Barack Obama is coming to Europe!

The Bugle, Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello buglers, and welcome to issue 37 of The Bugle, making it the world's longest-running audio newspaper for a visual world in history.

This is for the week beginning Monday, the 21st of July 2008 with me, Andy Zoltzmann in London and in New York City, John Oliver.

Hello buglers, I'm back.

I'm back in the greatest country in the world.

You've changed.

Undeniably true.

I've felt that way for two years since the start of my first visa and I'll feel that way for at least one more year till the end of this visa.

I filmed Andy this week, had to do a piece in CNN and walking into a large open planned room containing people that you have mocked for the previous two years was pretty tense.

It was like one of those scenes in a saloon bar when the music stops and the pool balls hover over the pocket.

I was half expecting to be thrown out of a window by a 10-gallon cap wearing Lou Dobbs.

Does he call it cap?

No, it's hat, isn't it?

10 gallon cap.

I'd pay to see someone in a 10 gallon cap.

That's a hell of a look, a 10 gallon cap.

That is the next thing that Buster Rhymes needs to unleash upon the sartorial world.

He's not actually unleashed that much.

He's really just unleashed the plain vest.

It's a bad example.

Because he's got so much ink.

And by ink, I mean taps, Andy.

And by tats, I mean tattoos.

Right?

I've got a tattoo now.

Really?

What is that on, Andy?

That's my own face.

And it's on my own face.

So you can't really notice it.

I'm telling you, it's a big mistake.

You'll get sick of it when you're older.

As always.

Some sections of the bugle go straight in the bin.

This week, a home safety supplement, including advice on what to do if you fall off your sofa.

One, stay calm.

Two, deploy your parachute.

If your sofa was by the door of an aeroplane.

3.

Spend a minute or two assessing the situation before you make your next move.

Do not rush into action.

And 4.

Call your local MP or government representative to ask him or her what they're planning to do about it.

Also in the bin, a section on how to care for exotic pets.

Including lions.

If you have a lion, remember that lions like privacy.

So make sure your lion has its own bedroom.

He may miss home, so make sure you set him up with a games console and a zebra hunting game.

That should satisfy his bloodlust temporarily but if he starts getting stroppy and demanding a kill, take him up to the local park to feed on the ducks.

Top story this week and Barack Obama.

He has been capturing all of the headlines, including some headlines of the McCain campaign complaining about how many headlines he's been getting.

It seems to be the only way the McCain campaign can get any media traction at the moment.

They've They've accused the media of having a crush on the Obama campaign, and the media responded by blushing, looking at their feet, and saying, oh, no, no way.

No, I mean, we don't even like him.

Why?

What have you heard?

Did he say anything about us?

Because if he did, we definitely don't care.

He's such a loser.

It did seem to cross the line at one point this week when there was obsessive speculation on his visiting the gym three times in one day.

And the Associated Press said, sometimes it's hard to tell if Barack Obama is running for President of the United States or Mr.

Universe.

That's not reportage, it's borderline porn.

The Democratic candidate surveyed the room and approached the podium, which thrust proudly up from the floor, his firm chest heaving beneath his cool charcoal suit.

A single bead of sweat trickled down the back of his lithe neck, as in a low, insistent voice, he began to talk about the importance of long-term fiscal responsibility.

There needs to be a parental guidance system for some of this coverage, because children should not be seeing this.

Reporters standing up in the middle of the room saying, I have a question for you, Senator Obama, and my question is this.

Damn.

Does this suggest that standards at the Mr.

Universe competition are falling as well?

Because he's quite skinny, isn't he?

Yeah.

You know, my picture of Mr.

Universe, and certainly what I want from my Mr.

Universe, is someone who has clearly been threatening their own lives with steroids for at least 10 years.

It just showed that the ban on steroids has taken all the fun out of Mr.

Universe.

We're going to have to completely change our perceptions of what a universe man should be.

There's only one way, Andy, to decide whether this relationship between Obama and the media is real, and that is by calculating how well matched they are.

So last night I went to thelovecalculator.com, where apparently a man called Dr.

Love can analyse compatibility from just the input of the names involved.

So I typed in Barack Obama and the media, and Dr.

Love came back with these results.

Apparently, they're only 57% suited to each other.

Here is Dr.

Love's in-depth analysis.

He says, Dr.

Love thinks that a relationship between the media and Barack Obama has a reasonable chance of working out, but on the other hand, it might not.

Dr.

Love hedging his bets there.

Well, I think what we can draw from that, John, is that Ken and Ethel Love, Dr.

Love's parents, are really regretting spending so much money putting him through six years of medical school.

And in the interest of balance, I should also tell you: it turns out John McCain also has exactly 57% compatibility with the media.

This could be the closest election yet.

It could once again all come down to Florida, with whom they are also incidentally both exactly 72% matched.

Obama of course is winning the fundraising contest at the moment.

He's currently raised something like $860 trillion

of funding or something like that.

And it proves John that you can't win the election if you don't buy the most expensive possible tickets.

I mean he's ahead in fundraising, but he's actually behind in total money.

He raised $52 million the last month and meaning that he and the DNC have $92 million in the back, but that's still not enough to make him the financial front, rather.

John McCain raised $22 million, but he and the Republicans now have $95 million in the bank.

That is far too much money.

Both of them.

And yet, that's still not enough money to buy the latest Donald Trump property, which he sold this week to a Russian oligarch in Palm Beach, Florida, for $95.6 million.

Trump, the classiest cartoon tycoon in the world, has broken the record for the most expensive home in American history.

And imagine living in a house, Andy, that costs more than running for President of the United States.

That must be some house.

I bet it's even got a garden.

Could he not buy the White House for that?

Yeah, but the White House doesn't have a penis-shaped pool.

Well, it does, but it's indoor.

Yeah, it's modelled on Grosse Cleveland's Wang.

Proud of yourself?

No, but I think what we can draw from that comment is that Mr.

and Mrs.

Zach and Alison Zaltzmann are probably wondering why they spent so much money putting their son Andy through expensive education.

The Obama campaign has also got stroppy with a New Yorker magazine for its front cover, which had a cartoon depicting him as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist.

In their defence, the New Yorker say no smoke without fire, and also that it was just a joke.

But of course, some fundamentalist Obama supporters, John, believe that he should never be pictorially represented, and certainly not in a cartoon, and that we need to have more respect.

In the interest of editorial balance, well, they should have done another front cover of John and Cindy McCain dressed as druids sacrificing a child,

which is a fact.

They do that every weekend.

How do you think she looks so young?

The New Yorker defend themselves by saying they were trying to satirise some of the myths about Obama, and sometimes it is hard to differentiate the myths from the reality with this man, John.

So here's an effort to clear up some of the confusion about Obama's background.

Barack Obama was born as one of the twin sons of a vestal virgin and Mars, the god of war, before being suckled and raised by wolves alongside his brother Nigel.

He and Nigel later founded the city of Honolulu, before Barak slew Nigel with his own bare hands after he acted like a bit of a dick about who was in charge of the new city, which would one day rule the entire known world, leaving Barak as undisputed ruler and founder of the United States of America.

So I hope that clears it up.

That is a fact.

There are going to be right-wing pressing groups that are going to be picking up on your rumours about Barack slewing Nigel.

That's going to be all over the blogs.

He's just eerily quiet about Nigel, isn't he?

You never hear him mention Nigel Obama.

How close are we getting to the vice presidential selection, John?

I'm literally on the edge of my seat.

Is that to do with the vice presidential situation, or are you just about to get up?

No, I've just got a cobra sitting behind me.

Well, there's been a bit of an infestation in London in the last couple of weeks.

All right, so it's an infestation.

It's not just for your posture.

No, it does help, though.

It does help.

Very difficult choice choosing your vice president.

I guess there are a number of qualities that you're looking for if you ever find yourself trying to pick a vice president.

Ideally, your vice president should have no ambitions to actually be president.

I mean, the last thing you need as leader of the free world is to go on a team bonding weekend and have your deputy goading you to swim across a crocodile-infested swamp or to jump a burning motorcycle over a bus full of cows or to eat undercooked chicken.

And I think maybe there's Obama should maybe look outside the traditional field of politics because then you tend to end up getting a politician to do it.

I think there's a number of possible options that he should consider.

One, Derek Jeter, the opinion splitting New York Yankees shortstop.

I guess on the minus side, you know, he might cost Obama the votes of Mets and Red Sox fans.

But on the plus side, he is Mr.

October, John.

He's Mr.

October.

And that could prove really useful in the run-up to the poll in early November.

And he should also use that name rather than Derek Jeter.

He should be Vice President October.

Another alternative is Hugo Chavez, the bewailer from Venezuela.

Might not be popular with many in the US, but he loves the cameras.

And getting him on side and in the team might be the best way to shut him up.

Another option, Janice Joplin, the late 60s soul diva with the nuclear-powered vocals, may have died in 1970, but she is a woman, and that's good, and would be sound something genuinely different in the stuffy corridors of Washington.

On the plus side, she could belt out controversial policies at incredible and distracting volume, but still with feeling and soul.

On the minus side, she's dead.

Well, she'll also be the first dead woman vice president in American history.

Yep, since Lyndon Johnson.

So we in Europe, John, and I speak on behalf of this entire continent, we are all aflutter with excitement at the prospect of Obama coming to see our humble little continent.

We're really excited by this.

Of course, in America, it can be dangerous for a presidential candidate to be associated with Europe.

John Kerry lost after being described as looking a bit French, which I think probably tells you everything you need to know about America and the American political system.

It's a horrible thing to say about someone though, Andy.

Yeah, and they didn't mean that he plays spontaneously flamboyant rugby with a hidden edge of violence.

Popularity in Europe is not necessarily a good thing over here in America, Andy.

It doesn't really translate.

In fact, it translates into the opposite of votes in many parts of Middle America.

They don't like us, Andy, the Europeans.

They think we're tea-drinking fae elitist snobs.

McCain Aides quipped it, I don't know what the people in Missouri are going to think seeing tens of thousands of Europeans screaming for the one.

He later called him the foreigner's choice.

Is that what got Bush in the second time, Andy?

That's the only way it could make sense.

Perhaps we should have tried the bluff in Europe saying, oh, please, yes, more of him.

Can it be only be two terms?

Are you sure?

We are actually hoping that Obama will be able to join us live on next week's bugle.

Although when I spoke to him this morning, he did say he's a bit busy because he's supposed to be promoting himself to the continent as a viable, incredible world leader and might not be able to fit us in.

Obama is indeed beginning his European tour and the back of his tour t-shirt will feature dates in Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, all flanked by two tigers on motorbikes.

His appearance in London though, Andy, is expected to be fleeting, and British sources said Mr.

Obama's advance team had made it plain that he wants to get in and out of the city as expeditiously as possible.

Well, hold on.

That isn't going to make us feel very good about ourselves, is it?

What an unpleasant response to an invitation.

Yes, I'd love to come to your party, though I will be attempting to leave it as expeditiously as possible.

Other news now.

And well, what kind of continent is Obama going to find when he gets here?

Well, he's going to find a continent torn apart by badgers.

Problem is, that sounds like a terrorist group.

You need to explain the concept of a badger, Andrew.

Yeah, well, a badger is

basically a large vermin, a man-eating vermin.

It's the size of about a horse and a half.

They live behind bus shelters and they outnumber humans by ten to one in some parts of Britain.

Yeah, I mean, when I said describe a badger, Andy, I was really looking for an accurate description, not to make it even more confusing.

Because absolutely nothing you've said there relates to what a badger actually is.

They are vermin.

Anyway, so they're about, I don't know, about the size of a of a kind of middling to small dog.

Mainland Europe is in fact very angry with us again.

Barely had their anger subsided from what they thought was us trying to kill them with infected mad cow beef in 96, then they started thinking we were attempting to slip them tuberculosis after 12 calves delivered to the Netherlands tested positive for the disease recently.

And you can see why Europe is so angry.

We've been here before.

It's like the Trojan horse all over again, except instead of a horse, it's a cow.

And instead of being made of wood, it's made of cow.

You can see their point, though.

The similarities are eerie.

Of course, badgers do spread bovine tuberculosis to moo cows.

Sorry, I've been spending too much time with my little daughter.

But the badger actually poses a greater threat to British national security than the Basque separatist group Eta.

But the problem is, John, with this badger cull that has been proposed, is that the badger is a protected species and has been ever since Queen Victoria accidentally snogged one when drunk on her hen night.

Also in Europe, Obama will find a continent on the very brink of war following the resignation of the Belgian Prime Minister.

This could easily spill out from political bickering within Belgium into a pan-continental conflict.

Let's not rule that out.

It's happened before.

I mean, it hasn't, but it could easily happen.

He's resigned three months after taking office.

And if a country as silly as Belgium can't sort its democracy out, what hope for the rest of us?

And particularly, you've got to feel sorry for the sake coming so soon after the trauma trauma of Justine Annan retiring from tennis.

What have they got left?

It gets worse because this is actually his third resignation in the last 12 months.

And apparently the options now include asking Mr.

Letaume to stay on, calling an early election, or asking somebody else to, on a quote, have a go.

If you're using phrases like have a go, you are in serious trouble.

That is what you say to children on a group tour of the zoo when it's feeding time at the penguin enclosure.

That is not how you describe running your country.

I can't believe I'm going to say this, Andy, but Belgium needs a brutal dictatorship.

The king needs to take over and start riding around on his horse shooting cannons at people.

Get some control.

Yeah, it's the third time this year that Yves Laterme has resigned, which suggests that he really wants a holiday.

The Prime Minister took up office in March, a whole nine months after the general election results came in, and Belgium was criticised for this, but they responded by saying they were just following the human reproductive system model.

The election results had to be given time to gestate before nine months later a screaming bundle of nerves was delivered into their arms.

And the Belgians could take time to celebrate with a cigar before gradually realising that they were stuck with this now and had ruined their lives.

I'm guessing you're not planning a family yet, John.

Prime Minister Yves Le Telmay said it is only the king, a love of beers and the football team that unites Belgians.

To be fair, that's true of England as well, without the king part.

They're now behaving like a country who are attempting to sell the film rights of their government to Hollywood because this is starting to closely resemble the plot of a bad Rob Schneider movie.

He's the crazy Belgian Prime Minister who knows he can't do his job.

She's the crazy Belgian lady who thinks he can.

Rob Schneider is Prime Minister Yves La Telm.

Leanne Rhimes is crazy Belgian lady Michelle Waffle.

Coming next spring, those crazy Belgians.

Rated M for Messi.

Bugle, happy birthday now.

And last week was the 90th anniversary of the assassination of the Russian Tsar and his family in 17th of July 1918.

Now, John, of course, the next day, the 18th of July 1918, Nelson Mandela was born.

Coincidence?

No.

So is Nelson Mandela the real Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia?

Of course, many people have claimed to be Anastasia.

Mandela's kept an almost eerie silence on the matter.

She disappeared on the 17th of July, coincidentally, the same day the rest of her family were gunned down in a non-drive-by shooting.

And Nelson appeared the next day, unable to remember anything about his dramatic history as a despot's daughter and the pinned-down girl of the Russian Revolution.

Nelson then said almost nothing coherent for almost the next two years, fuelling media speculation that he is in fact the missing princess.

And throughout most of the following 90 years, members of the Russian royal family have strenuously denied that Mandela is the Duchess, claiming that he looks nothing like her and is a man.

But Mandela has somehow managed to keep himself in the public eye nevertheless.

DNA tests have proved inconclusive, but Mandela was once overheard singing Boney M's Russian revolutionary classic Rohrar Rasputin whilst waiting for a bacon sandwich at a motorway service station outside Blumfontein.

Russia does seem pretty confused at the moment.

For most of the last century, Tsar Nicholas II was officially reviled as a tyrant.

To Russia's Soviet regime, he personified all they tried to destroy in the revolution of 1917.

And yet now, a Russian TV program is counting votes, public votes, for the greatest ever Russian.

And the Tsar is currently tied for the lead with Stalin.

Andy, that is a country which does not know what it is.

Lo, John, it's a country that drinks too much.

Peter the Great, that's a clear choice for you there.

The clues in the name.

Well, Peter the Great, he used to hide dwarves in cakes, so no wonder they don't vote for him.

That's a reason to vote for him.

Embassy news now.

And in a major development, news came out this week that the US would be establishing a diplomatic presence in Iran for the first time in 30 years.

And this is quite a turnaround for President Bush, who had Iran in his catchy little axis of unpleasantness.

for almost the whole of his time in office.

And it isn't a full embassy.

It's kind of a halfway house to becoming one.

It's a kind of MB.

Its official name is in fact a US interest centre, which sounds as if it's a kind of modern museum showing what Americans are interested in.

Rows and rows of glass presentational cases containing baseballs, Bibles, burgers, guns, and hardcore pornography.

A special interest centre carries out all the functions of an embassy, apart from the most important one, which is being called an embassy.

So it's not actually so much a halfway house as a just fractionally short of a wholeway house.

Britain, we've had an embassy there since 1997 when the new Labour government instigated a policy of reaching out to rogue states.

Oh, Andy, rogue states.

Do you remember them?

They were such innocent days.

Before the days of calling a nation a terrorist state, you simply went with rogue or even scoundrel.

Really?

A scoundrel state or just a simple naughty state.

Well, I think roguish would be better than rogue.

Or raffish, maybe.

Certainly not one you'd want to leave alone with your daughter or your oil interests.

This decision has split the Bush administration and some have called it the end of the Cheney era, which I think in future may be a very useful language euphemism for a disastrous period in someone's life.

How has worked today, dear?

It was a non-stop Cheney era.

That's how it was.

I see my divorce as the end of my Cheney era.

Can the Chicago Cubs win the World Series and halt their 100-year Cheney era?

Cheney was unsurprisingly favouring military strikes and the State Department favoured diplomacy.

And military strikes are now Cheney's answer to absolutely anything.

He locked his keys in his car last week and ordered three F-16 bombers to fire missiles at it.

Yes, he completely destroyed the car, but to be fair, he got his keys back.

The recent Iranian missile testing and aggressive rhetoric with Israel had concerned some that Iran was about to become a second Iraq, whereas the US State Department in Europe now prefer it to become a second North Korea.

And does that not indicate, Andy, just how badly Iraq has gone?

That a country becoming a second North Korea is now potentially a positive move.

We really have reset those yardsticks.

Because only a couple of minutes ago, it seems Bush was prepared to personally ride a tungsten carbide-coated donkey across the border from America into Iran and challenge Ahmadinejad to a bare bonced headbutt to the death.

But now it's all lovey-dovey, and we've seen this before.

I think there's a bit of a Trojan horse thing going on here as well.

Because I think it'll turn out to, you know, it appears to be a nice parting gesture on the part of Bush.

And he'll probably, you know, say suddenly he'll offer to give Ahmadinejad a nice giant wooden replica of Tom Brady.

And then Ahmadinejad will parade the giant Brady around the streets of Tehran.

And then, all of a sudden, at the dead of night, out pops the entire US army and lays waste to the entire of Iran, whilst Bush stands on the top of Ahmadinejad's house grabbing his nuts and saying, How'd you like that, eh?

How'd you like it?

This diplomacy follows Bush's recent statement that he didn't want to be remembered as a warmonger, which is like someone leaving a fancy dress party saying they didn't want to be remembered as a cowboy when they'd come dressed as a cowboy, spent the entire evening on a mechanical bull, and had only uttered the two syllables ye and ha.

Your emails now, and this one comes in from Esther Inglis Arkell.

Good name, well done.

And it's the subject is Jewish superhero.

She writes, Dear Andy and John, I was recently listening to episode 35 of the bugle and was somewhat dismayed to hear Andy described as the first Jewish superhero.

My dismay mounted when Andy then said that Batman was Jewish.

Batman has been shown celebrating Christmas, albeit celebrating it somewhat gloomily on several occasions.

It's doubtful that he is Jewish, writes Esther.

However, Andy claimed very close to the truth with his announcement.

One of the newest superheroes to hit the comic shops, Batwoman, is Jewish.

Kate Kane is a stunningly beautiful heiress who moved from being a stunt cyclist and trapeze artist to kicking the crap out of petty thugs, murderous cultists and the occasional rampaging gorilla.

In the winter however she sets aside her red high heels and batarangs to light the candles on a menorah and cook latkers for her on-again, off-again girlfriend, Renee Montoya.

I'm neither Jewish nor a religious scholar, but I do know that children need heroes, and who better for our little ones to look up to than a hard-hitting, high-kicking, red-headed lesbian Jew in a bat suit?

That's basically how Jesus started.

We have an email here from Christina Hatimanuel, who says, Dear the Bugle, I've recently introduced a new feature into my mental the bugle.

It's called historical shh-is.

When great people said shh.

And here is a sample of quotes so far.

These are good, Andy.

Shh,

that's Harriet Tubman.

Shh,

that's Anne Frank.

And shh, that was George Washington crossing the Delaware.

Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this, writes Christina.

I certainly can't.

I like that.

If anyone else has any

historical shushes, please email them into the bugle.

Hotties from history now.

And thanks for continuing to send in your nominations to this global phenomenon of lust and history.

And this one comes from Brock Denton in France, who writes: I bring you today a nominee from the icy cold reaches of Scandinavia.

My candidate today embodies the war-starting abilities of Helen of Troy and three times the incandescence of Joan of Arc.

Hot!

Although, to be fair with Joan, her incandescence wasn't natural and was very much aided by big bales of hay.

I give you Gulvag, the Norse giantess who began the war between the two tribes of Norse gods the Isir and the Venir.

If you think that a woman who is hot enough to start an inter-deity battle is not hot enough already consider that she was burned alive three times in front of Odin only to be reborn.

Sources are unclear as to whether this third burning dispatched her, but we do know that Loki then proceeded to eat her heart.

She was so unbelievably hot that her delicious heart then managed to get Loki pregnant and he spawned a tribe of murderous troll women.

The woman not only broke down the impossible barrier of getting a man pregnant without using a sex organ, she also broke down the unbreakable glass ceiling of post-mortem impregnation.

What a survivor!

What a woman!

My only wish is that I had the chance to be impregnated by her sport of psychotic witch trolls.

Oh, yeah, so hot!

So, do keep your nominations for Hotties from History Flooding In and all your other emails to thebugle at timesonline.co.uk

sport now and the NFL are studying athletes' touchdown celebrations after rumours that some players are flashing gang signals.

The NFL have hired experts to identify the gestures.

It's like hiring a sign language expert, but one who specialises in urban declarations of war.

This has come to light after Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics was caught and fined for flashing gang signs at the Atlanta Hawks Bench.

Jacksonville Jaguars receiver Dennis Northcott said guys come from all over the country country and who knows what they're really doing.

He added that he cannot remember seeing a gang gesture in nine NFL seasons.

He said people have got signs for their kids, signs for their fraternities.

How do you differentiate who's really throwing up gang signs?

And he gave an example saying, this is a gang sign, he said, touching his index finger to his thumb to form a squished okay sign, but at the same time, it's a sign for a personnel group.

Andy, that is the fault of the personnel group.

They're just asking for trouble.

Surely a gang is just a personnel group.

Yeah, with very strict border limitations.

But the truth is, Andy, celebrations have always been controversial.

Winston Churchill's famous photograph, flashing the V sign at the camera, was widely misinterpreted as being V for victory, whereas it actually stood for the Sussex Vultures, a gang that Churchill had been affiliated to since he was 12.

He had the tattoo famously of a circling vulture spread across his chest.

And that sign signalled to the rest of his gang to launch full war against the the Hampshire Kestrels.

By that evening, 13 people were dead on the streets of Hampshire.

Yes, Churchill was a great wartime Prime Minister, but he had a dark side.

There have been some very controversial celebrations in sports.

Ian Botham, when he won the Ashes in 1981 for England, celebrated by getting on a horse and dragging the body of Australian captain Kim Hughes seven times around the boundary at the oval.

That's how he knackered his back.

We're never quite the same player again.

When footballer Gary Lineker scored his first goal for Barcelona, John, he put on a medical smock, got out a sick dog from inside his shorts, and performed an appendectomy on it.

It was in tribute to a friend of his, who was a vet, who had had a really disappointing meal out the previous week.

Just made him feel better at a difficult time.

And also, when Steve Redgrave won his first Olympic gold in 1984, he actually did a black power salute, but he did it wrong.

He just wore black panties underneath his shorts.

So no one really ever knew about it.

But if you look closely at the photos, you can.

He's got a bit of VPL there.

You can tell.

Oh, can't say that.

And in other sports, as we record now, there are still currently more riders in the Tour de France who haven't tested positive for drugs than those who have.

But that may well have changed by this time next week.

We will keep you updated.

Actually, I was watching a bit of the Tour de France coverage yesterday, John, and the Peloton, while I was riding through a French town, was pretty much...

There were a few

cyclists at the front, and then they were kind of more in a group behind them as they headed for the line.

And it was basically from overhead, it looked like the outline of a giant syringe

so bugle forecast now and john the forecast this week is will barack obama like europe so much that he will just decide to move here and if so which country would he live in well i think he'd become president of all europe right andy

he thinks his soaring rhetoric will be popular for about six months before we all turn on him i'd suggest that he lives in uh Barcelona because the food there is phenomenal.

All the places I've been, it's got the highest concentration of quality food.

And just so that buglers know, and he's not being paid to say that by the city of Barcelona.

So I think Obama will love Europe.

It's better than America, John, as you well know.

No it isn't.

No it isn't.

He's gonna stay.

He's gonna stay.

He's gonna love it.

He's gonna be swept off his feet by the European charm.

What, really?

Well, as someone who's just reminded himself what that European charm is for a couple of weeks,

I would say that I'm not sure he will be swept away by that appalling customer service and general surliness.

Well, John, maybe that was more to do with you than Europe.

Anyway, that's all from this week's bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

We'll be back next week, unless the world ends in the interim.

Bye.

Bye, Buglers.

Have a phenomenal week.

Hi Buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.