Audio newspaper for a visual world

Welcome to The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world, the new satirical podcast from Times Online, Edition number one, Monday, October the 15th, 2007, with me, Andy Zaltzman, here in London and in America, John Oliver.

Hello, Andy, hello, world, but most importantly, hello, Andy.

Thanks, John.

So, how is America?

It's doing its best.

All anyone can ask of the lad.

Inside today's multi-section Google, special news feature on the war on terror.

Are you bored of it too, or is peace overrated?

Entertainment, the Nobel Prize is upon us.

We now know all the individual category winners, but who will be declared overall Nobel Champion of the World?

2007.

As with any any newspaper, even an audio newspaper like this, some sections do go straight in the bin.

Today, those sections are the travel section, where people please stop going to Heathrow Airport.

It was designed by Hieronymus Bosch.

Just recycle it.

And also in the bin is the special lifestyle section, you and your stationery.

Why is it in there, Andy?

That is a needlessly heavy piece of sound.

So, today's top news story: Iraq.

How well is it actually going?

Quite badly, I would say.

Give it time, Andy.

Give it time.

I have given it quite a lot of time.

Well, just give it a bit more time.

You never know.

It might yet surprise you.

I just think, as a taxpayer and consumer of the war in Iraq, I have been disappointed with the war that I've received.

You have to support the concept of time, Andy.

You have to support our time.

If you're not for that, what are you for?

You're for the nihilistic view of non-consensual time that the terrorists are proposing.

Right.

I think you've been in America too long now, John.

They make some convincing arguments here.

Well, the consensus in Britain is that so far Iraq is only scoring 2.3 out of 10, which is bad for any war.

Yeah, that's not a great score.

But there has been an announcement that British troops will be reduced to 2,500 next year.

How many American troops are there there, John?

Well, there are 168,000, so that is just the latest slap in the face from an already very red American face at the moment.

So they're really getting stuck in.

That's a lot of soldiers.

Well, the big question, I guess, is could Iraq be going any worse?

And

this was probably best pointed out by the president himself, the self-styled 43rd President of the United States, when he said in a press conference that Iraq is, in fact, like Vietnam, but in a good way.

Now, that is not scraping the bottom of the barrel, Andy.

That's going through the barrel and tunnelling straight into the floor, possibly into an old antique barrel that you didn't know was there and getting to the bottom of that and then going through that into a mains electricity cable that's right and if you want to know Andy how much balls it takes to say a thing like it's like Vietnam but in a good way it's three balls

you need an extra ball and luckily this president has that extra ball and is willing to use it in a time of war I'm very worried about this plan to fly the troops home because I'm not in favour of the Iraq war but I think the environment is now the big issue that we really need to address and I think that it's reached the stage where the environmental damage of flying the troops home now outweighs the dangers of leaving them there so I think they're either going to have to just try and blend in with the locals or fight their way back across land well the exit strategy is quite a big issue because Bush has said that if we leave now the enemy will follow us home So any withdrawal will have to kind of throw them off the scent.

I think we're implying.

But the enemy do know where America live.

That's the thing.

They're aware.

They're number one Atlantic Ocean.

They're Canada's very noisy neighbour.

Can they not sort of set up some kind of decoy

like people do with Paparazzi?

So maybe some American troops can just head off to Australia and hope that the terrorists follow them there.

That is a good idea.

And then the real American army goes home.

That is a good idea.

That clicking on the line was probably the Pentagon picking that idea up.

But the biggest withdrawal, Andy, has been from Iceland.

I don't know if you saw that this week.

They announced their formal withdrawal from the Coalition of the Willing, to which their contribution was one troop.

That is a disaster.

It's a 100% withdrawal.

The entire Icelandic, ISIS, whatever they call themselves, it hardly seems to matter now.

They're not involved.

They're not a team player.

They've pulled their entire army out.

Well, what there should be, though...

Let the record show this, there should still be a Veterans Parade in the future.

Every time she goes to the shops or goes for a little stroll somewhere, that should be a parade.

What it does give you is spectacularly absolute results.

That's a 100% withdrawal from Iceland.

And even asking how the Icelandic Army is doing, maybe 100% of the Icelandic Army was a bit peckish.

John,

how much of America is still behind President Bush and his little jaunt?

Well, it's probably quicker to give you names, Andy now.

And it's not even the whole Bush family anymore.

No, America is not not enjoying this spectacular spectacular fall from grace.

His approval ratings, I believe, are as low as they have been yet, and they have been pretty low.

So, no, America is not too happy with how things are going.

But one positive thing has come out of this situation, Andy.

Which is what?

The US, this is a fact, and it's not one of those false facts, it's a true one, is now running out of bullets.

One billion bullets fired per year by Americans, Andy.

They said it couldn't be done.

They said they could make them faster than Americans could fire them, but they have been proven wrong.

Now, Bush's government have hit back by saying that's not actually that big a figure, especially if you think of a much bigger number to compare it to.

That is true.

And well, it's only what, about three bullets per American.

Yeah, it's not that big.

And there must be some Americans who don't use any bullets.

and some who use a lot.

So, I don't know.

I mean, if you're an average man in the street, I mean, you've been living in America now for almost 18 months.

I mean, how many bullets have you fired in that time?

What I fired probably, ooh, got about 22 bullets, but 19 of them were into the air.

Only three were at other people.

Yeah, well, that was that in that incident at the motorway service station.

Correct.

Right.

Best brush over that.

There's only one thing in a war more foolish than running out of bullets, and that is to tell your enemy that you have run out of bullets.

That's right.

That is a tactical error of quite magnificent proportions.

I think it does also come down to the problem that America had been operating a shoot first, hold court-martials later policy.

It works fine, Andy.

There is a genuine consequence to this, which is that police forces, in particular the NYPD, to train their police officers now, they're having to use paintball guns, which is a magnificent idea.

They should have them now for all the police.

Take the guns from them, give them paintball guns.

What is the worst thing that's going to happen to an innocent black man in Harlem?

He's going to end up looking like a work-in-progress Jackson Pollock.

Congratulations, Officer O'Reilly.

Yet another masterpiece.

Well, thank you very much.

It's just so hard to know when it's finished.

It certainly might have solved a few problems over here if a Brazilian man had had his head painted red, orange, green, yellow, and blue.

I think that really the only excuse they've got left for Iraq now is that it was supposed to be best of three.

So they had to have the Second Iraq War, and there was a legal precedent with this with the World Wars.

They were best of three.

That's correct.

And in fact, there was a Third World War in the 1970s, but because we were 2-0 up,

the press didn't report it.

Yeah, it was played behind closed doors.

Germany actually won and they now run Kent County Council.

So moving on to other news now.

And in Britain, John, I don't know if this has been big news in America.

Gordon Brown's honeymoon period has unceremoniously ended in a hail of abuse from his political enemies and accusations of policy stealing.

Has this registered much in the States or do they still think Blair is in charge?

Do you know what?

I was asked a question pretty much along that lines this morning on the radio.

If you listen now to that slight buzzing sound, that is the buzz of America talking about Gordon Brown's taxation pre-budget.

Because

we all love pre-budget taxation.

I mean, it's one of those moments in the year, like the FA Cup final, that as a kid you look forward to for weeks

in advance.

Particularly, I mean, in the old days, there wasn't so much economics on tele, so the pre-budget statement was you know, a big thing.

But now, you know, we've got these 24-hour economics channels.

It's not quite so special.

But it still has that little freeson of anticipation.

That's right, as he stands there and someone throws a football at his head, he's saying, I'm Gordon Brown, I used to be Chancellor.

But more than anything,

the recent weeks of politics in England have really proved to the country that no one really cares about party politics anymore.

We're alienated.

This is proved by the fact that there are more suicides during party conference season than during the rest of the year put together.

Now, that is a lie, but my point stands.

Yeah, I mean, it's a very powerful lie, so there must be something to it.

The government, they've offered to raise the inheritance tax threshold for married couples.

Married couples very much in the sights of all political parties.

The Tories offered tax breaks to married couples earlier this year on the grounds that marriage is the bedrock of Britain, the bedrock of British society, therefore it must be financially rewarded by the state.

And I fully endorse this.

A lot of people get married because they love each other.

I think this is weak.

I got married three years ago, but I got married because I love my country.

And I thought of all the wonderful things that Britain has done for me over the 33 years I've been in it.

When I was only eight years old, for example,

1982, Britain saved me from being invaded by Argentina.

albeit the Argentina used cheap maps and missed by 15,000 miles.

But I thought Britain's done so much for me, it's time for me to repay Britain now by contributing to its bedrock and getting married.

So I got down on my bendy knee and I said to my now now lady wife, I said, Darling, I love Britain.

Would you do me the honour of helping make Britain an even more magnificent nation?

And she said, Of course I will.

I love Britain too.

And we shook hands and we sang Rule Britannia.

And we'd reminisced on when it was that we'd realised that we both really loved Britain.

It had been at a party at university when we were both pissed off our faces.

And she was going out with Germany at the time.

I had a bit of a thing for France, but we've worked through it.

But I was at that wedding, Andy, and that is why I had my face painted like the Union Jack and kept screaming, God save the Queen.

That was also why I kept screaming, I miss Princess Diana, as well, because I do.

Every day is difficult.

Actually, has the inquests into

Diana's alleged death been big news in the States?

Actually, it has been quite big news, and American people do tend to think that we really do miss her, because I guess they saw...

all of those shots of mass mourning ten years ago and they're quite delicate around mentioning it.

So whenever anyone mentions Diana they'll kind of shoot an awkward glance over at you as if as if your mother's just died you go it's it's okay we've got over it now it has been 10 years but I I and the American people am extremely pleased that there is yet another inquest it's definitely what Diana would have wanted in fact I think there should be an inquest for each year that she would have been alive and indeed should have been alive were she not taken from us all so quickly so there should be 340 inquests.

Then you've got to have...

She would have found a way to live that long, Andy, powered only by compassion.

Another piece of news, Andy, is, of course, Armenia and the genocide that wasn't.

Has that caught on back in Britain?

It's been a bit of a story here, certainly the top genocide story of the week.

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess what happens for those of you that don't know is that in the year 2000, Bush referred to the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkey as a genocide.

But in his defence, he wasn't to know when he stated that as a fact, that an even bigger fact would emerge, that of Turkey's usefulness to the current Iraq war.

And that is a huge fact.

That is a massive fact.

And so Bush has backed down saying, no, it wasn't actually a genocide.

Is this partly because he's covering his own back for the numbers of deaths he's caused?

Well, no, it's really this is the first piece of really great news from the Iraq war, Andy, because the current Iraq war has, in a way, prevented a 100-year-old genocide from ever having happened.

And that is a huge positive of both Bush and Blair's decision to go there.

Yes, they've killed thousands of Iraqis, but in a way, they've saved 1.5 million Armenians from being subject to a genocide.

And if that doesn't win them the Nobel Peace Prize, then nothing will.

1.5 million Armenians, Andy.

They're heroes.

It just seems a shame that they didn't have the courage to...

be public with their real reasons for the Iraq war being to save so many innocent Armenian lives in the early 20th century.

I don't know, Andy, because I would have been right behind them, and that would have made those marchers look pretty stupid.

What do you hate about Armenians who are already dead so?

And our final other news story is that archaeologists in Rome claim to have uncovered what they think is a lost epistle of St.

Paul.

Now, the late St.

Paul was a compulsive epistle writer, as we know, although today only 14 of his many thousands of epistles have appeared in print in a book first published several years ago now,

called Bible to the New Testament.

The new epistle is from St.

Paul to his local council and has been translated from the original Greek by Professor Albin Strange of the Nantwich Institute of Biblical Studies and it reads like this, Dear Sir or Madam, where is my bin?

I asked for a new bin three weeks ago.

I have not received that bin.

Where is my bin?

The people who live down the road at number 53 stole my bin.

They've now painted 53 on it, so I can't steal it back.

Maybe in the old days I would have done, but I'm a changed man.

The current situation is untenable.

I need a bin.

I'm trying to found a major religion.

I do not have time to dispute the provision of basic amenities.

Give me a bin, give me a bin, give me a bin, preferably a wheelie bin, give me a bin.

Regard Paul.

So I don't know what message we can learn from this epistle of St.

Paul to the local council.

Do you know what I take from that parable, Andy?

I take from that that you lost your bin.

You're saying that I'm saying what happened to me in the form of a faked epistle from some personality.

I'm saying you haven't even changed the number of the house of the person you believe stole your bin.

I don't believe it, John.

It's got the same dent in the lid that our old one had.

I'm saying you haven't even changed the number.

Not by one.

Just don't mention the road.

Don't want to mention the road name, John.

But we do now have a new bin.

This is a private gripe, Pandy.

Don't take it onto the airwaves.

Bugle, letters and emails.

There is no letter section in this edition of the Bugle because it is the first edition of the Bugle and therefore none of you have had the opportunity to write in.

However, in future editions, we will be responding to your letters or, more likely, emails.

So do send them in to thebugle at

timesonline.co.uk.

So for next week's show, you will have the rare opportunity to ask a genuine American citizen of which there are literally thousands walking around here anything you wish.

Just send your question to thebugle at timesonline.co.uk and every week a different American will be happy to answer your queries.

Bugle feature article!

Now it's time for a special news feature.

What is torture?

Well I'll tell you what it's not Andy.

It's not anything that we're involved in at the moment.

In fact that should be the new dictionary definition of torture.

That which we do not do.

The Oxford English Dictionary shouldn't have put it better themselves.

But it turns out that when you put real pressure onto it, the word torture is a lot more bendy than it actually claims to be.

That's ironic.

It's been rendered completely meaningless now, torture, and with the word torture currently incapacitated, other words have been promoted to fill the void.

So simulated drowning.

we hear is now enhanced interrogation.

Slapping an inmate around the head is horseplay.

Sleep deprivation is nocturnal insistence, and applying electrodes to the testicles is turbo questioning.

That sounds like the kind of euphemisms you get in rugby commentaries.

A little bit of Argy Bargie

as someone's head comes clean out of a maul.

That is pretty much what's happening at the moment

in Congress.

And Dana Perino, the US press secretary, said of all the secrecy around what we're actually doing to these suspects, She said, it's secret for a reason.

It's not secret just because we want it to be secret.

It's secret because it's classified.

Now,

that would seem like a tautology at first, second and nineteenth glance.

But look at it one more time, Andy, because it isn't.

This government does not tautologize.

They would never do that to words.

But the whole human rights angle is

obviously quite a potent one in the war on terror.

I know the whole issue of human rights is increasingly difficult because there are more humans in the world than ever before, but unfortunately only the same number of rights to go around.

So some people will miss out.

Don't blame the government, blame maths.

And I guess human rights has become a bit like musical chairs.

And you've just got to hope that when the music stops, your chair doesn't have wires coming out of it.

Absolutely.

It's very important.

Now, also, the American governments have argued that the reason that we should not reveal our torture or indeed not torture methods is that the enemy, by finding out, would train to withstand them the enemy would adapt they would adapt and they're absolutely right because if you beat them Andy they will develop harder skin if you shove their head in water they will develop gills because apparently Andy this is the one single area where Republicans do believe in evolution

The the home front and the war on terror has been going tremendously well.

The chief of the Metropolitan Police in London has warned that terror plots are growing

which is bad news.

But I guess, you know, the pro-war movement will say, well, think how many more terror plots there would be if we hadn't stamped out so much of al-Qaeda and anti-Western fundamentalism by liberating Iraq.

It's very hard to argue with that kind of logic.

But so the government's been passing all these draconian laws, as they have in America.

They're now wanting to extend 28-day detention without trial.

I thought they didn't apply to me, John, because I've taken the very sensible precaution of being white.

So I'd assume that I was in the clear.

But I found out they they do actually apply to me when I accidentally committed a bit of terror

just a couple of weeks ago.

I was walking through Westminster, innocently playing myself at scissors paper stone, as you do, when in the process of doing scissors on stone, I found myself flicking a V-sign at the houses of parliament whilst brandishing my fist, which I thought could be considered an act of illegal protest within the one kilometre exclusion zone of the home of democracy within which I'm no longer allowed to democratically protest without prior permission.

So I thought I could be a terrorist.

So I then stopped and searched myself under the new stop and search powers.

I found myself to be in possession of a biscuit in the shape of the American flag, which I thought I might eat in quite an aggressive manner in an American's face.

So I then interned myself without trial for several weeks, still felt a bit of a terrorist.

So I then flew myself on a secret CIA flight to an unspecified North African location, beat myself up quite badly, submerged myself up to my neck in water, and mercilessly lampooned my own love of cricket.

Now, at the the end of that of course it turned out that I wasn't actually a terrorist.

But John it just goes to show doesn't it?

It really does.

I mean you really do love your country Andy and you want to keep it safe from yourself.

I do.

I think you know I know

I was innocent but the point is I didn't know that until I found it out.

Exactly.

Governments in Britain and America have admitted some mistakes have been made, and it's a war mistakes are going to be made.

I guess they could say that if you want to make an omelette you've got to crack some eggs.

But you do also have to cook those eggs for which it does help if you have planned at least a basic omelette cooking recipe in advance of cracking the eggs.

And all they've done particularly in Iraq is jump up and down on the eggs and now they're wondering why the Iraqis want muesli for breakfast.

It's a dreadful omelette, worse than anyone could have envisioned.

Now it's time for the bugle's unique audio cryptic crossword.

Each week for the next 26 weeks the bugle will contain a clue for its unique cryptic audio crossword.

The grid is available on the website timesonline.co.uk slash the bugle

including as a special introductory offer two free letters to get you started

So you have to fill in your answer each week and then next April anyone who successfully completed the entire crossword will win the right to treat themselves to a cup of tea.

So here is the first clue one across

for the crossword.

Pay attention.

It's eight letters long.

Bangers made by wise men all around America.

The cheap ones may contain pigs' testicles.

And that is a great section of the bugle to listen to while sitting on the toilet.

Business news now.

Crisp manufacturers have been accused of putting too much salt in their crisps, thus damaging the health of children.

Those manufacturers have hit straight back by merely pointing out, all we're trying to do is make your children easier to float.

We're heroes.

Next time little Timmy falls into the canal and bobs straight back up to the surface, we expect a strongly worded thank you letter from you ungrateful hippies.

The FTSE 100 index fell by a record 4,138 points yesterday morning after traders across the world realized that the whole of the global economy is based on increasingly ludicrous speculation about non-existent financial fantasies and that their entire existence is essentially futile.

However, the markets recovered in the afternoon when they remember that they simply don't care.

The US this week announced the federal budget deficit fell to 162 billion, the lowest in five years.

However, the national debt is still 9 trillion, the largest in the world.

And yet you don't see Africa donning drop the debt wristbands for them, do you?

All we want is a bit of consistency.

Bugle arts and entertainment.

And the awards are a vapid, self-serving exercise in futility at the very best of times.

But with the Nobel Prize season upon us, the world really has been abuzz with speculation as to who will take the prize for physics.

Now, of course, as we know, in the end, it went to Albert Fair and Peter Grunberg for their discovery of the giant magneto-resistance.

You sound,

the way you said that, John, sounds like you've almost never heard of giant magneto-resistance.

Well, not only have I heard of it, Andy, I thought of it first.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, and if it wasn't for Fert and Grunberg chasing gongs, I'd be standing in front of the Nobel Prize Committee today saying, yes, yes, take that, Grunberg.

Take that, Fert.

But Fert, upon receipt of his award, screamed, I'm king of the worlds, before being dragged off the stage, whilst Grunberg simply burst into tears and thanked God and the Nobel Committee.

Their invention was credited with revolutionising hard disk technology.

And I read on the internet that without it, you would not be able to store more than one song on your iPod.

Now this raises two issues.

One, why does anyone need more than one song?

Surely Born on the Bow by Credence Clearwater Revival should be more than enough for anyone.

And B,

let us assume that Apple, shrewd business folk that they have proved themselves to be, would not have marketed a one-song capacity iPod, albeit that it probably would have looked really nice.

and have been a bit of a fashion accessory.

Well, it would have been user-friendly as well.

Very user-friendly, Andy.

But it is reaching a very exciting stage now, the Nobel Prizes.

We now know all the winners.

And the draw has been made for the knockout stages to get the eventual Nobel champion.

And science has been drawn against peace.

Home Advantage could be crucial.

If it's in a chemistry lab, I know who my money's on.

Although they have been testing peace on animals recently.

True.

And it's

just doesn't work.

It's almost as if they don't want to get on.

Now, in this troubled world, Andy, it is often difficult to find ways to be proud to be British.

but if any of the listeners would like one of those ways look up Doris Lessing upon her realization that she had won the Nobel Prize for Literature because she was out shopping with her husband and she was coming back in a taxi to be greeted by a flank of American photographers saying you've won the Nobel Prize for Literature how do you feel she and her artichoke wielding husband looked slightly crestfallen.

She said, oh Christ, really?

Oh,

and then tried to shove her way into her own house.

It was a magnificent exercise in ingratitude.

That is Britain at its grudging best.

That's what we do best, looking slightly sour and snubbing the rest of the world.

That is, that's what won us the war, really.

Pretty much.

That's basically the reaction when we heard that Hitler had invaded Poland.

Oh, bloody hell.

Dah, ruined my afternoon.

And we also have our guest book reviewer of the week.

This week, our special guest reviewer is Osama bin Laden, the prominent terrorist.

And he has chosen his non-fiction book of the year so far.

When it comes to paperback non-fiction, my book of the year so far is The Revenge of Gaia by Ace Science Wiz James Lovelock, published by Penguin, priced £8.99.

Although my book club members can claim a £2 discount if, when ordering, they caterwall death to the West.

According to Lovelock's 240 attractively laid-out pages, the planet is already doomed.

As you may all well know, I'm always in favour of extreme approaches, so Lovelock certainly butters my littery muffins.

Albeit that his insistence that the end of the world is nigh makes me feel that I've rather been wasting my time.

His persuasive prose style, reminiscent of a young Jenny Colgan, certainly made me think hard about looking into sustainable forms of terrorism.

I give it an al-Qaeda rating of four burning infidels.

Cheerio!

Sport now, and if my life is anything to go by, some podcast listeners might want to listen to this before the rest of the podcast.

The big story in world sport this week has been Marion Jones handing back her Olympic gold medals from the Sydney Olympics.

John, I would imagine America has quite literally been tearing itself limb from limb over this story.

Well, America is ashamed of itself or herself over this one, and yet are we going to keep letting sports people hurt us and disappoint us in this way, Andy?

Because all they're trying to do when you boil it down is get better at athletics.

And what you have to bear in mind, Andy, is that scientists have discovered humans have reached their peak in terms of athletics without the use of banned substances.

And we all knew this day would one day arrive.

I don't think anyone thought we would honestly live to see the day where a man would attempt to break the no-second barrier in the 100 metres, unless that man was 100 metres long.

In which case, get a urine sample out of him, that man is cheating.

When I was a schoolboy, I ran the 100 metres in 3.8 seconds.

I wasn't on drugs.

I was in a car.

But you were cheating by driving at three years old.

There was nothing explicit in the laws of School Sports Day that I wasn't allowed.

to get a lift up the track.

Well, the rules were made after that race.

But the Olympic Committee have a bit of a problem here in that the woman who came second to Marion Jones was Thanu, the Greek runner who subsequently missed the 2004 Olympics

in a drug scandal.

So the gold would have to go to the woman who came third, who no one can remember who it was now because they didn't write it down at the time.

So I think what's going to have to happen is they're actually going to have to have a rerun and get all the finalists back in the stadium in Sydney with all the people who were there at the time to recreate that moment as accurately as possible.

But I think it's good that sporting injustices are now being rectified retrospectively because sport is littered with unjust results.

Personally, I think it is time for Germany to accept that it had no right to win the 1954 Football World Cup and to give it to Hungary, who are clearly the better team, and had Pushkos not been fouled out of the final, would have won.

That's true.

I'd like to see that result overturned.

Also, Stephen Hendry beating Jimmy White in 92 and 94 and the World Championships.

I think he should hand those back.

He can keep 93, no complaints, 18-5.

Even Jimmy's most ardent supporters couldn't argue that he deserved that one.

Well, I think there should be a fairytale rule there, Andy.

You can appeal under the fairytale rule that you should have won that match.

To me, John, the surprising thing, though, is that so you look at Jones's times, they were good, but they weren't that outstanding.

And it suggests to me that in the eighties, they were much better at doping athletes than they are now.

And I think these doping scientists have really been taking it easy for too long and you know the level of cheating in athletics now is really substandard look at the all the world records still stand in the 80s Flojo the East Germans Kratos Vilova the famous Czech 800 meter runner no one's even come close yeah but I didn't have to look at that one

but East German scientists and the they were researching performance enhancing drugs on steroids so I'm afraid

I'm afraid their drugs are no longer admissible

the thing is, sport is judged much more harshly than other areas of life, in which, you know, I think we'd be in favour of performance-enhancing drugs, say if you get into the police to make them detect crime more efficiently.

We'd all be in favour of that.

And, you know, we shouldn't be too judgmental.

Churchill himself actually tested positive posthumously for nandrolone.

And his family claims it was some legitimate dietary supplements.

But I'm afraid the UN does operate strict liability on these things, and we are going to have to hand back World War II.

Oh, no.

Oh, that is shameful.

He used to be England's greatest Briton and now he's a disgrace.

Now in the Rugby World Cup, we are recording this on Friday so we're going to have to guess what's happened in the England-France semi-final on Saturday.

And I think we can safely say that either England will have triumphantly rampased into yet another World Cup final after siding their way through an obliterated French team with a display of total rugby seldom seen in the history of humanity, or that France will have sneaked their way into a freakishly fortuitous victory on the back of cheating, luck, and a hometown refereeing.

One of those two will almost certainly have happened.

Absolutely.

See, I'm certain of one thing and less certain of another.

I'm absolutely certain that Phil Vickery will have eaten one of the French players during the game.

I'm just not sure who.

He was overheard in the canteen asking the chef to develop him a source that would be nice with Olivier Milloux.

But in a way, that's just what the French team would be expecting.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, because that's a front row, but I mean, it'd be more interesting were he to try and eat Yannick Josion, essentially.

But then that's a logistical problem, because Josion's quite a lot quicker than him and notoriously reluctant to be eaten.

Sports shorts now.

The goalkeeper for Fiji was banned from New Zealand this week due to sanctions linked to a coup.

And whittling down your opponent's team through historical research has already caught on.

At time of recording, England had traced the family trees of the French rugby union players, meaning that the entire French scrum was set to be banned due to guillotine-related infractions during the French Revolution.

What's an infraction, John?

It is the use of a guillotine in an illegal way.

Right, okay.

That's a technical sports.

You can use it to dice carrots, otherwise it's a sinbin.

Football, a memorial service for Jose Mourinho's time in charge at Chelsea, will be held at St.

Peter's in the Box, Fulham, on Saturday, the 20th of October.

Ian Robin will read from 451 The Death of Football, Poems on the Pragmatism of Football Business.

Please don't send flowers, donations to the European Institute for the Eradication of Sporting Romanticism.

And finally, some results.

Bullying in the European Super Cup.

Wilcaster High School beat the Squala di Santi Scalacci in Naples, 1813.

A hat-trick of Chinese burns by young Matty Silverback for Wilcaster there.

Very promising young thug indeed.

And some excellent verbal bullying by Natasha Filders caused two Italian girls to join a convent.

And finally, in Greco-Roman architecture, the Parthenon beat Hadrian's wall 3-0.

Oh, bit of an upset.

And now it's time for the Bugle weather forecast.

So, John, what do you think the weather's going to be like this week?

I think it's probably going to be a bit sunny still.

A bit sunny, you know, with probably a bit of a nip in the air.

No, I think it's going to be dank and wet.

Well, let's see who was right next week.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree.

In next week's Bugle, what are China up to these days?

The US election, everything's going to be fine.

And a live report from the European Tantrum Throwing Championships.

It's quarter final stage.

Can Britain flip their lids more convincingly than when they failed to get properly riled by not being allowed seconds of pudding at the World Championships last year?

So join us next Monday and every Monday for next week's Bugle.

Well, it won't be next week's Bugle every Monday.

That will only be next week.

Although by then, the following week will have become next week.

Okay, yeah.

But the point stands.

John's point stands.

Also on the website, timersonline.co.uk/slash the bugle, you can see what would have been the print edition of the bugle had England not inconsiderately reached the World Cup Rugby semi-final and had to have a pull-out about them

thereby removing the bugle pull-out.

But anyway, there it is.

It's all there in all its sparkling technical colour glory on the website.

Bye.

Have a lovely week.

Hi, Buglers.

It's producer Chris here.

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

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

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