The Bugle - 15 Years, What Just Happened? With Marina Hyde

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Satirist Marina Hyde joins Andy to discuss 15 years of The Bugle, the state of satire today and, of course sport. If you enjoy this, buy Marina's book: What Just Happened?Subscribe to Top Stories, our daily show celebrating 15 years of The Bugle: https://pod.link/TopStories Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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And as we prepare for our 15th birthday live Bugle tour, London on the 15th and 22nd of October, Birmingham on the 27th, Glasgow on the 30th and Dublin on the 3rd of November, details online, we are bringing you some extra bonus bonus additional bugle content to mark reaching 1.5% of a millennium's worth of podcast to existence. To mark this 1.5 decade point and our continuing places, the longest running audio newspaper for a visual world that I've ever been involved with, not only do we have our run of special 15th anniversary shows, which you'll hear highlights of over the next few weeks, but we also have other exciting offerings to the gods who rule our Yutsov for our listeners, such

as you. These include the launch of Top Story, a new parallel pod feed featuring classic top stories from the Bugle Archives. And for this week's offering Bugle 4242 sub-episode A for ahhhh don't know the legends fly by these days, we have something rather different. This week I look back at the last 15 years of human civilization, a decade and a half in which despite the Bugable's existence, not everything was gone quite as brilliantly as it might, with one of Britain's foremost satirical writers. Throughout the beable span now in official epoch in the history of human civilization,

Marina Hyde has been writing about the world, politics, related issues, and also, more importantly, sport for the Guardian, one of the physical newspapers, that has withstood the challenge of our own audio newspaper. As a fellow exasperate, as at the term of this planet, Marina was the perfect guest to reflect on the past 782 or so weeks in the history of our world-renowned species, when we met in early September at a time when the United Kingdom still had a female monarch and a male prime minister, albeit not much longer in either case. Here to get the Bugle 15th anniversary celebrations

underway are reflections on the last 15 years. Marina, welcome to the Bugle. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. Well, it's a great pleasure to have you on. Now, you have been chronicling the planet for a long time now. How would you assess humanity in 2022 compared with 2007, the year the bugle began? I would not say that things have only got better. I think with no, I think we're every time that we've had a change of leadership was, the chaos has got more and more kind of intense. And people used to talk about the Omni shambles. We're now in an Omni crisis. I mean, it's just, it's magnified, hasn't it?

And obviously it's been sort of madly driven by social media and things like that as well. Yeah, I mean, if you told me in 2007 that like the US apprentice host was going to be the leader of the free world I'd be like okay And if you told me in I don't know 2016 that he was maybe going to be the leader of the free world again In 2024 I would also be quite worried so yeah

I mean I would just say a downward spiral is that Down with tail spin and you know, I mean how much that like I said the bugle launched in 2007 I mean how much of the blame should should I be accepting having hosted a satirical podcast all that time and how much should you be accepting having been writing satirical columns about the injustices of the world and now look at what we're looking Is it our fault? Now who's being naive, okay? Let me tell you, satire has never changed anything in human history. And if you could think of an example, I would love to hear it. I mean, think about this sort of... I mean, if you're thinking of even like going right back,

you know, the greatest perhaps British satire is that ever lived, Jonathan Swift, in 1729 he writes a modest proposal which is a basically about what the British are doing in Ireland and he suggests in a really deadpan way that perhaps the Irish could eat their children or that which would solve two problems at once and it's a sort of unbelievable work and everyone thinks it's it, you know, and yet nothing changes. They're still more than a century off the potato farm. Nothing has ever changed. That's the greatest sat the potato farm. Nothing has ever changed. That's the greatest satirist ever.

Nothing has ever changed. And you still can't get a decently priced baby in a British restaurant. You still can't. You still can't actually. And that we should do something about that. But no, it's satire changes absolutely nothing. I mean, when Peter Cocoa opened a satirical night club

in the 60s, which I just love the idea of, we just called the establishment. And even when he was opening it, he said, you know, I think this sort of, you know, this sort of, well, cool to mind, all those great sort of Berlin cabrass that did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and the start of the Second World War. It never has changed anything in human history. So it's not your thought, absolutely not. But then that raises the question, what is the purpose of what is it purely cathartic? I think it is cathartic and I do actually think, I mean when I think of what Sata has done for me as a, you know, other people's sat, I'm like, God, I mean, it gives you such comfort. I mean, it sort of scoops you up in a way and makes you feel part of a fun and fabulous us laughing at horrid old them.

And it also gives you a way of looking at things. You know, oh, there's some Oscar-Wall thing where he says that sunsets didn't exist until Turner painted them, which is obviously he's being sort of glib and whatever. But, you know, people didn't properly see the government in a way for or government in this country until they saw the thick of it. And then it's like, oh, I see, it gives you, it gives you words for things and ways of looking at things that, you know, really open a window. And it's, that's a great comfort, but, you know, it doesn't, sadly, it doesn't change, change those things. I mean, Armando Nietzsche is very funny about it now. And he says, you know, the only thing

after all those years when the thick of it, so I think it was about, you know, about gosh, I mean, about, about, yeah, it's maybe a bit later than that. So, you know, the only difference between what that sort of laid bare and what's happening now is that in the thick of it, no one runs around all day going, oh my god, this is just like in the thick of it, you know, people in the government. But also does the thing where they actually sort of want it to seem like that? That's the worst when they take these sort of things as a sort of it, you know, people in the government, but also does the thing where they actually sort of want it to seem like that, that's the worst when they take these sort of things as sort of instruction manual, which I mean in the day to day, they had a great hilarious of just a quick news joke saying, you

know, question time, live from Wembley Stadium, and then in the referendum, they actually did question time live from Wembley. I'm not even thinking, it's supposed to be an instruction manual. Again, it's not an instruction manual. So predictive satire essentially? Yeah, I mean, well, lots of that stuff was brilliant because it sort of satirized the future, which was so clever. So, so all that said, what do you sort of enjoy writing about most as a satirical columnist? I mean, are there times where you just get so sort of furious at what you're thinking about that it's hard to sort of see the funny side or do you think

that's why you're going by? Yeah, I do think you have to keep the anger out. You may feel very angry, but I do think you have to keep the anger out. I think tone is, I've got old where I think that tone is like the most important thing of it, at sea, anything and you can have very little to say, but if you say it in the right tone, people are more receptive to listening. And you can have hugely important things to save it if you get the tone wrong then people just switch off. So I think the anger can make people feel like they're being shouted at. So I think it's, I often think these things are better done with humour.

For me it's quite, it has been quite cathartic because I have sort of written my way through some really chimaltas times and I actually have to say, I mean, you know, therapists tell you to write it all down, don't they? I think actually, you know, my job is a form of, like, mandated news therapy. Right. Also paid. So I'm quite fortunate in that way.

But yeah, it's, you've got, I think what I like, what works best, I think, maybe this is, I don't know, probably saw this really, but I do think most great comedy is character driven. So when you get sort of new characters come into the soap opera, it's been like a sort of mad telling novella for the last few years. Since I have to say, since 2016, it has become like a sort of crazy telling novella. I sometimes get people writing to me. My favourite ones are the people who write to me from America and say, you know, I don't know if

any of these people are up and I very much enjoy the story. Which I love. I'm so 2016 was away your book, your book starts. Obviously there was Brexit in the election of Trump. Brexit describes the binfire of the vanities. Yeah, yes. In your book. And your new book is described as you quote, slashing all the way through the hellscape of post-referendum politics. Now hellscape, I know deliberate understatement

is a classic tool of the satirist, but why did you only go with hellscape? Was it because they wouldn't let you use the term? You're f***ing again in the blurb. I think they read that blurb for me, but you're right, it's massively underplayed. What was I thinking? Yeah, we all going to have to come up with new words. I feel that, you know, sitting here in the autumn of 2022, it's quite clear we're going to need some new words,

you know, Omnichambus has become Omnichrisis. And there's going to be a whole load of neurologisms that need to be invented by you and me and many others as soon as possible to cover what's coming. Permahelscape. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll need to dig out lots of our prefixes, right? I think Permahelscape was a very popular haircut

in the 1980s. So, I mean, now six years on from Brexit and three prime ministers on from Brexit. It's all getting very well. Have we moved on at all? Have we learned anything as a country since then in the UK? I don't think we... Well, I don't think I fear we may not be as our rock bottom. Someone's sitting the other day, don't worry,... Well, I mean... I don't think... I fear we may not be as our rock bottom, someone's sitting the other day, don't worry, rock bottom's coming soon. Yeah, is it?

I feel that, you know, the election of Liz Truss particularly was not necessarily people saying, okay, we have, you know, we've kind of been on a sort of mad chasing high. It's like people on drugs who instead of actually thinking, perhaps we now have to stop and begin the unpleasant business of getting sober. I've just thought more drugs, we must have more drugs. We've delayed the calm down and the calm down is in the post. I'm afraid to say it's in the post.

In fact bits of it are arriving. So you have children, how old are you? They are 11, 10 and 8. And have you started trying to explain politics and because mine are a bit older than that, 15 and 13 now? And there's times where I try to talk to them about politics and looking at the state of,

well, not just British politics, but American politics, the state of global politics, you just feel like saying, just try and ignore it for the rest of your life if you want to be happy. I really agree with you. I feel I felt throughout, like I mean, you know, I kept saying to my

children for a long time, you know, this isn't, this really isn't normal, you know, it isn't like this always. And then I thought it's gone on for so long now that I mean, they look at you as like, but it always seems to be like this. It's always mad and crazy and, you know, watching Donald Trump, but you have to try and sort of assert norms that have now been completely burnt. There's nothing left of those norms. And so you try and say it's not really like this, but I guess it is like this now. And it's quite hard to get it back. So I don't know, my children, there were times in the whole, you know, the mad sort of Brexit thing was Theresa Moe was trying to get her deal through and people were watching television every night on the

Parliament channel. I mean nobody watches the Parliament channel but people were sitting there watching these things and you know my children could do an impression of John Birke. I mean that's something very important that's been stolen from their child. Absolutely. Mainly by me who had to keep working. I'm really sorry we're going to have to have this on because I need to work and I have to watch this But we're not you know, so well, I've got to watch this for three years, you know, sorry Yes, I don't mean I don't know it's hard to sort of see how it's gonna. I mean looking at you know, I've seen the bugles been there

been Addressing the universe in 2007 15 15 years beautifully if I may say so, but, but, but, but, but, what can you do? But in effect, but, so what's it going to be like in 15 more years from now? If it carries on at the current trajectory, is it just going to be, you know, 9 billion people standing around in a big circle screaming at each other? It's really unclear. I think that so many things are cracking and you think that the, the machine is lots of different forms of machine, essentially broken, have been taped over and are now juddering really fast and everything's

just going to blow and I'm, you know, I think we could have populist challenges from the right, from the left, I mean, you know, it's Martin Lewis going to come through and I mean, I really mean that, you know, is he going to run? You don't know, these people can kind of come through because people have just had it with sort of politicians. I think it's interesting when the bugle started because I'm thinking clearly in retrospect, although not fully understood at all at the time, the financial crisis was the biggest event of that decade.

But people thought it was 9-11 and it was very easy to live on, obviously, there were wars and whatever you'd lived on in the aftershocks of that. But it was not understood until much, much later what the financial crisis and the failure to deal with those people, what that, you know, that we're living through a lot of the fallout of not dealing with properly and of that event and I think that Trump came from that and all sorts of other things came from that and that sense of sort of, you know, leads behaving with complete impunity, which by the way, I still think we see, but I think something is just going to lots of different things are going to break.

And the economics is going to catalyze that. Right. So amidst all this, sorry, it's a little cherry into it. Well, it's not one of them in five minutes. Since we've established that satire at least has a cathartic element for the people who write and perform it and the people who read it, who listen to it, who watch it. So we know, we still have a place. Oh, absolutely. My God, it's been my comfort most of my life.

So the worst things get, the more important that cathartis becomes. However, we also need an escape. And you, like me me having a escape through sports and you've been running about sport for a long time. What role does sport have in your life and in terms of keeping your disposition towards humanity, positive? Well, it does have that role, doesn't it? And it's an escape. And yeah, of course, because nothing of these things exist in a vacuum. I remember, there's so many times where you think,

oh, this is like what's happening in politics. Or you think, oh, I know exactly why Theresa Mayer's giving Jeff Boycott a night, because you know, I mean, and you start seeing these constant power. I mean, I always think associatively anyway. That's the kind of way I think. And so it was really quite hard for me to write about politics without thinking about sport. Or, you know, you think, God, you know, I mean, Starma really plays like

Marino, you know, he actually doesn't even want to have the ball, because it's just a risk. Um, Diego Torres, that brilliant, do you know that, you know, Diego Torres, he's the Spanish journalist, he codified Marino's, Marino's game. You know, bear in mind, he did actually want to advance the Champions League final having only 19% of possession. I suppose, I wonder with, you know, that could happen to start.

He could easily sort of allow his opponent to double-fault him into number 10. And, but he's a hugely risk of us. He's almost thought himself into the position where having the ball means the ball can be taken from you, therefore whoever doesn't have the ball is stronger. So then, politics, so I always end thinking, even when I'm watching sports, this is a bit like... But you know, I always think like that, so I...

But it's quite helpful to think of it like that, to have those kind of ways you can map one experience onto another. I find it quite helpful for understanding things. And what sports do you particularly for those fun? You see football, you write about quite a bit. What is... Yes. Cricket, I mean, I watched anything, and obviously in the Olympics, I've become completely obsessed with handball

for a two-year-old. I love handball. Yeah, fantastic. Watch a lot of that live in 2012. And in fact, in 2008. But yes, I'll, yeah, I'll become completely obsessed with anything at all during the Olympics.

I enjoyed the water polo in the Netherlands. I went to a session with my dad and that was very much, you know, we look for metaphors for life and water polo. There seems to be a lot of unseen violence going on. Oh my god, it's staggeringly violent. Yeah, it's staggeringly violent. Yeah, it's, but I mean, you know, even the synchronized swimming can be, you know, but they try and, sometimes they try and politicize the swim, synchronized swimming.

I was reading once about some French routine that they only banded the last minute, which was based in, set in the sort of death camps of the Second World War and I just thought, how did you get all the way to whichever the host city was? And no one said, I just think we won't do this in sparkly leotard. I just, let's not do it. But they got all the way, I, anyway, but yes, I mean, well, we just sported, you know, we looked at sport for a bit of an escape, but then over the past 15 years, we've seen sport, you know, go through the same kind of hyperspeed, plutocratic, avarice, and unfettered globalisation that we see from politics and an economic. It is politics.

Yeah, and I mean a long time ago I used to think that, oh, maybe you know, you've got to keep it out, but it's ridiculous. When all the people who are buying the tournaments or, you know, are using it clearly as a geopolitical tool, it seems to be so weird that the only people who aren't allowed to be political are the athletes. Like, okay, you're having your world cup in Qatar, okay? Or in Russia, you know, or the Putin is using the, I don't know, what was it, it was a such a, yeah, 2014, bugle, yes.

You know, which he used as a sort of curtain razor for invading Crimea. I mean, ultimately, why can't athletes be political? Because everybody else around this stupid thing is. Yes, I mean, it's not really work massively well looking at the state of the world the way they've, you know, given out Olympics and world cups. And though you sometimes hear that, oh, it helps advance. Oh, yes, I'm hearing that from the eyes. The ISEM FIFA. Yeah, I mean, God, I mean, but actually looking back, I mean, let's look about, was it 25th? Well was all that fee for drama was do you remember how that was most extraordinary story and of our times in sort of 2015

We're like oh my god look at all this you know if they're bringing pulling them out the hotel hiding by their own bed They're literally coming out with their own dirty linen From that hotel, you know, they arrested them all and it was so you know people went to like Ryker's Island for a night And stuff like that and he thought thought, my God, this is the most, we're feasting on this story. And then of course, by the next year, you think, oh, that seems quite small compared to the absolute madness that began to happen in politics proper. Yes. And then we have things like the Saudi takeover of golf. Yeah. Essentially, do you think it's come to the time where commentators on sports should be highlighting

what sports people are endorsing? So you should, you know, golf commentators and well, here's Dustin Johnson, 85 yards to the pin and let's hope he's not distracted by the sight of an unshaperoned female spectator over the back of the group, and how much he disapproves of it. Yes, I do.

I mean, if you take the money, you should back yourself. But that's the, yeah, I mean, but again, the money, you should back yourself. But it's, yeah, I mean, but again, the commentators are not really allowed to be like that. And the athletes, I mean, some of the athletes, you say, I mean, I essentially think he has taken, it doesn't, doesn't, you have taken a political decision, whether or not, some things are cast as political and others aren't. And it's really sad that holding a little kind of rainbow ribbon on the Olympics podium can get you into huge trouble, whereas, Saudi money is absolutely fine. Yeah, it's ridiculous. And the whole idea that sport and politics don't mix is undermined whenever there's an

international sporting event, it begins with a national anthem because your nations are political entities. Like a typhoon fly past and It's like, okay, we've seen your hard work. I mean, it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's militarized. If you look at American sport, it's completely militarized. And it's, you know, I mean, again, it is totally politicized by people who claim that it shouldn't be politicized. You know, kneeling down, that's politics.

But my typhoon fly past is not. Is the Qatar World cup later this year? Is that the logical end point of sport? Yeah, when you have to build a town to stop a stadium looking stupid. Yeah, I think that there's something about those mega events. That is the logical event of the end of those mega events. Where they did, there is one town that they've had to build a town to stop it looking silly.

Because it's just tiny, the country, and they've built some one of the stadiums and they've had to do this. Yes, I mean it's completely obviously corrupt, run by terrible people, I see Beckham's advertising there and yeah and it will all be finishing like a week before Christmas. No, sorry, no. It is wrong on almost so many levels. Infinite levels infinite number of what's going to happen to sports personality of the year? That's that's right Yeah, I mean, is anyone asked? So when the bugle started it was I was about just under a year before the Beijing

Olympics, did you know? I went there. Yeah, and that was that was Pearson There was the opening ceremony had these two you I don't know if you remember they had the open series extraordinary And it had but they had two thousand dramas who apparently had been made to rehearse in nappy so that you know No one said that they'd no one actually had to go to do and leave the There was just this you know obviously synchronized drumming, you feel it in your actual chest, and in the stadium, it was just like a, like a blood pulse of like this new superpower announcing itself to the entire world. Yeah, that was, but I remember going to press conferences there every morning, and these, they said, we will be allowed,

you will be allowed to protest against anything,. And these two little little old ladies had protested that there has been knocked down for it, and they were taken to a labor camp. And so there was a woman from the IOC on stage with the guy from the Chinese Organising Committee who just refused to answer any questions. So we would ask the woman for the IOC, do you see what you've done? You're now, you're complicit in this, you're not, anyway, three days after days after that, that no press conferences allowed happening. But what's going to happen? You can't stop the Olympics. So they just, all these people are just totally played by these people, but they quite like being played by them because they get bribed, I guess. And, you know, that's the healing power of sports. The world came together in Beijing and all the problems in China were solved as a result of 17 days of people wringing around and

chucking stuff. Yeah, they did really well there Yeah, they really were they did yeah Again point me an example worth a healing power of this is as it was worked in the last I don't know 15 years I'm and crickets change change a lot in in In the last 15 years and for a start 15 years ago. I wasn't writing about cricket and through the bugle I got a cricket column and now I spent I see right yeah, yeah now you I said you are now involved with cricket. Yes, immersed in it But I mean that too has has changed 2020 was still relatively new in 2007 and now when was Stanford?

Stanford I was quite soon after I think that might have been 2009 That was brilliant. That was notting at me through the that was absolutely brilliant watching that happened a guy landing Landing on the nursery grab with with his case of Money, but it wasn't his case of money. It was his case of fake money Yeah, well, we found out not about Alan Stanford as the time went on there were about three actual bank notes on top of a Perseverance box full of is he in prison? Where is he now? He is still... Well he was... Because there was a wonderful... There was a wonderful story at the time, I that... Because you know he was out and about and with his girlfriend who was some sort of

PR person. And I believe that Chris Gail and her had some kind of liaison during it. Sounds like a workriot now. And then you never saw her again. But then at the end, Stanford had to give the trophy to Chris Gail, which I thought was just so perfect. Yeah. And then I think he went on the run, didn't he? And I can't believe there's poor people at the easy being. And no idea that this would happen.

What? There were no signs. There were no signs. How could we predict? Yes. We're such a stupid country. A guy who turns up with a perspex box for a fake money. For the very money, I... In a helicopter that he'd hired in...

I think he hired it in Battersea, didn't he? Yeah. Put his branding on it and flew it to Lourdes. Yeah, I just think a Lombell should have been ringing. Yeah, but our governing body's, though, Andy. I mean, again, there's no more tightly-fought competition than the one to be the worst. FIFA and I see it's like a permanent,

it's been the great rivalry of my lifetime sporting wise. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of federal and adult jokovic. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And all the various sporting bodies and the governing bodies have competed

throughout the last 15 years, certainly, to be the worst. Other institutions that you've written about plentifully in your journalistic career and your current book include the Royal Family. So I mean, in 2007, the Queen was a sprightly 81, I think, just relatively inexperienced as a monarch. Still with the stabilizers on, yeah. A mere 55 years on the throne under her belt. In the first few years of the of the of the bugle, we covered the,

because we take our role on the bugle as official podcast of human history very seriously. We followed professional, future King William, building up to the baroilment by an uptrialization of Kate Middleton to become our future overlords. What interests you about the Royal family as a satirical writer? Well, I mean, it's quite miserable really. I think that people really want them to be unhappy and they want their, they, you know, I mean, what do we want from these people? They, it's so sort of miserable and the, the people are in slight denial about why they, and how they contribute to it. I remember going at, I think it was, yeah, it was Megan and Harry's wedding and I went to Windsor the day before and there were all the people camped out, you know, and there was this woman saying to me,

oh, it's just terrible what they've done to her, it's terrible what they've done to her. And I said to you, and she said the tabloids, she had them all on her niche, but all of them. You know, I mean, it's like Princess Diana, you know, someone was buying the papers, but we're very bad at admitting that, you admitting that we're massively interested in this thing. And I do think, and that people are part of it. I mean, they bought the papers. They loved the paparazzi shots.

That's what they wanted. And they want these people to be unhappy, I think, in a very odd way. And they're obsessed with duty and what duty looks like. And I think it's very difficult to see how it can possibly not go into some form of crisis after the death of the Queen because I just don't think people feel the same way about Prince Charles at all. 15 years ago when we began George W. Bush was still president of America. Barack Obama was on the campaign trail. About to us, you're in a new era of hope around

the democratic world. The people was always, we had a thought on each side of the Atlantic in the early years when John Oliver was co-host before he retired too. I come to what he did, I think open hot dogs, do all. What's your relationship been with American politics? Now how has your perception of it changed over the years that you've been writing? My husband takes care of a lot of American politics for our family and I do the UK politics. I was speaking to my friend, Georgia Pritchett, who writes sort of succession and vip and things like that. And because she did,

though she was, did American politics and her wife does British politics. And because it's just been so mad over the last few years that you've kind of need to divide the duties You think I can't watch any of this anymore, but yeah American politics. It's God it's it's never been as dark in my lifetime. I mean that's the thing you know you the To see sort of Michelle Obama and I went to the annual great Trumps inauguration to see Michelle Obama and George W. Bush

You know, I mean to if you told me in 2007 I see looking fondly in any way back at George W. Bush. I mean, if you told me in 2007, I see, looking fondly, in any way back at George W. Bush, I would have, I mean, I really wouldn't have understood it. But when she came off the platform, he was filmed and they had the lit reader who said that he said to Michelle Obama, after Trump's mad, well, that was some weird shit. And you just think, oh,

kind of lead George W. Bush., obviously I don't completely think that, but that's the thing, isn't it? It's got worse, so you look back and think, oh, we didn't know, we were born. Yes, that was some weird shit. I mean, that could be a tight, you know, the alternative title for your book. For my book, I know.

What just happened. Yeah, well, that was some weird shit. The title of my book has got the question mark and the exclamation mark because I actually have no idea what happened. That's what it's supposed to of my book has got the question mark and the exclamation mark because I actually have no idea what happened. That's what it's supposed to imply. I don't know the answer.

I've saw someone else have done a book, some brilliant scientist, had also written a book for some of the years called What Just Happened, but there was no question mark. I think this guy knows what just happened and whatever his feel, especially as I was, I have no clue. I've just been a bystander. And away from the UK and its former nephew, I believe, the USA, I mean, internationally over the last 15 years, we've proudly covered on the bugle some of the great rogues of our burgeoning millennium from Chavez to Armadinoja, and we've had Gaddafi, Bin Laden, it's

his final exit from the international stage, the Kim dynasty, Incarib Bolsonaro, Putin as well as the various... Charlotte, Shise, in Britain and America. I mean, what do you think these people have in common apart from being amen? Be men who think they ought to be leaders,

see men who have actually become leaders and D total shipwags? What else do they have in common? Well, you've covered quite a lot of bases there. I will say that. I mean, there must be some nasty assist, sociopaths. I don't know. But they have tapped into something quite primal and they say things that people just didn't say in public life. Yes, and about people who have been warning about politics. Yes, these kind of leaders for two and a half thousand plus years.

Yeah, and then what a clutch of them we currently have. Yeah, it's, but that's what I mean about something being broken and that we didn't under properly understand this is what happens is that populists come through and they're you know to be serious for a moment. That is what happens is that populace comes through and to be serious for a moment that is what happens if you don't deal with the problems is that someone who has got a quick and easy solution for them. I mean look you are deterting the Philippines people voted in their masses for someone who said I'm just going to execute people, and they thought it made things better. And you've got people actually which I find also

very sad that there's lots of people saying, you know, I mean, people in the Philippines saying it was better under the marcuses. It was, you have people saying it's better under Chuchesco in Romania. You've got lots of people who look back and say, well, it was better back then. And that I think is, I mean, does the arc of history bend towards justice? I've got, it's gone on a hideous king. I think it might bend. We've got, it's on a hideous king. I think it's stopped bending. That's the point I mean bending towards justice. No, it's gone on a hideous king. I think it might bend to the most. It's on a hideous king.

Stop bending, that's the problem I mean bending towards justice. Could the arc of history please return to justice? Please return to justice. I think it's the boomerang of history. Yeah, currently. Fast in the other direction. So I mean who have you enjoyed writing about most? Do you say, I mentioned how, you know,

a lot of comedy comes from characters. Who of you? Well, you can find the character in all of them. I mean, at the start, you might have thought Theresa May was relatively sort of uninspiring as a character in some ways, but the things that happened to her, which were, by the way, the result of her character, you know, she, once she had her mad election, and because she fought the campaign so badly, then she actually got lost her majority and then had to just carry on being Prime Minister for two years doing this most impossible thing. I remember Frankie Boss said it was like trying

to shit out a pool table. It's just, and just trying to do it with no, it was, you know, watching people in those situations, it's like watching Basil Faulty or something, you know, you're watching someone just come up and up and up again to the event. You know, they say about sitcom writing that it's, you know, you chase your characters up at your tree and then you throw stones at them and that's really what has happened to a lot of our political leaders. I mean, it's good to get new characters breathing life back into the franchise. And, you know,

we'll see how this trust character works out out but I think the signs are not good. Yeah as someone who I've been doing the bugle weekly for about 40 weeks a year for 15 years and without a deadline I don't get a lot a lot done. I mean how do you go about right do you kind of work your deadlines beyond the point of flexible? A little bit different in the language people, isn't it? I mean, I quite like it now because in the old days, newspaper deadlines used to be at seven o'clock in the evening. I don't know what I was to do all day, you know.

Now, I guess I'll, and I write it and I send it by lunch. And I never know really what I'm going to write until the morning. And I don't have, I just, and I start, I just open a word document and I, I never started at the beginning. I write some random things down and then I kind of move them all around and I, you know, I don't really know what I think about a lot of things until I've done the writing. It's funny and then out of the sort of primordial sleep comes a column. I'm not saying a brilliant, but you know, it's, it, an artifact is formed and that's

where it is. But yeah, no, I don't, I don't have any, I just do it on the morning. It's a trade, ultimately, journalism, it's not an art. Right. And I'm, what if you're, you know, you're, you're writing something and you've chosen your topic and, you know, the sort of, the, the humor of the insight isn't flowing out. How do you, how do you force? That happens all the time. Oh, well, you know, you've just got to, I mean, Matthew Parris told me,

Matthew Parris told me something hilarious. When he first started being the sketch writer at the Times, he was employed, and many years ago, before mobile phones, and he was sent to the liberal, the first job he did was he went to the liberal Democrat party conference anyway. And the editor at the time, she appointed him as Charlie Wilson.

Anyway, and he kept finding, suddenly, this guy said to me on about day four, there's a lot of notice, phone messages in your pigeonhole, Mr. Parris, and he looked at them and it was like, call Charlie Wilson, call Charlie getting more and more abusive. And then Charlie Wilson said, sorry, what's your fucking copy? He said, well, nothing interesting's happened.

He said, sorry, I don't think you understand your job. I don't care if anything interesting's happened. You make it sound like something interesting happened and you produce and I have to go every day. And it's a really good discipline actually. And I also got to young writers, I mean, just write something, anything, just a small bit every day

and you'll get in the habit and the knack of being able to do it. It's agonizing the anxiety of authorship is not something that you should think about for journalism. So, well, let's just again look, look, look, do you think in 15 years when you're back on the show the launch of your new book? Well, I very much hope to hear.

Your new book in 2037 entitled, I was wrong about everything, an Emperor Boris deserved to rule us all. What will we be talking about? We just be talking about how fucking hot it is or how amazing our trade deal with Madagascar is that turn both the UK and Madagascar into two of the world's top five economies or how we're getting on with it.

Yeah, there's some like bankers, definitely. Yeah, I think those sort of things, yeah, I mean, I think we will be quite hot, yes. Maybe, hopefully, something radical will have happened, because I do think that people on the ground are, you know, shared with extraordinary results with this amazing initiatives. I mean, you know, it sounds quite boring and sort of non-saturical, but sometimes you go to these charity things that, you know, the whole charity is springing up,

trying to feed people doing all these things. And you think, wow, these people have really got it together. This is a logistical master work. And I just, if our overlords like that, and I hope these people have overthrown them and taken over instead But and in terms of sport Yeah within in 15 years time shouldn't be cricket will just be two people hurling balls at each other for three minutes And then everyone will go home. Well, we're watching it all on VR and it will feel like we're

Will will be VR elements to all these things immersive won't we be watching all these things immersive in a really odd way? Oh, that could be so I mean if they could create virtual reality of an unending test match That just goes on for all eternity. Yeah, just sign me up Sign me up. I'll watch it. Just let me log out. Let that's the matrix for me put them at that matrix on I'll be quite happy Let that's the matrix for me put the matrix on I'll be quite happy Push the plug me into that matrix. I don't want the red pill anymore Just a meal every every two hours play. Let it go on forever Well, there we go a note of hope on On which to finish marine it's been there been great having you on a special 15th anniversary bonus extra sub-bugal

Your book what just happened is now available at every single good bookshop in the universe I assume. Absolutely, all of them, every single one. And the internet will just ask nicely. If you have your sick next year, they've got a copy you can borrow. Thank you for listening, Bugleers. I hope you enjoyed that. Don't forget you can buy Marina's book, what just happened from anyone who has a copy if you asked nicely. We will be back next week with our birthday show show recorded live at the Leicester Square Theatre. Until then, goodbye. And happy birthday to you all.

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