Obama and KSM

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers!

Welcome to issue 32 of The Bugle.

Yes, that means that in terms of knockout tournaments, it is now a full Football World Cup of Bugles.

What's going to be in the group of death?

I don't know, but last week's last week's bugle is a strong contender.

For the week beginning Monday, the 9th of June, with me, Andy Zoltzman, in London and in New York City, USA.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Let's synchronise our watches.

It's Bugle O'Clock,

the international date line of Bugle O'Clock.

It knows no GMT.

It knows no Pacific time.

The bugle is its own time zone, and it wraps around this sphere.

That is true, given that it is a podcast, so people will listen to it at random times.

There you go.

Then what started as an inane comment has turned into something approaching a fact, even if it's not in the door of the fact.

I would say it's more than a fact, John.

I'd say it's an immutable truth.

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

This week, a special home security section.

Should you use old or new technology, CCTV or a crocodile-infested moat.

Also, new government advice on how to deal with burglars.

Dace now suggests trying to welcome the burglar into your family, confuse him with hospitality, then slip some methadone into his cornflakes in the morning to give him his fix.

Also, how to deter burglars?

Borrow some police do not cross tape from your local bobby on the beat, cordon your house off, and put a small white tent up on the front lawn.

No one is going to burgle that house.

Also in the bin, a new Where Are They Now series featuring the great composers.

Week one, the Czech music whiz, Bedrek Smetner.

Following a stellar career, which involved writing more solo piano works than a lot of you put together, Smetner slipped into obscurity following his death at the age of 60 in 1884.

He became something of a loner and spent all of his time away from the public gaze in a little box underground in the Vysoredsk Cemetery in Prague.

Although his music has continued to wow audiences and critics alike, Smetner himself has done pretty much bugger all for the last 124 years.

Next week, whatever happened to Mozart, he used to be everywhere.

Top story this week, and Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for president.

The US general election has finally begun.

You may have thought that it has already been going on for a demoralizing amount of time, but those were just the primaries.

Andy, that was mere electoral foreplay.

Now it's time for the full-blown, unprotected, vigorous Democratic rutting.

And after November, we can all roll over and go to sleep for the next four years.

So it is all over, it seems, for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton have been gathered around the campaign's bedside for the last few days, holding a candle-lit vigil for a campaign that has simply refused to die.

Despite being essentially medically dead for ages now and having lost all of its useful functions, the Clintons have refused to unplug it from its special machine until its eyelids have completely stopped twitching.

Hillary's speech on the final primary last week was the biggest verbal tease I have heard for some time.

Knowing that people were simply waiting for her to pull out of the race, she expertly strung the plot out like a daytime soap opera writer.

And she started with such sympathy from people.

She'd run a great race, had been just as historic a candidate as Barack.

She'd left everything out there on the field.

It was just time to wrap it up.

And to be fair, that's how it began.

She complimented Barack Obama on his campaign, saying, it has been an honour to contest these primaries with him, just as it is an honour to call him my friend.

And tonight, I would like all of us to take a moment to recognise him and his supporters for all they've accomplished.

Perfect.

Gracious, selfless and most importantly of all, past tense.

America leaned forward in its lazy boy thinking, here it comes, the longest candidacy dogfight we've seen is about to come to a close.

Then all of a sudden we hit the future tense and she says, I want to turn this economy around.

I want health care for every American.

And America jumped off its lazy boy screaming, no, you wanted to turn this economy around.

Now you want someone else to do it.

You left everything out on the field, remember?

Stop putting things back out on the field.

Then America slumped back into its lazy boy, defeated, as she said, this has been a long campaign, and I'll be making no decisions tonight.

On what?

What film to push to the top of your Netflix queue?

You lost!

It's over.

That is the beauty of an election.

This decision gets made for you.

Every person gets one decision, and then you count all the decisions up, apart from Michigan and Florida, like you agreed on.

And then the person with the least decisions stops.

And in this case, that's you.

So please stop.

Just let the woman enjoy herself, John.

I've been thinking a lot about the highlights of Clinton's campaign.

It's been a quite heroic attempt to become the first woman to be nominated for presidency since the Republicans nominated soul singer Betty Swan in 1968.

Although this, of course, was an administrative error, the guy filling in Richard Nixon's application form had siren voice Betty's hit song Make Me Yours going round in his head at the time and wrote the wrong name down.

Nixon incidentally narrowly missed out on a Grammy that year.

I think the highlights for me John is the phenomenal amount of money that Hillary managed to raise during her campaign.

A lot of it really just from turning up on her own doorstep at 6.30 in the morning hassling herself to donate.

In the end she usually ended up caving in and just writing a check to herself for a couple more million just to make herself leave herself alone.

Yeah, she was her own greatest donor.

But I mean she's shown incredible mental toughness and It's like losing the Olympic hundred metres by three seconds, but turning up to the medal ceremony anyway, standing on top of the podium and waiting for the gold to be put around your neck.

Perhaps she's just going to turn up to the White House on Inauguration Day with enough confidence that they'll just swear her in to defuse the awkwardness of the situation.

Either that or Obama will walk into the Oval Office and she'll somehow already be behind the desk typing.

And let's not forget also that it's not necessarily over for h uh for her uh altogether, John, because she did win uh the uh election in Puerto Rico last week, which means that technically she is president or queen of Puerto Rico.

I don't know which they have there.

She could use Puerto Rico as a base, John.

Use her force of personality, her willpower, and her connections to build up Puerto Rico as a nation, becoming the new Fidel Castro, only with a different hat, before invading America to settle some scores like a vengeful carrot going on the rampage in a rabbit hutch.

Never eat my children again, Earhead.

That's true, though.

If anyone, if anyone alive can drag America back into a civil war, it's her.

But I wonder if this proves, John, the fact that Obama, rather than Hillary, has won, that America as a nation is more sexist than racist.

Is that so?

Or are they just saving up the racism for the really big one when the whole world is watching?

I mean, the beauty, they're just waiting that they can vote for John McCain and make a sexist and racist choice.

I mean, that is for your quintessential American voter there.

I mean the debate now rages on over whether Obama will pick Hillary as a running mate.

Obama is a young black man

so you would think he'd really need to pick as vice president the oldest whitest man in the world but and he can't do that because he's running against him.

Boom!

Boom!

Take that you war hero!

Boom!

Clinton has been a very divisive character.

She's really split the crowds.

Various institutions apparently grade presidential candidates, and the National Rifle Association gave Hillary an F

for her stance on Second Amendment issues.

But on the flip side, the Drum Major Institute gave her an A grade in the subject of middle-class issues.

So it just goes to show.

I don't know what it goes to show, but it goes to show.

She's very pro-drums as well.

I mean, I know they said that wasn't the issue they were voting on, but it has to have helped.

Well, she has spent most of the last eight years banging her own drum, so maybe that's something to do with that.

I guess that there are a few problems with picking Hillary Clinton as VP.

One, large parts of America hate her, and hate is not a vote magnet unless you're a Republican and attaching that magnet to gay people, immigrants or abortionists.

Two, her husband will be a problem.

He has more skeletons in his closet than Pole Pot.

And finally, number three, the fact that Hillary probably wouldn't see it as vice president so much as co-president, or indeed just president.

When in fact, there were rumours from within the Clinton camp that Bill Clinton has spent most of the last few days skipping around the family breakfast table saying, hands up if you've ever been president.

Oh, looks like I win that one again.

You're making the coffee.

I really feel that that would be, that's such a good joke.

to play and it's such a unique joke amongst couples.

I think he has to do it at some point.

I'm not saying do it now, the wound is raw.

But I think sometime, 18 months' time, it's got to be worth.

The whole room will go quiet and she'll know what's coming.

Bugle lore news now, and the law very much in inverted commas.

Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the number three ranked terrorist in al-Qaeda, and four of his henchmen, are appearing before a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay.

Shouldn't you technically call him the bronze medal terrorist?

Yeah, he's bronze medal.

I guess, you know, if you're having a terrorism Davis Cup tie, you probably wouldn't have him in the singles, but you might have him playing doubles with bin Laden.

Or maybe if it was a dead rubber, he might get one of the three set singles on day three.

That's right.

Last week was the opening day at Guantanamo Bay of the trial of the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 tax on the US.

So I say trial.

It is in fact a military tribunal just to put America in an even more controversial situation.

They just live for controversy at the moment, Andy.

They're like early 90s Madonna.

Of course, a lot of people are saying that he won't get a fair trial, and America's response to this is, well, he should have thought of that before he did his terror.

Proving both sides' points, I guess.

The man in question, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has dismissed the trial as an inquisition and is demanding to represent himself in court.

He said that he had five years under torture and wished to become a martyr, and it seems as though America is about to oblige.

And, Andy, if you're an al-Qaeda leader, and I'm not saying you are, I'm not saying you are, although I'm not saying you're not either, I merely don't have enough information either way at this time.

If you are though, then you've got almost everything on your wish list of hate to Santa since September the 10th, 2001.

You pulled off an improbable and brutal attack which provoked your victim to lash out wildly at anyone with an owl anywhere near their name, turning genuine sympathy into resentment, then outright hostility, adding to the mix an illegal war fostering even more resentment, and then the cherry on the cake cake being that if you need someone to bump you off into the eternal paradise that you inexplicably think you deserve, then once again, just rub the great Satan up the wrong way, and like a myopic genie, your wish will be granted.

Khaled, uh, can we call him Khalid, or is that a bit over-familiar?

I'm going to call him KSM.

He sounds like a Dutch airline.

He said these exact words, I'm looking to be martyr for long time,

perhaps suggesting that he learned his English from a Thai prostitute,

Which, you know, is, I don't know if that's going to be relevant to the trial.

But it's interesting that KSM and the USA, for once, are actually very much singing off the same hymn sheet.

And hymn number one in this case is, Bring on the Death Penalty.

Words by Dee Rumsfeld, music by Hubert Parry, 1918, to the tune of Jerusalem.

Surely, Annie, anything he wants to do, you should do the opposite.

This man is a power tool.

No, because he went on to shout at the end of this little speech, God is great, God is great, God is great.

Now, if God does reward, Andy, those who perpetrate mindless acts of mass violence, I will happily not go to heaven because I don't want to spend eternity having awkward conversations with an arsehole.

Again, that's a big if, if God does reward that if.

KSM has undergone the US hobby of waterboarding,

simulated drowning, which seems to be going on quite a lot, so much so that some inmates have apparently evolved gills as a defence mechanism.

But cleverly, they did this not in Guantanamo Bay.

So in legal terms, it's fine as long as the prosecuting lawyer looks sideways at the judge and taps the side of his nose when introducing the evidence.

So, it will be okay.

The problem is how fair a trial can actually be when the prosecution openly admits using waterboarding and other dishes of torture tapas.

I mean, try that in front of Judge Judy, she'll laugh you out of the courtroom.

It's thought that the prosecution are going to try and re-obtain the information they're going through waterboarding with so-called clean questioning.

Even that sounds a little sinister.

I mean, maybe they'll just try the the old, I remember that thing you said to us when you thought you were drowning.

What was that again?

And if he says it, then boom, that has got to be admissible.

He said the exact same words in a non-precipice of death scenario.

Bang to rights, bucko.

Also, the little noticed 28th amendments that the Bush regime has hurried through could be crucial.

That amendment being that out of sight, out of mind is now legally binding, as is what Geneva doesn't know won't hurt it.

Also, the trials are taking place in Camp Justice

in Guantanamo, which does sound rather like a new prime-time TV show in which Graham Norse presides over retrials in a special spangly court at the Old Bailey.

Actually,

the key thing there, it's like with Japanese.

The key thing is the inflection.

It's actually Camp Justice.

There's a question mark at the end of it.

But we can't complain, John.

We can't complain about the way America is conducting these trials because let's not forget, they invented the war on terror so they can make the rules.

It's very much like when we in Britain invented cricket.

You know, no one can claim that the LBW law is objectively morally right.

But because we invented the great game and we didn't want people putting their legs in the way of the wickets, we invented the LBW law.

It would be the highest cantaloupe on the melon shelf of hypocrisy to demand that America backs down on this.

But what is KSM's problem, Andy?

The US has pledged that he will receive a fair trial and they don't just pledge anything, you know.

When these people pledge something, it stays pledged.

No joke.

If they pledge they'll get you a cup of coffee you know you have a cup of hot hot bean coming your way u.s defense secretary robert gates said that washington is stuck with guantanamo whether people want to close it or not this administration has effectively given this country a deeply regrettable tattoo to remember them by and it's going to take a long time and be extremely expensive to erase that tattoo Of the 270 or so prisoners there, Gates claims around 50 to 70 of them were an irreducible minimum, but against whom it would be very difficult to bring charges due to either not enough or no evidence.

Terrific selling job, Willie Lohman.

I'll take it.

There is a group which are seen as being too dangerous to release, but whom no case can be brought.

And this seems to suggest that when they were brought into Guantanamo, they were innocent, but they've now been treated so badly that they are fully qualified terrorists with a violent grudge against the West.

In other words, they've managed to create their very own terrorist camp.

And now they know the location of one of the most effective producers of Islamic terrorists.

they have absolutely no option but to order airstrikes against themselves.

I'm sick of evidence though John.

It just really clogs up the legal system.

It must be so dull for judges.

You know another bit of evidence.

Oh let me guess.

Is it another exhibit?

What a surprise.

Please do show it to the jury.

I'm sure they're absolutely busting to see it.

The most interesting detail of the trial so far is perhaps this.

KSM saw the sketch made of him by the court artist when it was given to the defence team and he complained that that it made his nose look too big.

The artist said she would alter the sketch accordingly.

See?

We're not complete animals, KSM.

Also, it's interesting that he would choose to focus on the court artist's sketch of him after five years of imprisonment and torture and imminent death.

I suppose everyone has to draw the line somewhere.

I was actually in, Andy, a replica Guantanamo's cell this last weekend in Philadelphia, Andy.

That's right, you wouldn't, I'm afraid, be entirely alone in thinking that.

And

I can tell you, it is about the size of a Japanese hotel room with none of the kits chic.

But some people see a torture chamber Andy.

I see this.

Studio space, cozy, fixer-upper, very quiet neighbours, secure location, close to the beach, in a gated community.

It all depends how you look at these listings.

Also, there's been controversy over the American use of floating prisons.

That sounds like a nightmare to me, John.

I used to find it claustrophobic when I went punting in Oxford, so I can imagine what a prison boat is like.

So much force force bon of me when you're in a boat.

Let's get really grating.

Booze news now.

And cheers, Andy.

Cheers.

Your very, very, very good health.

Boris Johnson, who, through some combination of a sick twist of fate and the moronic instincts of voters, has become the Mayor of London, attempted his first piece of legislation last week, namely to ban the drinking of alcohol on the London Underground.

And London has reacted to this alcohol ban by throwing a weekend circle line drinking party, which led to a trail of broken glass, 17 arrests and six closed stations.

The trail of broken glass was very much in the spirit of Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs out to find their way home.

Revellers could simply follow their vomit, urine, glass and shame safely home.

It's a more visceral, old-fashioned version of GPS.

But Andy, here's the thing: there is only one person in Britain now remaining who is above this ban, this ban of drinking on the tube and that is the only person who is above the law in Britain Andy and who might that be I think it is Her Majesty the Queen Andy oh no I don't know where this is going Her Majesty the Queen it is now her monarchical duty to go on a drunken rampage around the underground what better way of demonstrating her power than getting blasted on fortified wine and taking a corgi out for a ride on the Piccadilly line

listen Andy here's the thing there's been some shock in America about the scenes coming out of London, which seemed to resemble a Hieronymous Bosch painting.

But here's the thing, every nation, Andy, has its favourite form of consumable self-annihilation.

For Americans, it's food.

For the British, it is the tipple.

It's interesting, Etsy, that you said your good health, which is obviously a a greeting that you use when sharing a drink with someone, given that the spectacular number of deaths now caused by alcohol abuse in Britain.

and I think a lot of the problems on the tube came down to a misunderstanding of a matter of law.

British law is very confused ever since we joined the European Union.

And I think a lot of youth people in particular think that it is still illegal to drink less than your body weight in alcohol.

But that's just a misunderstanding.

It is actually legal not to drink that much.

You know, as a nation, we're basically drinking to forget.

everything that we've done.

When you have this much of a terrible past, then you need something as an anesthetic to make the shame go away.

That's why Americans don't drink as much.

They haven't got as sordid a past as we have yet.

Yet.

Yet.

It'll come.

You'll hit the source soon enough, my friends.

Although looking at the age of the human slurry who huke all over our beloved high streets every weekend, it does seem they're actually drinking to forget things that haven't happened, drinking to obliterate their completely hopeless future.

People in America did act extremely surprised, Andy, but you know, for such, for such a repressed people as the Brits.

And we do react.

We like it to be spectacular.

With the death of Princess Diana, you know, a hugely overblown reaction, an orgy of grief, which led to people waking up bleary-eyed a few weeks later, assuming that they dreamt that they gathered together in a park to weep uncontrollably with their fellow Brits over someone they did not know, only to then realise that Elton John was still number one.

And yet, have the government learnt nothing from this?

Because reports are coming out of the British government's plans to ban parents from giving their children a taste of wine or beer at home.

You have just seen what happened.

You don't need to be Nostradamus to know that people will protest this by getting their children absolutely trolley to spike the government.

Kids across the country will be hammered like a wonky nail.

If they're not pushing it on them, they'll be spiking their milk.

No one tells us how not to raise our children.

Not when it comes to alcohol.

Also in Booze News, a watchman on board a nuclear submarine, let's not forget the first word of those two words, the words nuclear, was caught at work having drunk beer and fallen asleep and the submarine crashed in the Red Sea last week.

Now John, I'm not an expert on nuclear submarines, but I do know that drinking and driving is wrong at the best of times and it's especially wrong when you're driving a f ⁇ ing nuclear submarine.

Well, it's interesting the word you would choose to use, Danny.

That would seem to get you a place in the military because Executive Officer Lieutenant Commander John Aitkin said to his he was caught on a camera phone saying to his crew after the incident, and I quote, getting your fing tapper down whilst watching a fing DVD and swigging lager isn't accepting responsibility for your shit mate.

It's not a fing laugh.

There could have been a fing fire.

There could have been a f ⁇ ing flood.

There could have been a f ⁇ ing collision.

All because a guy who was supposed to do his fing job couldn't fing do it.

Who said oratory was dead, Andy?

He sounds like an even more drunk Churchill.

That's a superb concentration of swearing, and that's that's the kind of swearing that really built the British Empire.

Yeah, we basically just cursed our way across the world and intimidated the locals.

The crewman has been placed on leave from the HMS Superb, or as he called it, the HMS fing superb, mate.

Honestly, it's a bloody great submarine.

No kidding.

Best fing submarine I've ever seen.

Do you want to go on it?

Come on, let's take the little lady for a spin.

I've only had a couple.

Let's make it do a wheelie.

I can do a wheelie in the submarine.

Also, in Booze News, the drinks manufacturer Anilax have announced the development of an alcohol-free whiskey, which gives you all the aggression of conventional whiskey without the hangover.

Will be available in all schools from next week.

World Food Summit News now and the UN's World World Food Summit has been taking place in, of all cities, Rome.

Of all the cities in the world you can have a food summit in to address the problems of the world starving to death, Rome is possibly the rudest.

I mean I've been to Rome quite a few times, John, and it is impossible not to stuff your face with high-quality food in Rome.

I once sat on a bench in Rome for half an hour and without even noticing it, I'd had a four-course meal.

Top quality.

That's right, This summit was held last week to discuss the global crisis caused by the dramatic increases in the price of staple foods.

One of the more peculiar attendees was cheeky Bobby Mugabe who took time off from imprisoning and murdering his political opposition at home to attend the World Food Summit in an act of almost performance art level irony.

This is the man who has single-handedly starved his nation.

Almost half of the population suffer from malnutrition.

About 80%

of the country's 12.3 million people are unemployed and many depend on food aid.

Foreign Office Minister Mark Maloch Brown said this is like Pol Pot going to a human rights conference.

But here's the thing Andy.

Let's give him the benefit of some mountainous doubt.

Perhaps he learned something from this conference.

After all, he did take time out of his schedule to turn up and we know he's very busy at the moment with all that election rigging and murdering.

Very busy.

Credit where it's due.

Well, maybe he's trying to learn from his mistakes, John.

Because, you know, clearly, you know, he's clearly got many virtues as a leader, as we've discussed on the bugle before.

You know, people are still voting for him despite everything.

But clearly, food is one thing that he has got wrong, as demonstrated by the fact that his nation hasn't eaten anything for about 10 years.

So he's just learning from his mistakes, that's all.

Or perhaps not, because almost upon landing back home, he threw out all NGO aid groups from Zimbabwe and banned them from returning, merely for looking at him a bit funny.

He's banned aid agency field work, and Zimbabwe's poor and starving and age-ridden millions presumably responded, Alright, Mr.

M, you've made your point.

Now, is there any chance that we can die with at least a shred of dignity?

Because Mugabe John is a man who very much wears his leadership style under his nose.

That kind of a moustache simply cannot be a mistake, even

at his age.

If you ever have a child or meet someone, a friend or a lover, who chooses to wear a moustache like that, that's an early warning signal.

They are about to try and take over something and not in a normal way.

Like you say, that moustache is the tip of a very aggressive iceberg.

The West has blamed Mugabe for starving his nation to death, and Mugabe has blamed the West.

So I can't really see a resolution to this particular argument.

It seems that neither side is willing to back down and blame themselves.

This is really really becoming the political equivalent of a grinding baseline clay court tennis rally between Valander and Lendel in the early 80s.

Gio, they once had a rally, John, at the French Open that went on overnight, and it only finished when Lendel shanked a backhand whilst trying to stir sugar into his coffee at breakfast.

McGabby's presence was described by Mark Malick Brown, the British Foreign Office Minister, as like Pol Pot going to a human rights conference, or as it turned out, it was rather like Polpot going to a human rights conference, opening the door to that conference, but then not looking around and saying, oh, I'm terribly sorry.

I thought this was the genocide conference, my mistake, do carry on, I think my one's across the road in the sports centre.

And Mugabe blamed, you know, he blamed Britain's imperial past for Zimbabwe's problem, but we in Britain had the decency, as soon as we realised that imperialism wasn't working, to do the decent thing and pull out.

The conference also discussed the impending problem of biofuels, as discussed on the Bugle some time ago, the clever plan by the West to simultaneously ease their own carbon consciences and starve more people to death, thereby reducing the number of carbon footprints on the planet.

Now, I personally, John, I'm actually very environmentally friendly.

I am fueled by biofuel.

Yeah, I did once try eating nothing but petrol cakes, but I felt sick.

Your emails now, and this one comes from Nicholas Dietz.

in New York, who writes, Dear Bugle, in episode 31, Andy mentions Sharon Stone's Pontulius.

As I had never heard, that's true, I'm not denying it, I'm not ashamed of it.

As I never heard this particular term to refer to the female genitalia, I proceeded to spend an inordinate amount of time in a valiant but ultimately successful effort to learn the definition, derivation, and/or etymology of this mysterious word.

Time well spent.

Time very well spent, Nicholas.

Congratulations.

I was quite surprised, he writes, to discover that the word originates in a rather obscure Creole language derived from Portuguese known as Papiamento, spoken by the inhabitants of Aruba and Curacao.

As it turns out, Pontulius has nothing to do with the female anatomy at all.

In fact, it is the surname of Aruban Union Leader and Adjunct General Secretary of the Confederation of Latin American Workers, Anselmo Pontulius.

You have a lot of nerve, Andy, he writes, trying to sully the reputation of this Caribbean labour leader by claiming that he is nothing more than Sharon Stone's vagina.

For shame!

Do you have any idea of the working conditions of the average Aruban labourer?

Well, neither do I, but I imagine that carrying tray after tray of fruity drinks with little umbrellas isn't as taxy as working in a coal mine.

After your vicious attack, how many Arubans will show up at the next Aruban labour rally to hear the chants of Workers of the World Unite emanating from Miss Stone's vagina?

Perhaps a few, but not many, that's for sure.

With all due respect, I know Anselmo Pontulius.

Anselmo Pontulius is a friend of mine, and you, Sharon Stone's vagina, I know Anselmo Pontulius.

And by the way, Andy, he continues, how would you like it if people started saying things like, Hey, check out the girl over there, you can totally see her Zaltzman.

I wouldn't like it.

I I have to I have to agree.

I wouldn't like it, but if that's what it looked like, then I'm not going to argue with it.

He concludes I believe you owe an apology to mister Pontulius, to the Confederation of Latin American Workers, to the people of Aruba, and to all Papiamento speakers the world over.

Well, I d I do do heartily apologise.

Apologise, Andy.

Well, I would apologise, though, except I spelt Pontulius differently,

and it's a different word entirely.

It's pure coincidence.

Mine's got a silent G on it.

Oh, Andy, this is a terrible answer.

It's got a silent G.

It's a politician's answer.

It's a politician's apology.

Just front up and apologise to the Union of Latin American Workers.

Just time for a quick hottie from history nomination from Krisna Santos, who says, Dear Andy and John, after the fairly weak nomination of Lord Byron, we all know Keats was the real heartbreaker among English romantic poets, I knew it was necessary for me to put forward a real hottie.

It would be nearly impossible to find a hottie with better credentials than Greece's blind prophet Tiresias.

Since giving an in-depth description of all Tiresias' sexy escapades would probably make any but the freakiest of folks spontaneously combust, I will simply list them.

1.

Blinded by Athena after catching her bathing naked.

Hot.

2.

Turned into a woman by Hera after killing a pair of snakes sexing each other.

Hot.

3.

Took full advantage of womanhood and got married and had children.

Hot!

4.

I can't wait to hear your reaction to this.

4.

Turned back into a man after trampling another pair of copulating snakes.

Volcanic!

5.

Called to judge which gender had more pleasure during sex by Zeus and Hera, being the only person to really know.

Atoll in the South Pacific.

And finally, number six, the one who told Oedipus about that whole sex with his mother episode.

Well, that's just disgusting.

He may have been blind, but that probably made his multi-gender adventures that much hotter.

Let's not be blind and deny this hottie for the ages a spot on June's hottie list.

Taresius for Mr.

and Mrs.

June.

Oh, very good.

That is our first double nomination.

Does Tiresia take the whole of June?

It's hard to deny that.

It's hard to deny Tiresias taking the whole of June.

Thank you for your emails.

Do keep them flooding in to thebugle at timesonline.co.uk

sport now and man can now run faster than he could a couple of weeks ago.

Jamaican Usain Bolt ran 100 meters in a world record 9.72 seconds which means that if he could run from New York to London at the same speed he could do it in six days six hours 18 minutes and 43.08 seconds provided that he didn't sink get tired pull a hamstring or get eaten by an albatross good luck with that Hussain

here's the thing and I'm not denying that that is fast Because it is fast.

That is a quick way to cover 100 meters worth of ground.

What I'm saying is he's never beaten me in a race.

And surely that is hanging over him.

The fastest I've ever seen you move is when you've got a football and someone is running at you looking like they might try and tackle you and you will just go in the opposite direction at considerable speed.

No, then I'll change direction again quickly, ghost around them and smack it like a conquer into the top corner.

John, I know it's been a while since you've been in Britain, but that is not how this nation remembers your football.

But sadly for Hussein Boltz, any athletic record is now under the shadow of drugs, which has shadowed its shadow all over athletics for so long now.

And there are a number of world records dating back to the 1980s, particularly in women's athletics, that look like they will never be beaten.

There was

systematic cheating, of course, by the Eastern Bloc baddies in those days.

Jarmila Kratochville over the Barry Bonds of women's 800-metre running.

It actually turns out that not only was she on drugs, probably, but she was in fact a greyhound dressed up to look like a woman who might actually be a man and that is how she ran 800 meters in one minute 53.

She was a greyhound.

She was a greyhound.

Yep.

Dressed up like a

like a masculine woman.

Is that what I mean that seems to be what you're saying Andy?

If it's not true yarner sue me

well I think yarmiller might just take you off with that very kind offer.

I know most of the leading

Eastern block runner of the 80s are very keen bugle listeners.

And we got an email from Marita Koch the other day.

just just fairly dull reminiscences about 200 metre races she'd been in.

Really, if you're going to email in, Marika, it really has to be...

Don't make it about yourself all the time.

And Marlise Goer nominated herself as a hottie from history.

I explained to her, no, you've got to have been dead for a long time.

And did she say, well, I'm dead inside?

Does that count?

And he had to say, I'm afraid not.

And the best sports story of the week.

Unquestionably, the fight between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays kicked off when pitcher Scott Shields hit Coco Crisp with a pitch.

It didn't look that bad to me, John.

I'm not sure what kicked it off.

Apparently, though, there had been a long-running argument between Crisp and Shields about over whether White Snake are better than Beethoven.

And, well, Crisp lost it completely when Shields kept going on about here I go again on my own, just saying, you know, that's just not as good as the Ninth Symphony.

They really needed the umpire to step in and say, you're not comparing like with like there.

It was was a great sight, though.

A genuine bench emptier.

The bullpens sprinting fatly across the fields.

There were some relief pitches that I think had never run quite as far.

By the time they

reached the fight, it had finished and they needed oxygen.

But Crisp and Shields have now both gone to the top of voting for the starting spots in the All-Star Game Fight, which promises to be a classic.

One of the commentators, I believe, said, well, it was a good game until this.

And this illustrated the hypocrisy associated with violence in sport, John.

I mean, let's think back to World War I.

A football game breaks out in the middle of a war, everyone's a hero.

Nowadays, you get a little bit of fighting in the middle of a football tournament, and all of a sudden, it's not on.

That is hypocrisy.

And also, I tell you who would disagree with his statement over the Boston Rays fight, and that is the entire crowd who made their feelings known about the situation with huge cheers, excitable screams, and constant applause.

There's absolutely no way they were doing anything other than loving that mayhem that was being visited for their viewing pleasure.

Thankfully, MLB demanded that both Crisp and Shields held a press conference at the end to say that Beethoven and White Snake were both good.

The argument was never over which was bad, it was which was better.

They're both good, and MLB wanted to make that clear.

And finally, the audio cryptic crossword replacement and the forecast have been cancelled because, due to persistent juvenility, we have overrun on this recording spectacularly.

And I'm getting dirty looks from Haley, our producer, who I think wants to have at least some of her weekend free from the editing desk.

So it's been a pleasure talking to you.

Do keep your emails coming in to thebugle at timesonline.co.uk.

Bye-bye from me.

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 review literally anything.

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