Sharon Stone fludges her pontullius

The Bugle, Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 31 of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world for the week beginning Monday, the 2nd of June, 2008, with me, Andy Zaltzman, in London and in New York City, John Oliver.

Hello Andy!

Hello buglers!

This of course has been a historic week, John, because in a town in Colombia they have made the world's largest ever poncho, proving that no matter how depressing the world may become, the poncho will always be an amusing garment, especially when you make it big enough to fit over a church.

Well done, Columbia.

I mean they might have spent a bit more time solving their drug wars, but no, they had to make the world's largest poncho, and I applaud them for that.

I now think that any church without a poncho looks somehow incomplete.

I agree.

Are you listening, Archbishop of Canterbury?

At least put a sombrero.

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

This week, the job section.

Including features on, do you work from home but miss the office atmosphere?

Then simply hire a group of people you don't really like and would never never otherwise spend time with to mill around your living room for nine hours a day.

Also, this week, a free CV-this one belonging to the astronaut and former senator John Glenn.

So, use that if any of you have got job interviews.

Yes, it might put you across as being a bit old for most jobs, but a lot of employers might find themselves thinking that they actually could do with someone in the office who's been to space and spent 25 years in the Senate.

You can't buy that kind of experience.

Top story this week and Scott McClellan's tell-all book.

Details came out this week of Scott McClellan's forthcoming book titled What Happened Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

This book has gone straight to number one in the bestseller list, generating the kind of excitement not previously seen for a book without Potter, Da Vinci or Bible in the title.

Not since The Boy Wizard have we seen these kind of scenes outside bookshops, many of which opened at midnight to queues of journalists who'd come dressed as their favourite characters from the Bush administration.

Neil Dixon, 46 from the New York Times, clutched the book close to his chest saying, I've been waiting ages for this.

There are some startling revelations in the book.

McLennan reveals that, amongst other things, Bush was not open and forthright about the war, that he rushed into a war that was not necessary, that he didn't plan adequately for the aftermath of the war, and that he relied on a manipulative propaganda campaign to sell his pet war.

Now, these highly sensitive facts, John, of course, were previously only known to anyone who had paid the blindest bit of notice at the time.

And they would also have been accessible to Scott McClellan at the time had he put his reading glasses on and looked at any of the placards at any of the anti-war protests anywhere in the world.

Other than that, we had no way of knowing this was true.

It's a good point.

I do hope he's put some monsters and car chases in this book, Andy, because he has stolen the plotline from almost every book published about the president in the last five years.

He's ripping off Robert Fisk.

This is plagiarism of the worst kind.

The reason this book is so shocking is that it comes from someone who was part of the president's inner circle.

On the day that McClellan left the White House, Bush said, One of these days, he and I are going to be in rocking chairs in Texas talking about the good old days of his time as press secretary.

And I suppose that image may still come true, but I guess it's more likely now that McClellan will be gagged and tied to his chair, and Bush will be rocking backwards and forwards in his with a rifle in his lap.

But these revelations by McClellan were were about as surprising as a friend of Beethoven selling his story to the local paper and revealing that little Ludwig really liked writing music and was pretty good at it too.

I just hope, Andy, that Scott McClellan didn't just do this for the money because if he did, that means we could have just had a whip round at the start of the Iraq war and heard the complete truth.

I'm sure everyone would have chipped in for that.

Now that would have been a very wise investment, a bargain at double the price.

Just pass a massive jar around the world and then dump it outside Scott's home.

One commentator said McClellan was a true Texan concerned with truth.

Not really.

He was press secretary at the White House.

I mean that's a position where you're not so much concerned with truth as concerned by truth.

You wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat having had a nightmare about truth chasing you off the edge of a lemonade waterfall and holding your head under the surface so all the bubbles go up your nose.

Karl Rove has spread his black leathery wings and gone on the attack.

Both he and current White House press spokesman Dana Perino have said this is not the Scott we knew.

That's presumably because the Scot they knew would say anything they wanted him to say.

If they told him to go jump off a cliff, the next thing they knew he'd already Google mapped the nearest cliff and was explaining to the press about how him jumping off a cliff was in the long-term best interest of the country.

But it's true, I think political memoirs generally do have the same relationship with truth and relevance as a pet ferret has with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

In other words, either none at all or a little bit, but entirely coincidental.

People have said that this is inconsistent.

He should have said all of this at the time.

But to be fair, McClellan did end every press conference by winking at the press and holding up a sign saying everything I just said is bullshit.

But they were too busy picking up their pens to notice.

It's kind of like one of those hostage videos.

He was just forced to read this stuff out.

Former presidential councillor Dan Bartlett said McClellan had used very inflammatory words like propaganda without a lot of evidence.

I'll tell you what other inflammatory words you shouldn't use without evidence, Andy.

Weapons, mass, destruction, mission and accomplish.

Angry lorry drivers news now and Britain has been brought to a very partial standstill once again by protesting lorry drivers complaining about the price of fuel.

They've elected to protest not by parking their lorries outside OPEC headquarters in Vienna or outside the headquarters of the world's largest oil companies, but the government who are going to add 2P to the already many P that petrol costs in Britain.

Newspapers in Britain are, in fact, calling for a cut in fuel tax, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown admits that the world is facing an oil shock.

And, you know, Britain is a godless, secular country now, Andy.

And our newspapers have become like a daily Bible, albeit a Bible with pictures of topless women in it.

And then, on the seventh day, did a paper run an editorial promoting vastly irresponsible short-term thinking on the energy crisis.

And lo,

Britain was pleased.

It's interesting you should draw the comparison with religion, John, because an expert on the BBC website said that the current oil crisis is like the dot-com boom in the 1990s.

As long as everyone kept believing in it, the price went up.

When they stopped believing in it, the price went down.

And that's a warning.

So I think we, John, as believers in oil have the power to solve the global oil crisis by stopping believing in the power of oil so when your car starts in the morning bugle listeners don't give credit to the oil instead give credit to the key in your ignition or the workings of almighty Zeus and watch the oil prices tumble you're gonna have to combat OPEC's tinkerbell theory then in that they they're encouraging children of the world to say that they do believe in oil and clapping their hands and the price will just shoot up there have been truck driver protests in both England and France, fishermen blocking ports in France, Italy, and Greece.

I mean, as it happens, the truck drivers in France were blocking ports anyway.

They were striking about something they'd actually forgotten long ago.

So they were happy to switch over and now strike about this.

People here in the United States are already panicking about the price of gas, and it is a fraction here of what it is in Europe.

If you even mentioned the price here, people would initially assume it was a joke, looking for hidden cameras around the room, then would go very quiet, then scream, run straight out into the streets and start rioting.

Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil Corp., the world's largest oil and gas company, spoke to shareholders in Dallas on Wednesday.

He spoke from a swivel chair stroking a hairless cat.

And ExxonMobil is known to be very sceptical about the global warming that would threaten its industry.

And whilst other oil companies at least try to appear like they care about the environment, Mr.

Tillerson is becoming a refreshing breath of carcinogenic air.

He said that rather than accept global warming is occurring and allow governments to implement policies which will put world economies at risk, we should instead continue the debate.

We should talk about it more.

Effectively, Andy, he would have been the man on the Titanic saying, yes, but is it sinking, though?

I know it looks like people are sliding into the water, but could that not be a trick of the moonlight?

Let's be absolutely sure before we deploy those lifeboats.

Well, I think that's better, John, for an oil company to be that honest that it is perfectly prepared to shaft the entire planet.

I find that less annoying than BP's adverts saying, oh BP are going green.

Let's know.

Oh you mean your font.

It is green.

You've literally gone green.

If you are concerned about the cost of fuel here are some tips on how to economize on your fuel bill.

One, only drive downhill.

Two, if your local amateur dramatic group is putting on a musical about an oil slick, don't use real oil.

Try using a mixture of dark treacle and human bile instead.

And three, instigate a bitter family feud, saving you from having to drive to see your folks at the weekend.

It's the green thing to do.

Think of the future, not the past.

Human devastation news now, and more than 100 nations have agreed a draft treaty banning cluster bombs.

And I'm not talking about cluster bombs who played third base for the Boston Lincoln Poot from the early days of baseball.

Nor am I talking about the Cluster Bombs, the Motown backing group who preceded the Vandelas until Martha Reeves had had enough of them pretending to blow themselves up.

No, John, I'm talking about the extremely rude, splattering harbingers of destruction that save much of their collateral damage for long after the TV crews have gone home.

These bombs split into hundreds of tiny bomblets, which sound cute and lovable, but just as fluffy little ducklings one day grow up to become homicidal killer crocodiles, so bomblets mature into raging balls of death on contact with the ground.

They do sound cute though, Andy.

Bomblets.

They could be the new Christmas craze.

Every child wants a cute little bomblet.

And if you're a child living in the Middle East, then you're probably going to get one whether you want one or not.

Dropped out of the sky by a metal Santa Claus and his fiery, fiery reindeer.

Unfortunately, the move to ban cluster bombs is opposed by a number of key weapon manufacturers and stockpilers, namely Russia, China and the US, rendering the agreement basically useless because not only are they the world's biggest producers of cluster bombs, they're the world's biggest droppers of them as well.

I've been trying to think why America will have ducked out of this treaty, John.

I think there are a number of possible reasons.

Firstly, because America thinks cluster bombs look cool when they go off, and I guess from a certain angle, they do, as long as you're not underneath them.

I think that angle has to be watching them on television.

Or from behind the controls of an aeroplane.

I guess.

I don't know.

I've never actually dropped a cluster bomb myself.

Alternatively, it's because America have around 700 million bomblets to get rid of.

And frankly, John, it would be disrespectful to the families of the manufacturers of these bomblets not to let them off.

We must not let their work have been in vain.

And thirdly, because, as America actually claimed last week, the treaty could apparently jeopardise America's participation in peacekeeping operations, which is a quite phenomenal triple jump of logic.

But some campaigners do believe that the US will change.

However, they cite the Landmine Treaty of 1997 that was never signed by the US, Israel, Russia or China, yet those nations have not used landmines since it came into effect.

So turned out they might stop doing it, but they won't say they're going to stop doing it.

It's like negotiating with a six-year-old.

Have you spent much of your life negotiating with six-year-olds still?

Well I have, and it's largely to do with landmine treaties, and it's just like negotiating with China and the US.

Very short attention span.

They crayon doodle a lot on the wall.

It's very annoying in the midst of negotiations when you're trying to get them to do stuff.

And then it's very hard to regulate their sugar intakes.

That is the one thing that six-year-olds and US ambassadors have in common.

They both get very haywire when they've had too many sweets.

Testify.

The little bomblets have got a high failure rate, which makes them very like little turtles.

But unlike little turtles, the ones that don't make it, don't become tasty little canopies for passing sharks.

They become landmines, which are banned.

So essentially these cluster bombs are landmines for the lazy.

They're countries that can't be asked to go to the trouble of actually laying landmines themselves.

They just let luck do it for them.

But I'll tell you what, John, I would not like a cluster bomb going off in my garden, unless the foxes were sunbathing on my patio again.

In which case I could see a moral and tactical justification for it.

I just think they're nice, those foxes, Andy.

I don't see what your problem is.

Well, we'd never be able to use our entire garden again for fear of treading on an unexploded bit bit of liberation weaponry.

But that's worth it to get rid of those foxes.

But, Andy, here's the thing: your last two houses,

you've had troubles with foxes at both houses.

It's starting to look like it might be you and not the foxes.

You're somehow you're antagonizing those foxes.

Yeah, well, your last two countries, you've had a problem with Muslim extremists, John.

I don't keep bleating on about it.

And now, a special Bugle Bloopers section.

I love bloopers, Andy.

I love bloopers.

Do you prefer a blooper to a gaffe, or do you see them as very much interchangeable?

No, I like a blooper, Andy.

I like to, even when I see gaffs, I like to call them bloopers, because I prefer the word blooper to gaffe.

It's a lot more funny to say.

And top blooper of recent times, Hillary Clinton.

She made a classic blooper last week when she was talking about why she should stay in the race.

And she said, my husband did not wrap up the the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June right then there was a slight pause when she could have stopped talking now I'll just carry on running but instead she decided to say some more words and the words that came out of her face were this we all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California I just don't understand it Andy, is there a funnier blooper than one which is assassination related?

Who can forget the blooper of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand?

What a blooper.

And that led to some violent slapstick for years afterwards.

I just think it's come to a sorry pass, John, when a woman can't make a veiled assassination threat at an election rival candidate without people getting all pro-life about it.

Was this a tacit admission, John, that Hillary Clinton was in fact responsible for the assassination of Bobby Kennedy?

It was unclear whether she was trying to confess to that.

To be honest, I think it would have been less politically damaging to confess to the assassination of bobby kennedy than imply that obama should have been assassinated that would have been a better explanation if she just told me oh no of course i would never say i would never say anything as awful as to imply that obama might be assassinated all i'm saying is i'm taking full admission for the assassination of bobby kennedy

It was kind of a veiled mafia threat though, wasn't it?

It seemed to be basically saying, it would be an awful shame if that nice Mr.

Obama of yours got damaged, wouldn't it?

All she was saying is that people die in June.

June is one of the months that people die in.

It's quite a long, there's 31 days in June.

So it's slightly over a 12th.

There might be an American John.

There's only 30 in June in Britain.

Another top-quality blooper this week came from no less a source than Sharon Stone, who implied that the earthquake in China...

which has killed tens of thousands of people, was a result of bad karma caused by the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

Does display a certain misunderstanding of the nature of plate tectonics on the part of Stone, who of course was most famous for fludging her pontulius in basic instinct.

She was what?

Say those words again and she fludged her punctulius.

I can't be any clearer than that.

You know what I'm saying.

That is the most lyrical description of that crass scene I've ever heard.

Stone added, I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else.

Oh, confirming her reputation as the 21st century's Jesus Christ,

who peddled very much the same message that Stone is now peddling.

Jesus, of course, also is reported not to have worn knickers at his police interview in an effort to distract Pontius Pilate.

I mean, you're going to hell anyway, Andy, but I mean, that certainly has sealed the deal.

I think it's historically true.

I will bet you five shekels that Jesus did not wear women's pants at his police interview.

Very well phrased.

She said when she saw the images of the earthquake in China, I thought, is this karma?

And the only way she could have gotten away with that would have been if she'd immediately followed it up by saying, and then I thought, no, of course it isn't.

This, John, does provide more proof that there really should be an International Convention on Actors' Rights, which states that actors are allowed to speak if and only if someone else has written it down for them and told them what kind of face to pull when they're saying it.

Another blooper from Rachel Ray, the bubbly lady, average cook and dunkin' doughnut spokesperson.

She came under fire from Conservatives who were wearing a black and white scarf in a commercial, which they felt looked too much like a kefir.

Not that it looks like a kefir, merely that it looks too much like a kafir.

And if you're unsure what a kafir is, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin puts it poisonously like this: it's the traditional scarf of Arabic men, which has come to symbolise murderous Palestinian.

Oh no, it isn't.

Oh, she started off well there, she was right about the traditional scarf bit.

If only she'd left it there and stopped talking.

There seems to be a bit of a theme with people in America and talking.

Well, that's right.

It's a problem.

People start well when they speak here, and it's all about knowing when to slam in a full stop.

Rachel Ray, or as she's known in Britain, who,

admitted that it was wrong to appear in a doughnut advert wearing a balaclava and a bomb vest and screaming death to the West, and threatening to chop the icing off a doughnut if America did not withdraw its troops from Iraq.

So she's also admitted that some of her recipes contain coded messages with instructions for sleeper cells to start baking scones.

And also, Rachel Ray's catchphrase, how good is that?

when translated into Portuguese is como bom e iso, which sounds a bit like, come on, bom over ir, son.

Other bloopers, and Tony Blair has said that he will devote the rest of his life to uniting different religious faiths,

which appears to be a tacit admission that antagonizing Islam in the way that he spent so much of his time doing might have been, with hindsight, a bit of a blooper.

In Israel, Ehud Olmut, he is facing more scandals than a dyslexic shoe shop owner opening up in the morning.

Thank you very much.

And also a famous blooper from history, one on a visit to Poland, President Jimmy Carter, delivered a speech which was mistranslated.

When Carter told the Poles that he understood their anxiety about democracy, the translator stated that Carter quotes desired them sexually.

What?

Is that true?

That's true.

Well, I found it on the internet, so it's true.

Of course, American presidents have pretty much all got at least one faux pas in their cupboard.

Bill Clinton's famous faux pas of having his intel schnozzle his Mabutu.

19th century presidential star Ulysses S.

Grant.

He made a real blooper when he misread the signals whilst having an official dinner with Queen Victoria and turned up at her bedroom wearing nothing but a Stars and Stripes thong and an Uncle Sam hat with a riding crop between his teeth.

Your emails now and this from Mr.

Richard Francis who writes, John is a miso-archist.

Dear buglers, as a New Zealand citizen and thus a loyal subject of Her Majesty the Queen, lucky you.

Calm down, John.

I have to take umbrage at the extremely disrespectful comments made by that miso-archist, John Oliver, in show 30.

How do you respond to that accusation, John?

I'd like to be able to refute them, but I mean, there's no doubt that I uncaked a very repressed volcano and there was something of a verbal eruption.

And I don't know where it came from but I've been away from Britain for almost two years and I guess it's missing Britain in the most visceral human sense.

Richard continues yes I've made the word miso-archist up but Google was extremely uncooperative in finding a word that expresses my true disgust.

In the good old days comments like that would get your head lopped off.

Nowadays nothing and they call that progress.

Count yourself lucky John.

There was a time not so long ago when my head would have been on a spike on the Tower of London, waved around by the Queen and what a way to die.

As long as it was your head on her spike and not the other way around.

I think I'm out.

I think you're in more trouble than me now.

Perfect.

Perfect.

Richard concludes.

If the Queen is listening, I will gladly pop over.

If the Queen's listening, you're a dead man, Andy.

At least there's an ocean between me and the good lady.

All she needs to do, concludes Richard, is proclaim who will rid me of this turbulent podcaster, and I will be on my way.

A Hotties from History nomination from Sean Finlay, who said, I have to vote for General William T.

Sherman as a hottie from history.

On his march through the south, he ordered every standing building burned.

Nothing is sexier than a pyromaniac.

Another hottie from history nomination came from David W.

Harrington at

Columbia University of all places.

It's good to know that America's leading intellectual minds are now devoting their time and effort to the hotties from history scheme.

He nominates Lord Byron and he writes: There are lots of images floating around the internet that depict the romantic poet much like a young Patrick Swayze with a fresh face, strong chin, and wind-swept mullet.

However, to truly appreciate Byron's hotness, we must look beyond such works of poetic genius as Child Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan, or as you Brits hopelessly pronounce it, Don Jew.

Below Byron's belt, astute scholars will discover a debt-ridden, club-footed, child-molested pederast given to bouts of incest with his half-sister and homosexual acts with whichever man happened to be nearby.

Amazingly, Byron managed to break the hearts of women throughout Europe, spawning illegitimate children like a Mississippi blues man, until he died of a simple cold before he could lead a fleet of Greek ships to their destruction at the hands of their Ottoman overlords.

Hot!

Well done, Georgie Byron.

So do keep your emails and hotness nominations rolling in to thebugle at timesonline.co.uk.

Sport now and John, there is only one place to start in the world of sport this week, and that is England to USA Mill.

What a great victory for our footballers.

It's good that our national sport is still our national sport and hasn't been annexed by the Yanks Andy.

It was a proud day.

Well, I'd imagine that America, population 300 million, will be eating its football-shaped breakfast cereals with just a hint of embarrassment after tiny little England, only 175th the size of America geographically, taught you guys a footballing lesson.

Take that.

George Washington, Benji Boy Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Mark Twain, Neil Armstrong, Topcat, Credence Clearwater Revival, Top Cat, ex-golfers, Muffin Spencer Devlin.

Your boys took one hell of a beating.

That is the only time that Topcat has found himself in the same list as Benjamin Franklin.

Also this week, the NBA finals are kicking off.

Do you kick off a game of basketball, John or not?

No, you don't kick a basketball.

At no point do you kick a basketball Andy.

Absolutely no point.

It would be so much of a better game if you could only score by kicking it in.

You have to do a massive bicycle kick.

to slam dunk it.

I'd watch that.

I just don't think you watching it is going to be enough, Andy.

I mean, the NBA is quite a successful franchise.

Who are you going to be supporting, John?

Because it's the Lakers against the Celtics or Pistons.

Is that right?

As we record?

Yeah, Pistones.

The Pistones.

What the NBA are going to want is Boston against the Lakers, Andy.

That's a historic matchup.

And I think that will capture the imagination.

of the nation.

I don't support any of the teams still in contention, John.

So I've been trying to decide who to support based on their names.

So there's good reasons for British support to support the Lakers, basically because Jim Laker, of course, was our greatest ever spin bowler, who, of course, took 19 Australian wickets at Old Trafford in 1956.

So that's one good reason for supporting the Lakers, to keep his memory alive.

For the Celtics, well, the Celts have been a very useful addition to England over the years.

Our Scottish producer, looking slightly angrily at me through the window there.

And pistons, I just love pistons, John.

They're really useful little fellas.

I've got some in my car.

I don't know what I'd do without them.

So it's really hard for me to choose which team to support.

Come on, Andy, make a choice.

What's it going to be?

Lakes, essential car parts, or Scotts?

Car parts.

I need my car.

Go pistons.

Is that what you shout when you start your car every day?

Yes.

Go pistons.

Go pistons.

I also think basketball could be improved as a game if there was a bull on the court.

But I think that is true of almost all sports, apart, ironically, from bullfighting.

Well, no, that happened this year and it didn't work, honey.

The Chicago Bulls, their starting five, were just five bulls.

What you have to say is they were hard to score against, but they got into foul trouble early and they weren't the best offensive outfit.

It depends what you define offence as.

If it is

getting a basketball into a hoop, they were awful.

If it is goring your opposition, they were outstanding.

But they gave up a lot of technical fouls.

And now in the audio cryptic crossword slot, thanks for your suggestions for what should replace the audio crosswords, ranging from a Sudoku.

If you really want an audio Shudoku, here are the numbers involved.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, blank.

Cut them up, use your own sound editing software to create your own audio Sudoku.

However, what we're going to have instead is a chance to build your own soundscape from history.

A genuinely historic moment the Bugle is now enabling you to collect the sounds of week by week to build up the true sound of the Boston Tea Party.

This week, a box of tea falling in the sea.

Next week, we'll do some waves.

Bugle forecast now and here is a weather report brought to you from NASA.

The Phoenix Mars lander has just delivered its first weather report and it is clear and sunny on Mars.

A clear, crisp Mars day.

The kind of day only that you can just sit outside, read a book and quickly asphyxiate.

What about the life on Mars forecasts, John?

Do you think they're going to find any life on Mars?

Uh yes, I think they are going to find Jimmy Hoffer living happily on Mars.

Well I predict they won't find life on Mars.

Just look at the place.

It clearly isn't there.

You didn't need to send a f ⁇ ing spacecraft to find that one out.

Well, honey, there was a very quick and inelegant dismissal of the NASA space program.

You got more chance of finding life in Aberdeen.

Take that, Aberdeen!

So, thanks very much for listening to this week's Bugle.

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

Bye-bye.

Bye!

Hi, Buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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

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

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