selling cheap jewellery on a cable shopping channel.

And King Charming, as he now was, presided over the final days of an outdated monarchy before living out his life in exile and bitterness, trying to seduce Romanian waitresses on a cruise ship.

So, to mark this anniversary, a special bugle bugle relationship section.

Andy, you're the new brothers groom.

Your children are so lucky to have such a wizard of the fairy tale reeking to them at night.

I tell it like it is.

Now sleep well kids.

Why are you staring at the ceiling?

And Relationship of the Week, John, of course, where else to start?

But with the Darwins, the famous fake canoe death couple, who have been sentenced to over six years in jail each for their part in the fraud.

Has it been big in America, John?

It's not, and you may need to slightly give Americans the background to this absolutely ludicrous story.

Yeah, basically, it's about six years ago now, Mr.

and Mrs.

Darwin cooked up a plan whereby he would fake his own death in a canoeing accident.

And basically, they would claim his life insurance and various other benefits.

He then lived in secrecy through a secret door at the back of their house for several years whilst their two sons thought he was dead.

And then they moved to Panama.

I know I have a deserved reputation for lying, John, but this is all fact.

He's often referred to as Back from the Dead Canoeist, and that really is an amazing title to have yourself, however, illegally it was obtained.

Back from the Dead Canoeist.

It's a heck of an icebreaker.

Can I introduce you to John?

You may know him as the Back from the Dead Canoeist.

Oh, that sounds fascinating.

How did you get that name?

Well, long story short, I was a canoeist,

I died, and now I'm back.

Past the olives.

That was how Jesus was known in the first draft of the Bible.

I think what this proves this story about the diamonds though is that if you fake your own death in order to scam insurance and benefits and then live in secrecy for several years whilst your children think that you're dead, then move to a new continent to take advantage of your ill-gotten gains and then pitch up out of the blue pretending to have amnesia, it does put quite a lot of strain on your family relationships.

There's this disappointing excuse though when he turned up and claimed that he had amnesia.

He could have at least turned up in his canoe claiming to have discovered a new continent.

That's basically what Columbus did and he he got away with it.

He's a hero nowadays.

Well I don't believe it when anyone dies now.

I'm half expecting the Queen Mother to pitch up.

Well the son say I'm fine.

I've just been running a motorcycle gang in Kent.

Bugle relationship advice now and one if you're going through financial difficulties with your partner don't fake your own death and rip apart your entire family.

Two, if you're a high-profile man and enjoy the benefits of a warm, long and successful marriage try not to get filmed partaking in a sadomasochistic orgy that is then plastered all over the world's media revealing a secret side to your sexuality that you've kept secret from your partner for over 50 years.

And finally, any relationship relies on respects.

If you're having a minor squabble with your partner about a matter of sporting trivia, do not, when proved right, react with excessive triumphalism, thumping your chest and ululating before parading around the kitchen shouting, stick that one in your pipe and tell it where to stick itself, and making yourself a giant silver trophy which you then cuddle up to in bed every night.

Take that one from me.

Your emails now, and this one comes from Joel Oliver, who writes, Hello, Andy and John in order of hilarity.

Oh, come on.

There's no need to divide us.

Well, he doesn't.

He doesn't say what order, whether that's ascending or descending.

So

he's basically insulted both of us.

Greetings from Australia.

John, you may be interested to learn that I have an ancestor named John Oliver.

As I learned of the deeds of my several great-grandfather, I came to a startling conclusion that you, John, share a very distinctive characteristic with him.

John Oliver, the other one, was captain of a sailship that arrived in Melbourne, Australia, in the 1860s.

Upon hearing...

Oh boy, what was he sailing there?

It was probably people.

It was probably your criminal ancestors.

Sorry, carry on, Andy.

Upon hearing of the fortunes found in the Victorian goldfields, Captain Oliver's crew abandoned the ship and fled to Western Victoria to try their luck looking for shiny things.

Uh-oh.

This is where the similarity was unsurfaced.

After his crew left him, John Oliver decided to abandon his post and seek a quick pile of money in a place that seemed to be abundant in opportunity.

You, John Oliver, have abandoned your post, have abandoned your country to seek fortune in the gold field that is show business in America.

Let me tell you, I found very little gold in that field.

Now, I'm not a lover of England, being born in Australia.

However, this does not dampen my outrage at your traitorous behaviour towards the country that accidentally jettisoned their best and brightest citizens to an island that the Dutch tripped over on the way to a house party.

You are a disgrace to your name, John Oliver, your heritage, and to the glorious man you are privileged, I like this bit, to share the glory that is the bugle with.

I propose that the bugle's name be changed to the bugle brought to you by Andy Zaltzman and another person.

For shame, John Oliver.

For shame.

That is both barrels, isn't it?

Yep.

I don't know if there's any bugle listeners who are called Zaltzman out there.

I'd imagine

other than my immediate family.

I'd imagine there might be more.

Even though I'm not sure they're regular listeners either, Andy.

I imagine there might have been more had we started this podcast in the 1930s.

A great Hottie from History nomination here from Nicole Valentino.

Dear John and Andy, it took a lot of thinking, but I finally came up with my vote for Hottie from History.

Hatch put the queen who would be king.

Something about Androgyny just plain turns me on.

Me too, Nicole.

Me too.

This feisty female pharaoh was the fifth pharaoh, say that three times fast, of the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt.

She's generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful pharaohs, reigning longer than any other woman of an indigenous Egyptian dynasty.

To quote Paris Hilton, that's hot.

The sexified Hatchput assumed a position of pharaoh, and her reign as king is usually given as 22 years.

The other most famous female pharaoh was the infamous Cleopatra, another hottie, but her general sluttiness sullies her reputation enough to even be considered as a bona fide hottie from history.

Good argument.

Good argument.

What I like about this is a really rounded pitch for hottie from history.

Hatchput's illustrious career included a marriage to her half-brother, Thutsmose II, who was considered a god.

Not bad.

She also re-established disputed trade networks, oversaw naval expeditions in an attempt at diplomacy and healthy foreign relations.

Keep it in the future.

Was also...

I'm feeling a bit ill, Andy.

Was also, don't make those noises.

Was also one of the most prolific builders in ancient Egypt.

Oh, talk me some hieroglyphs.

She even has her own room at the Met Museum of Art in New York City.

Let's see Florence Nightingale claim that.

Although this is disappointing, Johnny, it was a lovely email, and all of a sudden, you have to make it slag off Nightingale, the original hottie from history.

Just wait for the climax here in every sense of the word.

Although cat scans of her mummified remains indicate that she had arthritis, bad teeth, and diabetes before she died at 50 years young.

Oh, yes.

You and the have a type.

I still think that

Hashfut, the queen who would be king, is definitely a historical hottie, or indeed even a hottie from history.

Well done, Nicole V.

That is a very strong nomination.

Hold on, I'm gonna

uh have a bath

certainly.

I'm gonna have a bath.

I was just gonna uh see if there's any existing images on the internet of her.

Let's see.

Oh, yeah,

she looks good in stone, that's all I'm saying.

Oh, dear.

Well, unfortunately, I have just found a picture of her mummified remains.

To be fair, she probably looks good for her age.

And another hotty nomination comes from Ash Dunn in Manchester, UK.

The real one, he writes, not that poxy rip-off in New Hampshire.

Salutations, chaps.

That's a superb British beginning to a missing.

Salutations back to you, Ash.

I would like to venture forth my nomination for Hotties from History.

Mary Curie, a seriously saucy science seductress who must have been quite the between-the-sheets showstopper.

Oh, yeah!

In the course of this Randy researcher's career, she was exposed to so much radiation that she eventually died of aplastic anemia.

Wow, what wouldn't she do?

It would be the ultimate bargaining chip in the laboratory of love.

Come on, baby, I know it might sting to do this, but you know, not as much as radiation sickness.

Remember, the safe word is polonium.

radioactively hot turns out me and mari curie have one thing in common at least

so do keep your emails and hotties from history nominations flooding into thebugle at timesonline.co.uk

Sport now and Olympic news, China has said that it will allow protests and demonstrations during the Olympics, the only stipulation being that it will only be in three designated areas.

Andy, is one of those designated areas the back of a police van?

And is that incredibly similar to the other two designated areas?

And in other Olympics news, the Iraqi athletes have just been banned from the Olympic Games.

Well, Andy, that is great news for America.

Just when they thought they could have the much-needed photo op of Iraqi athletes parading happily around in the opening ceremony, they're left with different sound bites, such as this one from a female Iraqi sprinter who said, well, I guess I can compete in 2012, but the way my country's going at the moment, I don't know if I'll be alive by then.

Well,

that is a different piece of PR than her wandering around smiling and waving a flag.

Poor, it's not, it's been a tough few years for Iraq, you know, and now.

That is another quintessentially British understatement, Andy.

It has been tough.

Cricket now, and following the England selector's surprise choice of Australian roofer Darren Pattinson to play against South Africa in the second Test match, largely on the grounds that he looked like a strapping lad and a decent bloke.

They have now turned their attention to the Philadelphia Phillies all-star second baseman Chase Utley.

The chairman of selectors, Jeff Miller, said, Utley's never played cricket as far as I'm aware, but he's a winner and he's in form.

Utley is set to replace out-of-form wicketkeeper Tim Ambrose.

Miller said that Utley is used to playing with one glove, so he should be even better with two.

Meanwhile, bowler Jimmy Anderson is set to be arrested for the next test match in Birmingham and replaced with a World War II QF 25-pounder howitzer.

Miller commented, Jimmy's knackered, and we need someone who can blast a few holes in the South African batting lineup.

The QF 25 pounder has proved itself on the international stage and we're confident that the South African batsmen are less confident against heavy artillery than they are against human bowlers.

We also know that their captain Graeme Smith is scared of sharks so we're also including Jemima, the hammerhead shark from the London Aquarium in our matchday squad.

And finally for this week, the Bugle forecast.

This week I am heading up to Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Festival where I'm playing Franny Bugle listeners who are going to be passing through at the stand in the afternoon at 2.40 and hosting the political animal show The Underbelly to come along.

I don't really know about selling things at the end of the bugle.

Is this the advert section?

This is the advert section.

In which case, can I say how much I enjoy Pringles?

Except I don't.

I don't enjoy them at all.

I find them a really bland snack.

And the forecast this week is for my first show on Thursday, will I have finished writing it in time?

John, what do you think?

Andy, I mean, I would say it's more likely for a tornado to hit Streatham and to physically carry you up to Edinburgh, placing you carefully down into your flat.

Right.

So, I mean, that is the long way of saying I don't think it's going to be ready, Andy.

What are you basing that?

That on?

I'm basing that on past experience

and also on the kind of trembling tone of your voice.

Well, what is your prediction?

My prediction is it will be absolutely pin sharp and ready to go.

Well, good luck, Andy.

Thanks for watching.

Good luck.

No, no, sorry, I wasn't saying good luck to you.

I was saying good luck to the first audience of that show.

Good luck.

So, do join us next week where I will be in Edinburgh at the festival, and John will still be in New York.

Bye.

Bye.