Was Stonehenge an ancient tax dodge?

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, welcome to issue 24 of The Bugle, the world's leading audio newspaper for the week beginning Monday, the 14th of April, 2008.

This is only the third ever issue of the bugle whose digits add up to six following issues 15 and 6.

With me, Andy Zaltzman in London and in glorious New York City, John Oliver!

Hello buglers, you are lucky I'm still here after that mathematical opening hour.

You've already given me a bit of a headache.

I just think these historical moments need to be commemorated appropriately.

Numbers are not my friend.

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

This week, a men's health supplements with features on Your Left Kidney, Sell or Save, Is It Possible to Have Too Many Pairs of Sunglasses, and an audiobook of Dr.

Wickenham Stoop's best-selling tone, Chances Are at its 80% terminal, The Hypochondriac's Guide to Sneezing.

Also rejected from the bugle this week, a free audio tattoo, a lifelong snippet of sound that plays over and over again from a concealed speaker underneath the skin on your arm.

Here is your free audio tattoo.

I love mum!

Yes, it's only audible when you take your shirt off, but still, it might sound cool now, but do you really want a faded version of that blaring out when you're 70?

Top news story this week, Olympic flames!

The relay of the Olympic torch around the globe has kick-started a new global game as each nation tries to find new and more imaginative ways to find the Olympic flame and put it out.

See, Andy, the cynics were all wrong.

The Olympics can bring people together.

As you watch the scenes of chaos around the world, you find yourself thinking, we're not so different.

We all want the same things.

We all want to see people get into some flame-based mischief.

Andy, the Olympics has brought the world closer and it hasn't even started yet.

This is going to be the best and the funniest games ever.

Yes, the procession of the Olympic torch around the world has provoked a series of fiasque.

London proved it thoroughly merited being awarded the 2012 Games by abiding by the age-old Olympic tradition of dealing with displays of political dissent with heavy-handed incompetence.

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, dismissed allegations that he avoided a human rights spat with China over the matter because Britain could not afford to jeopardise our economic relations with them.

Of course not, he said, giggling nervously and shuffling from one foot to the other.

What?

Those multi-billion pound economically critical relations?

No, no, nothing to do with them.

Where did you get that idea from?

Oh, look, a squirrel.

You don't often see them at this time of year.

So whose idea was it to run the Olympic flame around the world as a symbol of hope?

Well this relay actually began as a self-glorification exercise for the 1936 Olympics in Germany.

Uh-oh.

That's right, that one.

This was all Hitler's idea.

I'll tell you what, Andy, that man couldn't get anything right.

This had to be one of his very worst ideas.

Did he have a single good idea in his head?

Actually, I'll take that back.

He had a very good good tip for scrambled eggs.

But it's buried in the middle of Mein Kampf just after something pretty racist.

What was that?

Splash of milk, low heat.

And a dash of paprika.

What?

He's a madman.

He's a madman.

It should have been clear then, as soon as that was published.

Gordon Brown has now said that he won't attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing, which prompted the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is rumoured to be a man called Nick Clegg, to accuse the Prime Minister of a U-turn.

Now, in terms of things that our politicians really don't want want to be seen to be doing, U-turns are second only really to genocide.

Absolutely.

And Britain has a proud history of refusing to U-turn, which arguably reached its height at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, ironically, when the British 400-metre champion Renton Wohl from Scotland was leading at the 200-metre mark, but then refused to do a U-turn around the bend for fear of appearing weak.

So he spranted straight off the end of the track through the photographers into the advertising hoardings, then picked himself up, carried on running in a straight line through the crowd, up and over the back of the stadium, and plummeted to his death whilst accusing the eventual race winner Lee Evans of the USA of being spineless and of, quote, caving into the demands of the track.

Absolutely, and he was right.

That was a victorious death.

Now, all of this is nothing new, though, Andy.

The Olympics has always been a political piñata smashed around to reveal its sweet treats.

It has long been the target for political boycotts.

In fact, the Barcelona Games of 1992 were the first to be boycott-free since the Rome Games of 1960.

Clearly, no countries were big objectors to bullfighting or donkeys being thrown off churches.

And full boycotts for nations began in 1908 at the, well hold on, this can't be right.

London Games.

What?

What have we ever done to anybody, Andy?

Who had a grievance with us then?

Oh, I see.

It was the Irish athletes, angry at Britain's refusal to grant independence.

Luckily, that was all sorted out quickly afterwards, and there have been absolutely no problems whatsoever since then.

And even the US team staged a protest against us during those games when the captain of the American team refused to dip the stars and stripes to King Edward VII at the opening ceremony, saying, This flag dips to no earthly king.

And this tradition continues to this day and is actually set to be quite an interesting little side story when we host the games in London in 2012.

Dip your flag to the Queen, Yankees.

Dip it.

It's interesting on the subject of boycotts, John.

At a vigil in San Francisco coinciding with the Olympic torch protest, the 1984 Nobel Peace Champion and gold medal winner in the 1986 Albert Schweitzer humanitarianism competition, the fully qualified Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he urged world leaders not to go to the games in Beijing and he said, for God's sake, for the sake of our children, for the sake of their children, and for the sake of the beautiful people of Tibet, don't go.

Which strikes me as being slightly unfair on those Tibetans who aren't beautiful.

It's almost as if the press can only get an angle on it if there's Totti involved.

Tutu continued, tell your counterparts in Beijing that you wanted to come, but looked at your schedule and realised that you have something else to do.

Now that is really taking the hardest possible line on human rights.

Confronting it head on.

Dear Mr.

Wen, thanks very much for my invitation to your games.

Unfortunately, I'm mending my unicycle that day, and my wife has got a crochet class, and we've got cabinet yoga in the afternoon, so I can't make it.

Love, Gordon Brown.

P.S.

I think I've made my point.

But I think, John, perhaps this is what really happened at Moscow in 1980.

The Americans didn't boycott the games.

They simply remembered that they were supposed to be helping Jeff move a chest of drawers into his daughter's room.

And in 1984, the Eastern Bloc countries didn't boycott the LA Games in a tit-for-tat reprisal.

It was simply that they couldn't come because their grandmother had died.

Honestly, again.

Did Archbishop Tutu provide any other ready-made excuses for people?

He didn't say, but I think it's kind of a classic British response to an awkward situation is not to confront it head-on and accuse the Chinese of appalling human rights abuses, but just to make up an awkward excuse and smile politely and shuffle off.

So I think Tutu isn't really an honorary Brit.

South Africa have been banned for the longest due to that being extremely racist incident.

You know, that little apartheid blip which lasted 46 years.

But maybe this is Britain's best chance for medals in 2012, Andy.

We need to act in a way which will antagonize so many countries and cause such widespread boycotts that we'll be left competing just against ourselves and maybe the Swiss.

Well, I think we're doing pretty well at that, aren't we?

Yeah.

If any we'd kept Tony Blair, I think we might even be on course for that.

So the Olympic torch is still on its way on this

85,000 mile journey.

And I mean, what have we had so far?

Well, in Britain, we tried attacking children's TV presenters and tried to put it out with a fire extinguisher.

In France, they outmaneuvered policemen on rollerblades and managed to put it out three times before it was carted away on a bus.

And in San Francisco this week there was total chaos.

After being lit the torch was ushered quickly into a warehouse where for two hours there were rumours that it had completely vanished having been smuggled away by boat, car, bus or jet ski and it was at this point that it started sounding like a bad James Bond film.

But the bar has been raised now.

As security gets tighter, people are going to have to get more imaginative to get to it.

Argentina is the next stop and any buglers that are in Argentina should mobilise now.

Get thinking.

Put it out.

China also planning to parade the torch through Tibet, which is really taking the piss, frankly.

Other news now, and the British High Court has ruled that the Serious Fraud Office acted unlawfully when rather cheekily dropping its investigation into corruption involved in a £43 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Now, John, like me, you are probably thinking, a £43 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

I should bloody hope there's some corruption involved.

You don't want somebody like that passing off legally.

That would be far too dangerous.

Well, I mean, this really does cast a very unpleasant shadow, Andy, over the otherwise spotless reputation of international arms dealing.

Are there no heroes left anymore?

These people are role models to us and they've let us all down.

What are youngsters going to do who want to grow up to be arms dealers?

What are they going to think now?

It's very sad.

Apparently the Serious Fraud Office had dropped the case after the Saudis essentially said, see that nice little war on terror you've got going on at the moment.

Be a shame if that got damaged, wouldn't it?

Com Prende.

And it's reassuring to know that our allies in our heroic campaign to provoke spread, then partially remove terror are so steadfast and unconditional in their support.

And I think this really goes to the very heart of modern democracy and freedom.

And I, for one, John, would lay down my life for the right of big arms contractors and Saudi oligarchs to conceal their own private business deals from the prying eyes of the gutter courts.

If these companies and individuals can't commit large-scale commercial naughtiness in the privacy of their own arms deals, then none of us can.

Is that a world you want to have to grow up in?

I actually once sold arms to the Saudis, John.

Did you?

Yep,

I was young, I needed the money.

But of course, it backfired eventually, because I was captain of the school netball team and I benched a Saudi prince who'd been really out of form for a while.

Of course, five minutes later, the Saudi ambassador to my school had me pinned up against the bike sheds, threatening threatening to undermine the already fragile Western economy.

So it just goes to show: you make your bed, you better be prepared to lie in it with whoever you've made it with.

You got in over your head, Andy.

That was your slightly more militaristic version of Ferris Bueller's day off.

Tea cake scandal now.

The UK Treasury is facing a $3.5 million bill because of VAT wrongly placed on Marks and Spencer's tea cakes.

Customers had paid VAT on them for 20 years before a European court this week ruled that they were cakes and not biscuits.

I can't believe it, Andy.

The government lied to us.

First Iraq and now this.

I don't know who to trust anymore.

Well I think it's one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history John and thankfully if belatedly it's now been put right by Europe's heroic sweet food accreditation division.

For 20 years this poor little tea cake has been caught in a horrific halfway house.

It thinks it's a cake, it's sold as a cake, but it's treated like a biscuit.

In many ways John, this was worse than the Birmingham 6, the Guildford 4, or even the Birmingham and Guilford 10, because millions of people probably ate these cakes.

That's millions of people, completely unaware that in doing so, they themselves were contributing to Britain's darkest shame.

It's like I half remember Primo Levy, wrote Andy.

They came for the scones, and I did not like scones, so I did not speak up.

Then there was no one left to speak up for the tea cakes.

It was something like that.

I don't really remember.

But people around the world should not underestimate quite how seriously British people take tea cakes.

There could feasibly be a revolution over this.

I would not be the least bit surprised if by the end of this week the Queen's head is impaled on a spike outside Buckingham Palace.

If they keep pushing us, we will snap.

There's historical precedent for this.

Marie Antoinette said, let them pay VAT on tea cakes, and we all know what happened to her.

Marks and Spencer, the retailer of the wrongly imprisoned cake, said that the ruling endorses its position that the tea cake was a cake, not, as these completely unproven allegations suggested, a biscuit.

And I think think Marks and Spencer have proved, John, that's when you have a crucially important belief like that, you have to fight for it all the way.

Absolutely.

They're heroes.

And it's also important to tie up court time with stories like this as well.

Special bugle feature section now.

Archaeology.

The big old A, but no one quite understands why it was ever built.

Stonehenge and the first major excavations for nearly 50 years at Stonehenge have been taking place.

Stonehenge or as I like to call it the jewel of the A303.

Oh what a road.

What a road Andy.

Stonehenge is a 5,000 year old mystic stone circle but in many ways I prefer standing in the middle of Stonehenge and looking at the A303 and thinking how did they do that?

How did they build such a road?

So hopefully these excavations will help us find out what on earth this silly collection of stones was supposed to be for.

Two of the top-ranked Stonehenge experts in the British rankings are leading the dig.

They believe that the skeletal remains of ill people found at the site suggest that the henge, or stony, was a kind of Neolithic NHS drop-in centre.

If proven, this would make it Britain's second most obsolete medical facility after the unusable birthing pool at St George's Hospital in Tooting.

One theory they hoped to look into was that the large blue stones were said to have healing properties and that people would come from miles around with their sick relatives to be cured.

And in that sense, it could well be that Stonehenge was the first NHS hospital.

Large queues, impressive in theory, but increasingly ramshackle and responsible for many, many deaths.

There are other theories as to what the world's oldest but funkiest Midsummer nightclub was, in fact, supposed to be.

One, an impractical calendar, two, a multiplex druid cinema, three, a long-term prank by the prehistoric guys and girls to make us think they were weirder than they actually were.

Or, a tax dodge.

How else do you explain the complete lack of paperwork for such a massive building project?

It stinks, John.

It stinks.

It really does.

They were very corrupt druids around then.

Very corrupt.

In the early 20th century, Stonehenge was bought for £6,000

by a guy called Cecil Chubb as a present for his wife.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on a second.

That sounds like a complete lie.

No?

Is that really true?

I found this out on no less a source than the internet.

Who did he buy it from?

I don't know.

This whole story is falling apart in the scene.

No one called Cecil Chubb owned Stonehenge.

I did.

No.

It's a fact.

No!

That's not a fact.

Right, I've got to get Tom to look it up.

It's another fact off.

I'm looking it up as well now.

Cecil Chubb, Stonehenge.

There's no way.

No way.

Oh, Wikipedia.

Sir Cecil Herbert Edward Chubb, first baronet.

Is that the guy?

The last private owner of Stonehenge, which he donated to the British government in 1918.

So there you go, John.

Would you like some mayonnaise with your humble pie?

It still doesn't say who he bought it from.

It doesn't matter, John.

The fact is, he bought it for £6,000 as a present for his wife.

Now, I think she must have thought that he either really loved her, really hated her, or was having a really strange affair.

But I think also with Stonehenge, perhaps if these prehistoric dunderheads have spent less time moving massive bits of rock from Wales to Wiltshire and more time learning how to organise themselves militarily, they might have had a better chance of stopping the Romans when they eventually invaded a couple of thousand years later.

It's very much the millennium dome of its time, John, because for all eternity, people will look at it and wonder what the hell people were thinking of when they built it, and no one will ever truly know.

I just cannot stop thinking about the fact he bought it for his wife.

Yeah.

There is absolutely no way.

One, she saw that coming, and two, that she wanted it.

No way.

Guess what it is?

I don't know, Cecil.

You've bought me some pretty weird things in the past.

I know, have you given me a kind of clifffunt property?

No.

Is it a scarf?

It's not a scarf.

It's not a scarf.

Although, now you've said it, I think that might have been easier.

Because I do need a scarf, Cecil, and I did drop hints saying how much I would like a scarf.

I know, I know.

But what I thought even more was you'd like an inexplicable 5,000-year-old circle of stones.

Other archaeology news and prehistoric shit could offer a clue to the origin of Americans.

14,000-year-old pieces of crap are promising to reveal how the first humans made it to America.

The fossilized turds, referred to as a human coprolite, to avoid offending people who don't believe that defecation should have been allowed to happen before the invention of the flushing toilet, suggest that America was populated by people originally from Siberia, which with hindsight makes the whole Cold War look like a petty family squabble.

That's right, fossilized feces from a US cave may solve the riddle of how and when humans came to the Americas.

Or it may solve the riddle of which kids snuck into the cave to take a dump last week.

I wonder, whoever it is 14,000 years ago, Andy, who dropped this now legendary deuce, looked down on it

and said, A what?

A legendary deuce.

If you use terminology like that, you're going to lose your passport.

I wonder if the person who dropped it looked down and said, that is going to make scientists very excited in 14,000 years' time before his friend said, What a scientist, Barry, and clubbed him to death.

Apparently, they also found the fossilized remains of a cryptic crossword, half finished.

More exciting archaeological finds on the site of the London Olympics.

They found the ancient well of skepticism,

which still works apparently.

And also, somewhere underneath the Olympic site is the Olympic money vortex, sucking money into it like a lonely vacuum cleaner drinking a milkshake.

Your emails now, and possibly the most spectacular email ever sent to the bugle from a man whose name we can't quite decipher.

It could be Will, or it could be Indy, or it could be Will in Indy.

He writes this, addressed to John and myself, as Oily and Schmaltz.

Which I think, you know, if we ever hit the Jewish circuit, John, that could be quite a good double act name.

That sounds like a great 1920s double act.

Hey, Oily, watch that, Schmaltz.

This gentleman writes, just what do you think you are doing?

Are you humorists, or is attempted humorical behaviour?

Question mark.

First law of clowns.

Embody fundamental truths in your satire.

Embittered deconstructive bile as spoon-fed by failing socialist scruds.

It reads like it might be an entire audio-cryptic crossword.

Do you know what a scrud is?

It sounds like an insult.

NYT and its UK clones.

That's New York Times.

It's only momentarily amusing, though, apparently.

And that only in brief spots when truth is accidentally encountered.

Could be a horoscope.

Then shame and embarrassment set in.

Wow, what a disappointment, he continues.

I heard your webcast, number 22, and thought it had promise.

But on reviewing past episodes, I see you are cranky, muddled, hater satire, business as usual.

What?

Your USA audience, the ever-shrinking NYT crowd, and nearly extinct Radio America snarks may be enough to keep you in beverages at the local NYC political circle jerks.

No, I don't live in New York, John.

Is there something you've not been telling me about what you get up to on a Thursday night?

Well, yeah, just general circle joking.

What do you do on a Thursday?

But what about returning home to the UK?

he continues.

Do they have satire under Sharia law?

What?

No, they don't

That's the answer's implicit in the question there.

Let me get this straight.

You actually have some kind of potty prince or dismal duke or something who cross-dresses as an Bedouin Kaftan flapper?

What?

I don't believe anybody could understand that sentence.

Is that where jihadists keep their satire under their skirts?

What's the latest beheading joke out of East End?

It's like a Lewis Carroll nonsense poem.

I do find humour in the behaviour of typical Euro-Cretins who, after wrecking their own nations and participating in mass cultural suicide, suddenly emigrate to USA for shelter, but seem to want to continue the spread of their mentally debilitating disease.

Is that me?

Yeah, I think that's you, John.

I think that's you.

That is it.

That is a heckle.

What a hell of a heckle.

I suppose if you ask a Cretan, he don't know he are one.

And he concludes.

Wouldn't you rather grow up to be real philosopher comedians rather than remain bum-dwelling trouser fleas?

The socialist hate cheese is rich in protein but lacks essential brain-building vitamins.

Andy, I don't think we're accepting this email in the spirit it was intended.

That kind of leftist mental death is a sorry road.

Next, you'll be arrested looting shops or scrawling graffiti on train sheds during imagined Bilderberg conferences.

No, I won't.

Now, stop it and be good boys.

Try funny from Will Imdy.

Oh Will.

Tell you what, Andy, it says something about the general standard of emails we get to the bugle that even the hate mail is entertaining.

If I doubt, I doubt he is because he's clearly angry.

Will if you are listening to this, please send another email.

I think it might be a coded distress signal.

Maybe he's been kidnapped.

To be honest, that email has rendered all others redundant.

It's like the monkeys following Jimi Hendrix.

Okay, in which case, we will just move straight on to Hotties from History, which of course began early in the Bugle's life as an off-hand remark, has now developed an unstoppable momentum of its own to become one of the defining topics of conversation around the world.

And we've had some spectacular nominations this week, including what appears to be a concerted campaign to nominate Tycho Brahe.

I don't know if I pronounced that right, the 16th century astronomer.

This came from Richard King, who writes, Dear Bugle people, alchemy, astrology, voluminous pantaloons, and massive moustache like a woolly boomerang.

Very nice.

You're thinking about Tycho Brahe, aren't you?

The man was a 16th-century A-list celeb, mixing groundbreaking, horizon-expanding thought leadership with a gold prosthetic nose.

Oh, it's good.

It's good.

The man had a dwarf court jester almost as an afterthought.

He also owned an elk.

To my mind, he could have been a complete munter, and he still have qualified for Hotty from History status.

Consider him nominated.

I mean, it's what a confident finish, but I tell you what, I cannot see any way in which a man with a gold prosthetic nose and a pet elf does not become April's hotie from history.

It's going to be tough.

It's almost worth just giving up and saying no no male nominations.

That's too good.

He was also nominated by Allison, who gives further details about how he lost his nose.

Apparently when he was 20 years old, he had a drunken duel with a Danish nobleman called Manderup Parsbjerg.

He had this duel in in the dark, John.

Why?

Why?

I don't know, John.

He spent the rest of his life wearing a prosthetic nose made from silver and gold.

Well, I tell you what, I'm nominating him.

I will back that nomination up.

Add me to that list.

There's some difference actually in Alison's account.

It says it was not an elk, but actually a moose.

And this moose was apparently killed falling down the castle stairs after drinking too much beer.

So thanks for your hotties nominations.

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

and I will round up the rest of them in the next bugle blog when I have time to do so

which frankly at the moment is looking like it might not be this weekend and the cricket season's beginning so realistically October

Sports now British tennis already reeling from the news that no British male player has won a major title since 1936 has been further rocked rocked by startling revelations that terrorists plotting to blow up aeroplanes played tennis whilst finalising their plans.

This is the last thing the tennis world needed.

This is disgusting news, John.

It's appalling.

Absolutely appalling that tennis should allow terrorism to take place on its courts.

Tennis fan Ellsworth Kramer was one of many people protesting outside Wimbledon, mistakenly thinking it to be the headquarters of the Lawn Tennis Association.

And he was disgusted.

He said, I haven't heard of any of these players, and yet they were plotting to bring death and destruction to thousands.

It makes you wonder what Tim Henman's been up to all these years.

He's played loads more tennis than those other guys.

Henman has strenuously denied any links to domestic or international terrorist groups, nor would he be drawn on what political cause he would be most likely to take up arms and sacrifice himself for, although a friend suggests he had some sympathies with Cornish independence.

Masters golf now, and in the annual Masters fancy dress competition at Augusta last Tuesday before the major tournament started, Tiger Wood surprisingly lost his title when the seam on the tunic of his Pontius pilot outfit ripped as he played out of a bunker at the fourth.

He then tried to have a spectator crucified for taking a photo during his now revealing backswing at the fifth.

Phil Mickelton was awarded second place for his attention-grabbingly realistic Jane Mansfield costume, but was beaten by Spain Sergio Garcia, who finally proved that he can win on the major stage by playing 18 holes dressed as the Taj Mahal.

And US Ryder Cup player Scott Verplanck blamed his disappointing first round on, quotes, a temporary cessation of the laws of physics.

Verplanc claimed that he had incurred the wrath of Zeus by refusing to sacrifice his dog to the retired ex-Greek gods before the tournament, and that the King of Olympus had punished him on several holes as he shot seven bogeys in a five-over par round.

The furious former Canadian Open champion said afterwards, Why does he want my dog anyway?

He'll probably just turn himself into a stick and make her fetch him.

Pervert, this has gone on too long.

The USPGA has to stop ancient deities from ruining my rounds.

It's a farce.

And if it's not true, Verplanck, sue us.

That hate an invitation.

Although, that would be great publicity.

Getting sued by Scott Verplanck.

See you in court for Planck.

Motor racing and Des Lockfield beat Mickey Strump away from the lights at the junction of Jug Street and Mithridates Road in Frapcaster, England.

One bystander accused Lockfield, 19, of moving before the green light, but since no penalty charge notice was forthcoming from the DVLA over the next six weeks, the result stands.

Strump, aged 73, was unaware that he was in the competition.

Lockfield's navigator and girlfriend, the 17-year-old Metal Lee Craig, was impressed.

And in Formula One, at the Bahrain Grand Prix, the Brazilian driver Felipe Massa took his sixth career victory, although public interest was slightly diminished by the fact that he had never been involved in a German-themed orgy with five prostitutes.

Lewis Hamilton had a disappointing result, struggling at the start of the race, then smashing into the back of Fernando Alonso, and he finished out in a point, but escaped too much press criticism for his performance on the grounds that he had never been filmed acting out early 1940s German non-holiday camp SLM fantasies in a dungeon whilst being the son of a prominent fascist.

Upon such threads are reputations made and broken.

And if there are any buglers thinking, it seems like you may have missed a major story last week when if someone, say, connected with some kind of motorsport was caught in some kind of, let's say, sex scandal regarding, oh, I don't know, off the top of my head now, Nazi Germany.

Maybe had that story happened, I doubt that would ever happen, but if it did happen, it seems seems like that would be a great story to talk about well had that happened and had we maybe last week recorded gleefully a long section about it just hypothetically talking now and maybe had that happened we would have been told to take it out on legal grounds maybe that's what I'm just I'm just thinking that's probably what might have happened had that event happened and had we gleefully recorded something about that event for 15 to 20 minutes but it didn't happen so this point is moot.

And finally, results.

Cycling downhill one, uphill nil.

Now the audio cryptic crosswords, it's approaching the end of this.

What?

What?

Hold on.

Now hold on.

You've got my attention now.

Is that true?

Well, there's still a few weeks to go, John.

A few.

What's few?

Three?

I don't know.

For you, there's a lifetime to go before you really understand crosswords and hence life.

Interestingly, we had an email from Andy Inatco, who tells us, in last week's audio cryptic crossword, I blacked in one of the audio boxes so that my answer would fit into the space provided.

Is this within the rules?

Are we looking for the solution, or will a solution to the puzzle suffice?

Well, thanks, Andy, and well done for taking part.

But I'm afraid I must apply strict rules.

There is only one solution to this crossword.

I'm very much an audio-cryptic crossword fundamentalist.

I believe that my answer is right, and everyone else's is wrong.

And if they get the wrong answer, they will burn in hell for eternity.

Meanwhile, here's 18 across.

And in fact, this calls back to a comment John made earlier in the show about the apartheid era.

It's 12 letters long, split into three words of five, one, and six, and really goes to the hearts of the political troubles facing South Africa.

A messed up sham in South Africa leads to an opening to do some vandalism.

Have you got it?

I'm a crossword atheist, Andy.

You can put me down as a non-believer.

Bugle forecast now, and Sunday, just gone, was the London Marathon.

My forecast for that, retrospectively, John, is that someone skinny will have won it.

My forecast is, and this is a bit more of an outsider, someone in a rhino costume will have won it this year.

Also, good luck retrospectively to my friend Tim, who's running in it.

Yeah, good luck retrospectively, Tim.

I hope you win.

And, you know,

if you don't win, I'll pursue you around London with a big loser sign.

So that's it from issue 24 of the bugle.

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

particularly if they are baffling barrages of abuse.

We do appreciate the friendly emails that you do send in, but frankly, something like that is always going to be more entertaining.

It's a special, special treat.

Bye.

Ta tar!

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.