Food! Nonexistent Food!

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 26 of The Bugle for the week beginning Monday, the 28th of April, 2008.

That means there are 247 days left in in the year, and 24-7 is just how we work at the bugle, always on call.

Also, today would have been Saddam Hussein's birthday, so I realise this might seem a bit insensitive publishing a comedy show on this day of all days.

But on the flip side, John is now a year older than he was in issue 25.

That's true.

The retrospective happy birthday, John.

Thanks very much, Andy.

There's no better happy birthday than the retrospective happy birthday.

I understand that you sang karaoke.

Yeah, that's true.

We went out and I got to hear the spectacular sights and sound of Rob Riggle who combined Elvis's caught in a trap with a full karate demonstration.

That is what would have happened to the king had he been good at karate.

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

This week a special furniture section including how to get the best out of your sideboard, how long should you give it to use a sofa that a family member has died on?

And also, in this age of instant gratification, where now for the chaise long?

Also, in the bin to mark the beginning of the second quarter century of issues of the bugle, we're going to take you right back in time and give you as a free giveaway a recycled compressed version of the first ever issue of the bugle.

Here it is.

And there is such a point that

Top top story this week and peckish?

Well, statistically you probably are.

The head of the UN World Food Programme this week described the current global food shortages as a silent tsunami which knows no borders sweeping the world.

That is a beautifully articulated and deeply depressing point, but I'm afraid it's not true, for this tsunami is a clear respecter of borders, proven by the fact that whilst countries around the developing world are rioting in the streets in the face of malnutrition and hunger, we've only recently started to pay attention because pizza's just got a bit more expensive.

Food could actually soon be a thing of the past.

In Britain, the family food shop has gone up £15 a week on average.

And let's not forget, John, here in Britain, we don't get tasty tidbits airdropped on us like the starving Africans do.

That's true.

And yet, you don't see journalists reporting about that, do you?

No, you look, you don't.

Cost has gone up 40% worldwide since mid-2007, and there have been these riots and protests in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Egypt, many other countries that the West would love to care about but just can't.

We've got a lot on our mind at the moment.

We'll get around to it.

The neediness is a real turn off though.

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, also issued warnings about the current expansion of biofuels which converts cereals into fuel.

And could this be the biggest f ⁇ k you yet to the developing world?

Not only have we gorged ourselves to morbidly obese levels, now we are burning food as well.

Ethanol production is on course to account for some 30% of the US maize crop by 2010, dramatically curtailing the amount of land available for food crops.

We would rather have fuel than food.

People will go to restaurants in the future to have their meal set on fire in front of them.

Then they'll just sit back with a napkin in their lap, watch it burn, pronounce it delicious, tip the waiter and leave.

I mean I don't understand why this is a problem, John.

You would have thought that in an era where the world population is soaring upwards and the pressure on global food production is increasing, that using a large chunk of the world's agricultural land to make stuff for our cars, you'd thought that would be fine.

What's wrong with that?

You know, the bottom line is someone has got the maths wrong.

My theory is, though, that the world's poor, as always, are copying it right in the nadges.

But they must have developed an immunity to it by now.

Surely.

I mean, we spent the last two and a half thousand years lining them up against the wall, running straight at them and flacking them in the plums with a cricket mat surely they can barely even feel anything now these people don't need food they don't need food

and if we can just starve off the excess 30 who use a disproportionate one percent of the food and energy of the world then you know no one would have a problem is that wrong we might need a running translation for any American listeners there as to what nudges and plums refer to although to be honest I think you can probably guess

the truth is Andy is like the old saying goes you reap what you sow and when you sow the seeds of global inequality don't act surprised with what sprouts up come harvest time'.

Also, John, I don't see why it should always be us in the West that has to change our behaviour.

Why should it be us that has to use these renewable energies instead of food based car fuel?

Why can't the poor people of the world learn to eat the wind and the sun?

That's not unreasonable.

There have been rice riots around the world.

Who would have thought, John, that rice would be so popular?

I've always found it a bit dull as a staple.

I mean, I could live without rice, but it turns out the people of Haiti and the Philippines are fussier eaters than me.

Yeah, there are people now illegally hoarding rice in the Philippines to force the price up.

So rice really has become the new gold.

Rappers are going to start waving packets of rice around in their videos.

Strip clubs are going to be full of businessmen emptying rice into the G-strings of lap dancers.

Mo rice, mo problems, Andy.

It's like the Wu-Tang clan nearly said, rice rules everything around me.

And at the Olympics, at the Olympics and Beijing this year, all winning confessors will merely have a risotto poured over their heads.

Investors are even buying up food stocks as hedge funds start investing heavily in commodities.

Is there nothing that the financial markets will not profiteer with?

Oxfam has said that the problem is that agriculture as an issue stopped being sexy.

What are Oxfam suggesting that farmers wear lower cut overalls?

Come on!

That's going to set farming back hundreds of years.

They're trying to get away from that image.

Well John, I did hear, and you can probably confirm or deny this, that as part of a concerted bugle effort to make developing world agriculture sex again, you're actually doing a swimwear shoot on a Cambodian Brussels sprout farm.

Is that so?

No smoke without fire.

What I'm going to say about that is it's not untrue.

You did pose for a photo in a 2-2, John.

I'm not putting anything past you anymore.

Oh, God.

You know what?

I'd actually forgotten about that.

There was a time when you saying that would have been a joke, and then something didn't seem right about it, and that's going to realise, oh, yeah, I did do that.

Walmart, the world's largest retailer, is even restricting sales of rice at one of its chains.

Sam's Club, which is Walmart's cash and carry division, which sells food at suspiciously low prices, has limited customers to buying a maximum of four bags per visit.

Now, this has led to an increase in purchases of fake moustaches and wigs.

Walmart has said that it's not restricting the amounts of flour or oil that customers can buy at this time.

Everything that company says sounds sinister.

All press releases from Walmart should be delivered by dimly lit men in swivel chairs stroking cats, muttering to themselves, shh-tiddles, for one day we shall own everything, then they'll see,

In terms of British supermarkets, the British government has criticised the buy one, get one free offers at supermarkets for increasing the amount of food thrown away by British shoppers.

A third of food bought in the UK is thrown away, and that does not look good.

If we're not setting fire to it for fuel so that we can drive our cars to the shops to buy more food we don't need, we're just chucking it away for the hell of it.

Six million tons a year of wasted food and that's just Britain.

We're tiny.

Imagine the wasted food here although by the look of the Midwest Not lots going to waste.

I think they finished their dinners.

I'm not going to say anything more than that.

They finished their dinners in the Midwest.

They're heroes.

For every overweight American we like to take the piss out of here in Britain.

They have single-handedly, probably saved three African children by not wasting food.

Think of it that way.

Hold up the mirror, Britain.

Hold up the mirror.

We're expected to hit 9 billion by mid-century.

That's the world, not Britain.

Also, the emerging economies of India and China are resulting in more middle-class people there, whom a recent report discovered eat more food.

Now, I don't know how we didn't make the connection between rich people eating more food than poor people before, but we've done it now.

And

what needs to happen, Annie, is we need to drive China and India back down into poverty.

Everything worked fine then.

It was the perfect balance.

Yeah, they've got to take one for the team, frankly.

There are a couple of solutions, though.

One, sew up the stomachs of the world's poor in the manner of a Hollywood celebrity to make them less hungry.

Yes, it's expensive in the short term, but there will be long-term benefits.

And also, we need to make trade more fair, not just for the farmers, but also for us, the consumers.

It's got to be fair on my wallet, John.

Fair trade products are often a bit more expensive and let's not forget fairness is a duet and at the moment it's all Linda Ronstadt and not enough Aaron Neville.

Other news and the US election is hotting back up again after cooling down a bit and being slightly forgotten about by the world.

It's looking increasingly John like it might come down to the super delegates.

Is America excited at this prospect?

I think everyone hit a wall here this week, Andy, and there is a genuine consensus around the country that this has now gone on for, how to put it, far too fucking wrong.

They're now pretending they're more different than they are.

Obama and Hillary basically agree on everything.

And I think

what we really learned from this is that democracy is like spaghetti bolognese.

It's good for you in moderation, but if you have too much of it, it'll make you feel nauseous and you will get sick of it.

Now, there is this rumour around, John, that you are actually a super delegate now.

Is that so?

Have you checked lately?

Well, do you know what?

I haven't checked.

And I think how they issue super delegate status is that it's like a competition.

They put something under your chair.

And I haven't checked under any of my chairs recently.

And if you check under there and there's a little golden ticket, it's like Willy Wonka

opened up and says, you're a super delegate.

Please proceed to Minneapolis or Denver.

I think you probably best pop yourself down to the doctor just to make sure.

Have you had any feelings of disproportionate influence?

Always.

Yeah, well, you could be a super delegate.

I'm sure a simple blood test will let me go.

But the complex picture has been slightly simplified.

Last month, Bugle endorsed candidate Mike Gravelle, the potential kingmaker in the two-and-a-tiny bit pronged race for the Democratic nomination, has removed his minuscule potential spanner from the works by defecting from the Democrats and running as a Libertarian Party candidate.

This John must have rocked American politics to its very core.

It has, to the extent that I hadn't actually heard about that, Andy.

Really, that's how you know something has shocked people when they just don't talk about it or cover it.

It has shocked it to its core, only that core is an Apple core that has been thrown out the window on a long car journey.

Gravelle apparently says, my libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military-industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American.

But he went so far as to claim that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along, but needed the exposure of running in the Democratic race to get himself noticed.

I mean, he's right as well.

It was nice to have him at the end of the line during the early Democratic debates, just shouting at them.

There's some breaking medical news coming in, Andy.

They've just found out that super delegacy is in fact sexually transmitted.

So get yourself tested.

That's certainly true.

And you may need to make some awful conversations to past partners.

Hello, Debbie.

I know.

Long time no speak.

Exactly.

Listen, I'm a super delegate.

I'm really sorry.

I remember that night.

You may need to go to Denver.

On Thursday, we in Britain, after jealously watching such countries as Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Iraq, and even America get the chance to vote.

We are now getting our own chance, albeit it's a chance we won't take, as it is only voting on local government, about which we care even less than big government, at least until we trip over a paving stone and want to sue the council for hurting our kneecaps.

Now, the best thing local elections are good for is practicing your ballot box technique.

So when it comes to the big general election you don't balls it up like I usually do.

And last time in 2005 I got so excited about the chance to express my democratic opinion in the most adult way imaginable by scribbling a mark next to the name of someone I've never heard of or met and wondering what they stood for that I just lost it completely in the ballot box.

I was overwhelmed, John, swept away by a swirling maelstrom of cephalological ecstasy, culminating in me shouting,

Yeah, this is what I'm talking about and writing an X in every box on the ballot paper, then drawing some more boxes on the back, writing the names of the 1981 England cricket team and voting for them as well.

I'm just saying that local elections are a good way to wean yourself onto voting.

You're right.

You've got to get used to it.

You can't just turn up on the big day unrehearsed.

But here in London, the capital is going mere crazy as we gear up to decide which candidate should be given the keys to the Tower of London and the power of life and death over all Londoners or whatever it is they're allowed to do these days.

The two leading candidates, Ken Livingston and Boris Johnson, under their big news in America, John.

The great thing is.

No, I think they, once they realise that basically they are the closest we've got to British Hugo Chavez's, America.

That's a good way of putting it.

America might start, might start to notice.

Ken Livingston, the reigning mayor, is looking to win London for the third time, in which case he will get to keep it.

And a replica London will be built for the next election in four years' time.

And there is something about Livingston, John, that just makes you think if he'd been born in a different country, there would be some massive portraits of him.

Livingston gave birth to the congestion charge in London, and this almost brought Britain and America to the very brink of war because the US Embassy refused to pay, claiming it was exempt under the terms of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

So the US Embassy refused to pay, and it's good to see America economising at last, John, because this is a country with a $9.3 trillion national debt.

So technically, it is the world's poorest country.

And we in Britain, we're around $8 trillion richer than you, Yanks, with a very frugal £500 billion debt.

So we should be a little charitable and let you off.

But Livingston accused the US ambassador of trying, quote, to skive out of paying like some chiseling little crook.

Which

winning him the Nobel Prize for Diplomacy.

And it brought transatlantic war just that extra step closer.

Apparently the US Embassy owes Transport for London around a million pounds in unpaid congestion charges.

Livingston also had a pop at the Japanese embassy for not paying with these words.

Uh-oh.

I think there are several problems with Japan that we could go on about here.

Admitting their guilt for all the war crimes would be one thing, said Livingston.

Oh, dear.

So if they've not got around to doing that, I doubt they're too worried about the congestion charge.

Everyone loves a to-do list, and I'm sure most of us would have apologising for war crimes above paying the congestion charge.

It does seem incredible that people might vote for the Conservative candidate Boris Johnson just because he might be funny.

He might do some funny, stupid things.

And so, I guess people just want to be entertained by their leaders.

And whilst he would be bad on almost every level, he'd be funny doing it.

He'd be like a slapstick mayor.

And I suppose that's what we want.

That's the problem with democracy.

Well, that's how Neville Chamberlain got in, of course.

He was an entertainer.

I haven't decided who I'm going to vote for yet.

I might actually spoil my ballot paper, John.

And I mean, really spoil it.

Take it to a hydrotherapy spa, then onto a swanky restaurant.

and then to round the evening off, I'm going to fold it into an origami flamingo.

I just want to make it feel special.

Special bugle feature section now, the royal family.

Everyone in the world, stand up and salute.

And top royal news is an end to the male succession law, the law that states that a female heiress to the throne of this kingdom is automatically superseded by a younger brother is to be jettisoned.

Now, I know people in America, John, can get a bit touch about updating old laws that are clearly centuries out of date and often when pressed on the matter will start singing songs about founding fathers and trying to kiss anyone who looks a bit like George Washington.

But we in Britain have shown with this brave, groundbreaking piece of equality legislation that women have just as much right to be king as men do to be queen.

Mrs.

Pankhurst must be high-fiving herself in her grave.

I think that would be a lovely compromise to hit.

Yes, there will be no sexist-based succession, but you must be called king and you have to dress like a king and lower your voice a bit as well.

Other developments that they're hoping to modify are to repeal the law banning the heir to the throne from marrying a Catholic.

Wow, that's still there, is it?

We really do have some arcane laws around.

I think some of our laws still use the word peasant.

Ironically, though, John, if this new law about male succession was applied retrospectively, the Queen, despite being a woman, as she clearly is, was and ever shall be, would actually lose out and be revealed as the opportunistic pretender to the throne that feminists such as myself have always believed her to be.

I've done some research on this, John, and it turns out that Queen Victoria's eldest child was not the Queen's great-granddaddy Edward VII, the famous lady enthusiast, but actually Princess Victoria, who married a German emperor, Big Freddy III, thus becoming Mrs.

Kaiser and mother of the naughty Kaiser who captained Germany in World War I.

So if this law is backdated as it should be, I'm not saying we would have lost that war, I'm saying we would still have won it, only we would have been playing for the other side.

Although we can then assume that World War II probably wouldn't have happened, so indirectly this change in law could save millions of lives retrospectively and spank America right back down the global superpower charts.

Now, the current number two in Line to the Throne came in for criticism this week when it emerged that he landed his £10 million RAF helicopter in girlfriend Kate Middleton's back garden during an official military exercise.

Here's the thing Andy.

I would have been offended if he hadn't done that.

If you have access to a helicopter, you have to try and land it in your girlfriend's garden.

Even if your girlfriend's garden isn't isn't big enough, you owe it to all the people who don't have access to military helicopters.

Not only am I glad he did it, I hope he did it wearing mirrored sunglasses and a leather jacket whilst listening to Berlin's Take My Breath Away.

Prince William, indeed the celebrity trainee monarch, has come under metaphorical fire from the press for dicking around with a helicopter just to impress a chick.

But as you say, John, you know, we've all done it, haven't we?

Yeah.

We have all done it.

We've all been there.

I mean, when I was William's age, I nicked an Apache from a local chopper park and hovered hovered outside a nightclub trying to pick up honeys.

But don't tell the wife.

This emerged just days after he was criticised for using another helicopter to fly himself and his brother Harry to number three in Lives of the Throne to a stag weekend on the Isle of Wight.

Again, what is the point of being king if you can't do this?

I want our royal family to start behaving like airborne French aristocrats.

If we're going to pay for them, the least they can do is entertain us.

They apparently partied into the early hours with a number of attractive young women, including a local lap dancer called Gigi LaChance.

Now, she would make a great queen, Andy.

A queen Gigi LaChance the first, probably.

And also in other royal news, a new modernised crown is being designed for the Queen.

The new crown, made by electronic giant Dixons, features a built-in MP3 player to keep the Queen entertained during tedious public events, a scrolling news sticker around the base to keep the public informed of forthcoming royal events, and an electronic model corgi which dances dances in time to the national anthem

your emails now and we have an email here from jill swanson in texas who says dear andy and john this was sent to my house by mistake somehow it's for andy and the letter reads as follows dear andy this is your ex-bin please stop embarrassing yourself whinging on about my leaving you.

I want you to hear me clearly.

I left you.

Your neighbours didn't steal me.

The fact that you even said that shows how you've always objectified me and disregarded my feelings.

Is it any wonder that I left such a Neanderthal?

And please stop denigrating the symbol of commitment, your neighbours and I, my painted 53.

I proudly wear this number to show the world how much I love the wonderful people at number 53, whose names you've never even bothered to learn.

They're garbage, it is my honour to hold.

See, even your bin has even translated that for

the American reader.

They're garbage, and not just because their taste and breeding far exceed your own.

You might be tempted to blame your daughter and her endless diapers, again translated from America for this split, in regard to our years of union before her arrival.

But it is not her fault.

It is you and how you simply used me for years without caring one whit about me until one day I was gone.

Please stop walking by number 53 and glaring at me and the house.

Sincerely, the bin of number 53.

Jill says she doesn't know how it was sent to Texas, but fortunately it arrived after she'd formed a lifelong hardcore bugle addiction, so she knew where to send it.

So there you go, Andy.

Well, I take that as,

well, either a hoax.

No, it's not.

Why would they lie?

Why would Jill lie about that?

What does she stand to gain?

There's just various factual errors in it, John, that lead me to believe that if this is not a hoax, it is a coded distress signal from the bin for me to release it from number 53.

Uh-oh.

I mean, you've already mentioned the use of American language, also the suggestion that the people of 53 are wonderful people.

I don't know what the people at 55 would say about that, so the people at 53 are busy doing some illegal building work that threatens the foundations off number 55.

I don't know, that's not kind and loving to me.

Well, Jill, I tried, but it seems he's just not ready to let go yet.

Nomination for Hotty from History here from Katie McNabb, who says, I like my men smart, dashing, but slightly bonkers, which leads me to my recommendation for next month's hottie, Aaron Burr.

He combined dashing good looks and a hugely charismatic way with the ladies with being the kind of crazy-eyed mentalist VP that makes Dick Cheney seem like a newborn kitten.

Yes, Cheney shot a man in the face, but it was allegedly an accident.

Burr didn't shy away from his murderous tendencies and embraced them with a pizzazz you really have to admire.

Cheney can call himself the craziest Veep only when he duels with another VP and shoots him down in cold blood.

I'd suggest Dan Quayle.

Until that time, my affections remain with the crazy, bloodthirsty, but hugely entertaining Vice President Burr, one of America's true hotties.

Yours bugly, Katie McNabb.

Good nomination.

I don't know if he's going to get a win, but a good nomination.

He sounds pretty hot.

And this nomination for hotties comes from Kevin Ford in South Wales.

Dear Andy and John, may I suggest that the hottie from history be not necessarily human or indeed living, for I feel there is not much more sexy than knowledge.

Amen.

And therefore, must ask that the great library of Alexandria be considered.

Oh, boy.

Its enormous collection of books really turns my pages.

Nice one.

And the knowledge contained within that hallowed institution makes my brain faint.

As it has been sadly destroyed, with much of its collection lost, we can also add a sense of poignant loss to its beauty.

Like longing that the beauty of Florence Nightingale was amongst us today to explore and learn from.

Oh, don't we all long for that?

So we must wish the books of Alexandria were close to our loins.

Yes, we must.

Consider that nomination nominated.

Have you ever fancied a library, John?

An individual library?

No.

Do I fancy all libraries?

I think the answer is probably yes.

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

Also on the webpage, timesonline.co.uk slash thebugle, you can see the full unexplagated text of the greatest email in history, as discussed a couple of bugles ago, and also a fully updated Hotties slideshow.

Sport now and the European Cup semi-finals are rumbling on for a second week.

Both of the matches have gone to a second leg, as they were always scheduled to.

And John, I know you're a Liverpool fan.

The own goal scored by John Armarisa.

What do you want to know?

Assuming not all Bugle fans are football fans as well, but this own goal kind of transcended the boundaries of sports and life and really just offered us a microcosm of everything that is great about human existence.

A man with glory within his grasp, seconds from the end of a victory, does a diving header into the top corner of his own goal when it would have been easier to discover a cure for cancer in the position as the ball came across.

And yet he saw the opportunity, Reese.

He was brave enough and good enough to take it.

That's the point, Andy.

When an own goal is that good, I believe it should count for your own size.

That would encourage own goals to be even more spectacular that we should have won that 2-0 with his goal at the end there he should have been celebrating it maybe Rhys had half an eye on the general good of the game John because you know 1-0 to Liverpool would have led to a very dull second leg and I think it's time that more leading sportsmen thought about the neutral spectator he's a fan of the game first his own contract second

Other sport news, Robert D from Britain, widely considered to be the worst tennis player in the world, has won his first ever game at the 55th attempt.

It was also his first ever set that he'd won.

He celebrated this by losing in the next round in straight sets.

And he is now tied for longest losing streak ever with Diego Baltranina, who had 54 straight losses, but who did win a set in that time.

So he couldn't even get the record, Andy.

All he had to do was lose one more time.

It must have been harder to win than to lose that game.

He's like the Miami Dolphins all over again.

He choked.

He choked at at the last minute and won he still managed to get a world ranking of 1400 in professional tennis without ever winning a set

that makes me 1401 in world tennis if we can't have the best tennis player in the world though andy i want i do want the worst it's the middle ground which is most depressing i don't mind being the worst at everything apparently uh uh robert d john has career earnings from his pro tennis career of 1150

over three years.

Now that works out at approximately £1 a day.

That is slave labour, John.

No wonder the kid keeps losing.

He can't afford to eat.

He has played in, amongst other places, Sudan, Iran, and Colombia.

Suggesting that maybe his tennis career is a front for running a terrorist cell.

Absolutely.

And he's an arms dealer.

Let's not forget Bin Laden did once reach the semi-finals of Junior Wimbledon.

And also a quick result in the rematch of the 1908 FA Cup final involving all the surviving players, Wolverhampton Wanderers 0, Newcastle United 0.

Disappointing game.

Disappointing.

Very static.

Audio cryptic crossword now and the legendary audio crossword has been mired in controversy this week after the accidental

use of a repeat clue last week.

I don't believe anyone noticed that.

You'd be wrong, John.

You noticed that.

You'd be wrong, John, because we had this email from David McCormick, who, with the subject bastard,

who writes, quotes, the first time such a clue has ever been featured in the history of broadcasting, eh?

I've just waded through 29 minutes of embittered reconstructive vile and attempted humorical behaviour.

Lovely callback to the greatest email in history.

Very good, very good.

Only to discover that you'd repeated the clue for Twelver Cross.

I imagine this was an act of deliberate subterfuge and an attempt to ensure John is kept in a state of protracted misery.

Yes, it was.

But I fear that such a cheap shot will ultimately backfire.

Before you know it, you'll have a rogue band of apoplectic, audio-crushy verbalists, good word, marauding the streets, hell-bent on procuring the blood of those who deny them their weekly fix.

I can only apologise.

I had a difficult week.

Maybe it's just best to let the audio-cryptic crossword die here, Andy.

How about that?

It isn't best, John.

In fact, I'm going to swing the other way and give two clues this week to make up for the lack of clue last week.

Oh, no.

Six down, it's five letters long.

And it's very topical for this stage of the football season.

And it's this.

Going from one end to the other, but it's a messy goal around the end of season.

Five letters.

And also, four down, you get eight and six.

And this is a slightly delayed, withering satirical attack.

Is this what Blair did to his time in office?

Question mark.

Hospital department on which I depend withered.

Take that, Mr.

blur eight six that clue is eight and six two words

and finally bugle forecast now and my forecast john as we record this on friday the 25th of april is that by the time this show is broadcast on monday the 28th of april our producer tom will have got married and i am confident this will prove to be true and i'm also sincerely hoping for the sake of the harmony of this show it does prove to be true.

All the evidence points to it.

Also for the light-heartedness of that comment Andy I really hope that doesn't boomerang back into your face.

So Tom is going to be away for a few weeks so if you have any complaints about the quality of this broadcast please send them to the honeymoon suite Mike and Ethel's bed and breakfast Bogner Reaches England

But Tom's getting married on the 26th of April, which is a bit insensitive the birthday of my late

Tom, really?

Thanks a lot, mate.

Happy wedding, Tom.

Do try and cry less than I did at my wedding.

I've cried so much that I had the Icelandic tourist board asking for me to come back to Reykjavik.

That's all from the bugle this week.

Thanks for listening.

I'm going to go and have a bath.

I'll speak to you again next week.

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.