The Bugle - 25 years of Stalin Cosplay

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

📯 Support The Bugle! Get exclusive video editions, bonus shows, and the right to feel a little superior: thebuglepodcast.comThis week, Andy Zaltzman is joined by David O’Doherty and Alice Fraser to deliver your weekly fix of democracy despair, snake news, and historical nonsense.🗳️ Top Story: Global Democracy Update — The world is somehow both leaning towards and veering away from Donald Trump. We check in on:Australia, where going viral now involves saying racist things in chip shops 🍟The UK, where a party that is definitely not far-right (and will sue you if you say otherwise) made gains 🏴And Ireland, where we mark the first hundred days of government with a sigh, a shrug, and mild confusion ☘️🌍 Also this week: Remember when Net Zero was an actual goal and not just a vague eco-dream whispered into the wind? Good times.🐍 In Snake News: one man basically conquers snakes by letting them bite him. Yes, this is a real story. Yes, he’s probably not okay.📚 Plus, we look back at Tennessee banning the teaching of evolution (because that could never happen again, right?), and the thrill of the first four-minute mile.🎧 Check out Realms Unknown, our fully visualised YouTube show, and grab your copy of A Passion for Passion here: Bookshop.org🔔 LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE for satirical takes on politics, history, science, and slippery reptiles.Produced by Tom Wright, Chris Skinner, and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4339 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for this unremittingly visual world with me, Andy Zoltzman, reporting live and exclusively for the Bugle News Network from the Shed of Immutable Truth here in London's famously non-central South London district. It is the 5th of May, 2025. The clouds are in the sky. The grass is on the ground. Always reassuring combinations.

And I'm joined today to apply the salve of satire to this superating world. First, from Australia by Alice Fraser. Hello, Alice. Hello, Alice. Hello, Andy. Hello, buglers. It's a delight to be on the podcast. I was about to say it's a delight to be here, but I'm just in my cupboard and also in your ears, the magic of time. And we are also joined for the, well, this is a bugle first from Dingle in Ireland by the one and only David O'Dockerty. Hello. Welcome back to the bugle, David. It's been, it's been too long.

It's been a while. And as you know, I said I'd come back for the big one for three, three, nine. And Andy, what can I say in the few years since I've been on here, my political positions have evolved. Oh, right. Horrifically. Absolutely. You've heard about my battery car company, my rockets, they've all gone badly. And now I'm about to hear, here to set the world straight.

Oh, well, I mean, that's just the dance of human progress. Another, another blast from the bugle past is also joining us today. Chris, producer Chris is this week temporarily indisposed, at stroke busy stroke with his family on a bank holiday. So we are joined by the man who was there right at the start, back from beyond the grave, I believe, if we keep the bugle narrative going successfully. Yes. This is how religions begin. You surgically reattached my head, I think. That was the soap opera storyline we went with. Right. I'm back, but I had amnesia.

It's producer Tom. Hello, Tom. Hello. Yes. From the days when we were worried about George W. Bush and his rampant right-wing republicanism. Oh, happy. Charming to heady days. Halcyon, innocent times they were. Almost 18 years ago. Well, anyway, this is, well, now we've done a lot of episodes since episode episode one I forget who else is on it apart from you and me tom, but uh, this uh, like I said, it's now 4339 coincidentally according to a scientific and completely Objectivized computerized study of donald trump's first hundred days

4339 Is the number of bad things he's done is the number of bad things he's done since rebecoming president before you get to the first good or neutral stroke non bad thing that he's done, which according to the study was have a snooze on Air Force One about four weeks ago. Critics have claimed the computerized study is not in fact at all scientific and not even slightly objective, but well, who banned science and objectivity? Who's eye socket asked me poked with this gherkin of blame? Anyway, points been made. It's the 5th of May, 2025, 100 years ago today, at the Dayton City School, biology teacher John T. Scopes was arrested

after teaching children about evolution in violation of a new Tennessee state law. So I mean, that's, you know, again, have we made progress in the last hundred years? David, I mean, I imagine you'll be with your new political, political angles. You probably think Scopes deserve to be literally nailed to a wall. Screw you, Andy, you prick. I come on a little strong. That's my thing here. I just, I don't know.

I know some people have stopped reading conventional newspapers and get all of their news from the bugle these days. I've gone the other way and I obsessively check the news the whole time like I'm Zelensky or a creep comedian waiting for the allegations to come out. I don't know. I think it could be just that, you know, the big fear from where I'm sitting and dingle right here is that Trump unleashes the tiny keyboard tariffs. I'm in big, a very bad genre, an awful genre. Maybe balloon animal is the only worst art form.

Well, look, interestingly, interestingly though, Andy, uh, upon being fired, that teacher who was teaching about evolution had all the time in the world to fuck and he has bred enormously children who then believed in evolution and passed on their superior evolution believing genes to their children, thus proving the very hypothesis that he was trying to pass down. The best form of revenge. On the the 6th of May 1954 Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. He was a doctor famously and is now compulsory for all doctors in the UK to be able to run a mile in under four minutes in order to artificially reduce NHS waiting times. But the question remains, should it count? Because what Bannister did was run a mile by going four times around the same track, basically ended up where he started. So in practical terms,

he ran zero yards in four minutes, which to me is not that impressive. So it's only because that, you know, the woke let him get away with it back in 1954. You have to consider Andy at the same time as he is running the four-minute mile and being a doctor, he also was stopping people falling off the sides of spiral staircases. A little banister joke there for banister fans. Maybe that's the next advertising boom in podcasting. We've moved on from mattresses now it's banisters. Also the 7th of May 2000 Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as president of Russia so 25 years

of Stalin cosplay shitbaggery. Congratulations Vladimir. As always the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, we look at the latest options for disposing of rubbish. The world is clearly struggling with rubbish, whether it's local fly tipping or industrial recycling. So we look at the latest options for dealing with global trash without forcing people to really change their ways of life that much at all, including a proposal to collect all the discarded white goods from around the world, weld them together and float them up to the Arctic as a bonus ice sheet.

The total volume of discarded fridges, freezers, fridge freezers, freezer fridges, washing machines, tumble dryers, tumble freeze, fridge washers and the like. I'm going to say that's around about 600 million units per year. If we strap and or weld them all together, and they're naturally buoyant, of course, because the inner parts are made with air, if we exaggerate slightly, we would get an e-iceberg twice the size of Baffin Island every year. This would of course reflect all the heat back into space. And within just three or four thousand years time, we would be back to a permanent ice age that would keep this planet going healthily for the next hundred thousand years. So do send in your discarded fridges and freezers to the bugle. Do we have a PO box address? Just make one up.

Also, trash space rockets, which will collect your rubbish on Thursday morning and then blast them into space in the afternoon. The Junker Palt, which is a hyper trebuchet with a three mile long hydraulic nuclear powered flinger arm to Katwang, a 100 ton compacted aerodynamic garbage lozenge up to 2000 miles away into the sea, ideally, or relatively sparsely populated area of land under the out of sight, out of mind clause of the UN convention on the future of a sustainable planet. And we also review the latest genetically modified rubbish eating crocodiles that can eat an entire out of fashion sofa in under a minute. Then once the miracle of digestion takes its course, they can then provide enough crock a crap fertilizer to

grow one and a half parsnips per acre of farmland made from reclaimed rainforest. So some hope for the future, we will have more on that in future sections in the bin. You know the only thing that can defeat a man with a trebuchet is a man with a better trebuchet on higher ground with more prep time. That's a lesson the Romans learned the hard way. Top story this week. Global voters revolt against and revolt in favor of Donald Trump. It's been a bit of a weird time for global democracy. We reported last week on Canada decisively voting against Trump. Australia has followed suit this week, whilst the UK and Romania have slightly gone the

other way. I mean, let's have a look at Australia first, Alice. Federal election, sort of wholesale rejection of the right-wing Liberal Party, Anthony Albanese and Labour have won another term in office, albeit it's only a three-year term in Australia because I don't know, attention spans are shorter, I think. Yes, and upside down. Yeah, of course, time goes the other way. Peter Dutton, the CGI-generated cartoon baddie leader of the liberals became the first federal opposition leader to lose their seat in a federal election. So I mean, what is the feeling in Australia, this momentous, is this Australia's effort

to not put Trump back in his box, but to, I don't know, kick the box out across the sea? Well, you know, our defiant anti-Trump sentiment in Australia is of course leavened by the fact that our only national defense policy is to hope that the Americans save us if anything goes wrong. So we've got to be defiant in a cheeky, charming way that will make them want to keep us around. But Albanese's labor has won emphatically across the spread, strong swings for labor across all of the states and territories.

They've got a majority government at 86 seats. That means they get to kind of run the country the way that they want to. I understand that for people who do not live in Australia and do not understand Australian politics, this might be difficult to understand, Dutton versus Albanese. So just imagine Albanese, while not being Trump, is less Trump than Dutton, who is also not Trump, but is sort of Trumpy.

He's trying, he's sort of doing the performative cruelty thing. He sort of ponces around cackling wildly and stroking a cat. He doesn't do that. It's very difficult for a leader of a party to lose their seat. They always tend to install the leaders in the safest liberal seats, but it shows like a real swing against not just the party, but against him as a person, not just him as a political figure, but just the equivalent of people coming

and putting their bottoms on his window. Like it's a really like not just you, but you and the horse you rode in on and the road that your horse rode in on and the cart behind the horse as well. They don't want it, we don't want it, we don't like it. It's going to be an interesting next couple of years I would say, depending on what mandate Labour thinks this voting indicates that they have.

I saw a constituent in Dutton's constituency saying for some reason he didn't come across as a personable leader. Could that reason possibly be everything he's ever said and done? Well, genuinely, it makes you realize how talented and charming Trump is because Dutton was saying more or less the same sorts of things and when he said them, you could actually hear how awful they were. I thought it was interesting when Trump did one of his, you know, his helicopter interviews where it sounds like he's blow drying his own pubes and in it he said that Albanese

was a special friend and then when someone put Dutton's name to him, he said he had no idea who that was, but during the campaign, Dutton had said that he had Trump's phone number, which is absolutely intriguing that, I don't know, maybe Trump saved it in 2011. Like one of those people you used to to play football with but it's just mysterious in your phone as Peter football or Doug Newhold. After the Canadian election, in which a lot of people sort of blame the conservative collapse and their leader lost his seat as we reported last week exclusively for the world.

No one else picked up on that, interestingly, not even in Canada. So you're very lucky we're here. That's a further reason to join the Bugle Voluntary Subscription Scheme to keep this fearless journalism going for the world. Anyway, many people blame the conservative collapse on Trump and Trump himself gave an interview in the Atlantic. Sadly, that was in the magazine, the Atlantic, not in the middle of the ocean before sinking to a spot in which he took credit.

He had his phone number. He took credit and or debit. I don't know which way you look at it for the Canadian public swing against the most Trump candidate. So interesting times. On that subject, Andy, it's interesting that it's the classic mix-up of the Atlantic versus the Atlantic. But most people don't know that Time magazine is called Time magazine because it used to come out every five minutes and people would check the time on the top of it. That was the only means available in the pre-clock era.

Listen and learn, Beagless. Listen and learn. I mean, I want to talk about the Trumpet of Patriots party in Australia, but that's just my own personal annoyance because they texted me like 15 times. Like I'm conscious that nobody outside of Australia is aware of the kind of small internecine politics within Australia because Australia's main two parties are very close to one another because we have compulsory voting, so no one has to frighten anyone else into the polling booths so everyone's sort of aligned on things like a horrific immigration policy situation and being in the pocket of big mining. But they sort of differ on other policy points. But we have other parties. We have Pauline

Hansen's One Nation party, which is a party of a lady who became famous for saying racist things in a chip shop and only went downhill from there. A very early viral win, Pauline Hansen manages to have spoken in public and said the most horrendous things while sounding like she was on the verge of tears for coming up on 40 years now. It was her Gettysburg address in that chip shop. Let nobody forget. In future secondary school students will have to learn off every word of it.

I hope not. I mean, extraordinary. We also have the Libertarian Party, of course. We have the newly named Trumpet of Patriots Party, where they put the trumpet of the trumpet in bold and they text you 15 times a day. And unfortunately, that did not work out for them because they are also Clive Palmer's pocket party after the Clive Palmer party previously put forward by Clive Palmer failed. Uh, but you know, he has billions of dollars, so why not spend it texting fucking me at three o'clock in the morning?

saying racist things in a chip shop. Uh, coincidentally is also the, uh, currently the world's biggest selling podcast, um, with, uh, 4.3 billion listeners that started last week and it's ending next week. Just asking questions in a chip shop. Just asking questions in the hilarious accent of the people who run the chip shop. Here in the UK, we had local elections last week, not across the whole of the country, but in certain parts of the country, there were mayoral elections as well, and a parliamentary by-election. parliamentary by-election and all in all it was a triumph for the longtime Trump spittle Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party who collided 30% of the votes and it was a well I mean a huge if Australia and Canada were a bit of a

blow for the Trumpist right then Reform and Farage gave them a bit of consolation for us and it was the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party. I think that happened a long, long time ago. I think basically that happened the moment Margaret Thatcher started to look a little bit sad in the 1980s. The Tories got only 15%. I read one Tory politician saying it was now do or die for the Conservatives and they seem as always to be choosing option B, die, possibly to try and appeal to the core demographic of their vote. Labour only got 20% of the vote, having won the general election less than a year ago, their strategy of not scaring a skeptical public by doing absolutely anything to win them over going according to plan

apparently and they're even less popular than they were when they won a massive majority on quite a low share of the vote. The Liberal Democrats got 17 percent, the Greens a healthy 11 percent and Farage's party reform UK 30 percent. There are you know certain caveats there are only local elections which traditionally are an opportunity for voters to express their frustrations with the national government by putting unqualified idiots in charge of their local bin collections. This is all the time itself. The challenge now for reform is can they go beyond the everything shit blame the foreigners shtick, which is quite a useful shtick to get to a certain level of public support.

But when it comes to actually running stuff, it doesn't generally work as well. Also, while their popularity rises, their unpopularity also rises. So they might have got 30% of the vote. But I think Farage remains the, I guess again, like Trump, the most and least popular politician in the country. I think we need electoral reform so that we get sliders. So you don't get to vote positively for one candidate, but you can also vote negatively for other candidates, or ideally just have a slider for each candidate. So you know, on a plus 10 to minus 10, how much you like or dislike them,

and then they just average out the scores. And then that would genuinely show that one of the people in favor of that. I think, well, I mean, I come from a place which, you know, has a more progressive voting system, but I guess the thing about England and Britain, you just have to respect, you know, the way it's been for so long because it's, it's a good system. You know, whereas we vote in rank, you know, choice preference for who we wish to be in our parliament. You have a system where a black rod blows through the bugle of destiny. And a huge gold ball shoots out of his trumpet and hits Prince Charles or whoever he's called

now in the back of the head. And if he faces West, it's the laborer and right, it's a toy. I just think they're just different versions of the same thing. And I'm not saying one's better than the other. I'm just saying you have to respect it. Andy, I think there's so much going on here. Like I feel really sad for the conservative party because, you know, they've sort of gutted themselves by moving right in order to try and appeal to people who are aggrieved at the current situation of the globe or aggrieved at the entry of Foreigners which to be fair has been a core British value ever since they threw Ragnar Lothbrok into a snake pit Like fuck off foreigners. You're the problem was they were the problem for the Picts. It was a problem for everyone since then

That but they've tried to appeal to this demographic and then they had their lunch eaten by Farage and his toadies And it's really I feel betrayed the Core of the Tory party which is the sort of Landed gentry who want things to be the way they were when they were young in 1872 Where is the home for that man now wither a man with a mustache Andy? Where is the political home for a man with a waxed moustache? is the political home for a man with a waxed mustache. But I feel like the core problem here is that every voting now is a vote on Trump. Whether you're doing a Cosmo sex quiz or not. Whether you are saying how satisfied you are with your service at the airport, every single referendum or quiz or question is either a Trumpy is a pro or anti Trump vote, which makes it sort of

difficult to say how spicy you want your Guzmani Gomez because you're not sure if more spicy is more Trump or less spicy is more. Cosmos Cosmos sex quiz was actually that's the name I use while anonymously commenting on newspaper articles on the Daily Telegraph website. I like when Keir Starmer said that now is not a time for ideological zealotry. What it needs is the dull hum of a fridge leaving the country that the only discernible policy so far is he's against giving oldies winter fuel payments. That's the sort of thing that will get your fine nation out of this mess, Andy.

Yes. He just looks like the CEO of an airplane company in the front page of a flight magazine. That's his expression at all times. Whilst proudly announcing that more than 95% of that company's flights have landed safely. Labour also weren't helped in this week's Damien Hirst having a pop at someone for putting too many animals in formaldehyde moment by Tony Blair belly splashing himself back into public consciousness with a warning to the government over its net zero policies. This is Tony Blair, the ex prime minister and six time European ignoring public backlash

champion warned the government not to ignore a public backlash against the net zero plan, even if that backlash was hypothetical, future or pretend. I mean, it's this is the same Tony Blair who pursued that war despite those protests that one that one that same, that same Tony Blair one downing street inside I said Tony, let me just tone this word down a bit because this is a family show Tony messed up with a capital F. So I like David, were you glad to see him Blair back in the public debate?

I just love how he just reappears at the worst possible moment, like a sort of senile Obi-Wan Kenobi that insists on destroying the rest of Luke Skywalker's life, just waking Luke in the middle of it. Luke, Ewoks would make great pets. It's just an idea. I'm putting it out there. Not now, Tony. Please. Luke, you could use your lightsaber as like an air fryer or a creme brulee. I was just thinking, Tony, not now. please. I just think it's so extraordinary that we seem to have lost consensus on net zero between everybody going from just 100% all right, we're fucked, we're fucked the globe, we need to do something about it, all right, we can do a handshake deal where we all agree

to at least try to not keep fucking iting it as hard as we have been f***ing it and then someone, some genius in a moment of absolute inspiration just thought what if we pretend it's okay. That has been such a successful strategy throughout human history, Alice. Yeah, everyone got on board surprisingly quickly as though the thing that were driving a hole in through the ozone layer was the power of people worrying about it. Blair argued that governments should give priority to what he described as realistic climate strategies.

The problem is that realistic climate strategies in the minds of many people are giving up completely, launching a who actually needs polar bears campaign and making transport infrastructure so bad, airports so unbearable and the road so congested that everyone completely gives up on the entire concept of traveling anywhere. So I guess, you know, those are, I guess, more achievable. He also called for a greater commitment to adaptation measures to help sort of mitigate and live with the impact of climate change. These include getting the world's tech companies to develop functioning

sets of water resistant eagles that people can easily transplant into the sides of their necks in a simple home operation on the kitchen table using a bread knife and a jar of peanut butter as an anesthetic. Also breeding a giant space eagle with a 2000 mile wingspan visible from the Great Wall of China to glide around in orbit shading the world from the sun depending on where the sun is in the sky at the time. Nudging the world slightly further away from the sun in orbit using a giant intergalactic snooker cube so that it becomes a bit less hot. Or nationalizing the sun then privatizing it, then renationalizing it over and over again until the sun becomes progressively less efficient,

which I think might be the most realistic way to do it in a free market economy. Also installing a plug at the bottom of the Marianas Trench so we can drain the excess ocean every couple of weeks. I'm genuinely delighted by the optimism of the people who are like full speed ahead, feet on the pedal, let's use up all the petrol. We will invent our way out of this.

It's just this 97-year-old man saying, yeah, I'll have another cigarette. I haven't died yet. I have no proof that I ever could. It's genuinely a heartwarming faith in humanity that we haven't seen since the days of your, sorry, the days of your being wrong. Hundred days of government news now and well, the world has been tearing itself apart discussing exactly what the first 100 days have meant. Has it been good?

Has it been bad? Has it been just exactly what people expected? No one is fundamentally completely happy with it. I'm referring of course to the Irish government which marks 100 days in power since since the current government was formed. David, you are our Irish politics correspondent and you know, future Tietok, of course, Math at Time within the next three or four years, I reckon. Bring us up, bring us, bring us up. Cause there's been a sort of a, um, kind of parliamentary stasis and not a lot happening, is that right?

My hair is swept back right now because of the pace of change taking place in this country at the moment. It's been a hundred days of absolutely nothing, Andy, because there was a parliamentary speaking rights scandal that where I to start explain to you, the skin would grow over your ears, leaving them as big, fleshy sort of rugby cauliflower ear muffs. I mean, I do think in a similar way to Australia, because this government has effectively got in for a second term, they've got in by using the old trick of whatever the problem is, in Ireland's case, housing cost of living, they get back in by saying, oh my God, in

the election, that's the next thing we're going to do. That is such a coincidence that you were saying build more houses, because that's literally the next thing we have planned and well, they haven't done any of that yet. So I think now they're looking for a distraction. I mean, if any country should have beef with Greenland, I feel it is us because we should be Greenland. We are the greenest land of all. And the only solution that I can see, and I have suggested this to Taoiseach Michal

Martin is because tourists won't stop shining the boobs of iconic statue Molly Malone, in some way we could refract the sun's light off it such that it then provides solar power. That means that we can build the 100,000 housing units a year we need to build for the next 10 years. That's my solution. Thank you. Well, I think, you know, renaming Ireland as Greenland would be appropriate. Then, in fact, Ireland, IA being a word meaning anger, would be more appropriate for America. So just leave something, we need to find something for Greenland, Iceland? That just moves the problem further along. It gets complicated now, especially then when you look at the Costa del Sol where the true

Brits are and that becomes Britland, then it's going to get confusing. Sol is short for solitary though, just the isolationism that we all bear in our British souls. So basically, very little legislation has been passed and not much has happened in cabinet. I mean, we've seen this with Belgium before, they've had no government, and actually people seem quite happy with it. And you compare that with Trump, who has just defecated bits of legislation or ideas into the public domain in his hundred years. He's doing f**k all, not just better.

He said hundred years. It feels like just, you know, that is very much a Freudian temporal slip. We'll come back in. Give him time. Give him time. Andy, I hear your frustration and I know the bugle doesn't miss much, but while you did cover Keir's visit to Trump and the White House, our Prime Minister, Tishok Michal Martin, went to visit Trump on St. Patrick's Day and it was one of the saddest events in the, because we basically are screaming, please don't stop us using these tax dodges to have all your

pharmaceutical and computer industries on our little island for some reason that no one quite understands, but you're not allowed to ever say it's a tax dodge. So you just had Meighal Martin sitting there as Trump said, for example, that his favorite Irishman was Conor McGregor. Like literally that happened. And the prime minister had to just go like, well, that's certainly, that's certainly one of the many opinions one could have in the world. many opinions one could have in the world.

I guess it is difficult as a, as a, as a, as a world leader now, but if you're coming to power or starting a new term of office and Trump is now a massive shaping factor, it's like being a kindergarten teacher, starting a new job in a new kindergarten, you know, difficult challenge looking after a room full of toddlers. And then on day one, just as you're about to start your first day at the new kindergarten, it's a difficult challenge looking after a room full of toddlers. And then on day one, just as you're about to start your first day at the new kindergarten, the boss of the kindergarten brings in an eagle with a serious bout of food poisoning and sets it free in the room to do what it wants. It's going to be at best a distraction and probably quite worse than that.

So the, um, Trump's own a hundred, a hundred days. Um, it's been great according to himself and, uh, his, uh, his cabinet of, uh, of sycophants. Um, uh, little Terry Tarrant Corky, the constitutional cluster has, has completed a hundred days in office and is still bang on course to be the most chaotic president since himself. Now, normally, I quite enjoy doing the stats when someone reaches 100 in my other job, but this is up there with the centuries I have least enjoyed. 141 executive orders in his first 100 days. That is more than all the presidents from 1977 to 2013 combined passed in their first 100 days across 10 terms.

And in terms of, you know, the sort of respect for democracy in due process, it's been a tricky 100 days for the USA. He's also, just before we record it, announced he's gonna reopen Alcatraz prison. He announced this on a message on his social media site, go f*** yourself, the concept of objective reality aka truth social. He said, for too long America has been plagued by vicious, violent and repeat criminal offenders. So I mean maybe this is just increasing self-awareness. But is this him looking in the mirror and saying what he sees for once? Who knows? Has he just watched Alcatraz with Sean Connery? To put Sean Connery in prison and see him

escape because we can make that happen. Do you have any? I'd be a Nicolas Cage nerd and say the film was called The Rock, not Alcatraz. No, right. That is why we've brought you back here. That is the level. It's the mid-90s action film trivia. That's why I was brought in. And actually, I think Alice is a bigger action movie fan than me. I am. Yes. Shame on you, Fraser. Shame on you. Shame on me. I'm not going to do it again. You can cut it or you can leave it in and I'll get the angry emails from all the angry fans. I've been watching a lot of Snooker the last couple of weeks, the World Snooker Channel, which is pretty much an inaction movie. It's much healthier for the soul.

an inaction movie. Much healthier for the soul. But do they do witty quips every time they pot a hole? Pot a hole. Probably, but they're just not miked up. Yes, like Big Bash. In other, inaked players going, fucking can't ball gun this stupid shitting hole. Yeah. Ooh.

Stick that needle getting down my cock. That feels good. Some very exciting news in the world of snakes. Alice, obviously, Australia is renowned for up to 75% of the population every year being fatally bitten by poisonous snakes. But there's some hope now. A man has let snakes bite him more than 200 times, from which scientists may be able to develop antibodies that put deadly snakes out of business. This must be hugely exciting for your nation right now. Yes. No, first out of the gate, I want to say, Andy, I'm not antibodies. I am pro bodies. I'm also pro antibodies.

This man having experimented on himself may now be the font of snake antivenom. This is what we can achieve without ethics committees, Andy. Think of a future where we do this kind of experimentation on people that look it's it's a real achievement genuinely he's he he decided that he was going to make himself immune to snake venom by giving himself increasing levels of bites over long periods to increasingly venomous snakes even the snakes were really bored of it by the end. Ugh, I've got to bite this guy again. I've got to have a balanced diet.

There are a few ways, Andy, and I say this as an Australian, as an expert, there are a few ways to avoid dying of a snake bite. If you're afraid of being bitten by a snake and dying, you can own dozens of venomous snakes and let them bite you over a series, over a number of years in increasing quantities of Venom into your bloodstream and hope that you will develop a resistance So then you can walk freely through the world not worrying about being bitten by a snake or you can just Not go where snakes are gonna bite you, right? You know, I have never been bitten by a snake. I have I've never I've never been bitten by a snake. I have, I've never, I've never been bitten by a snake.

I don't know anyone who has been bitten by a snake. You only really get bitten by a snake if you're sort of with a snake. Leave the snakes alone. Now stop, stop pervilly making them bite you. It's weird, it's gross. It's probably sexual. Get that snake away from you.

Go away. But it's the reason that you've not been bitten by a snake and no one you know has been bitten by a snake is that you've not been bitten by a snake and no one you know has been bitten by a snake is that you've all been eaten by crocodiles or bitten by poisonous spiders first. Andy, I would rather die of a snake bite than have 200 snakes bite me so I don't die of a snake bite. Just let me fucking die.

Don't make me do the 200 bite situation. I think it's wonderful for science, but it's just like there's something wrong with him then. I'm not sure I should be sticking my oar in here to be honest, because famously St. Patrick got rid of all the snakes from Ireland. Thank you, SP! And so thorough was he. He got rid of any archaeological evidence there had ever been snakes. And it's only when I'm in either of your nations, you know, when you're in London and every morning you have to remember to shake out your boots and the snakes all scuttle under the door. It is interesting that he has allowed himself to be bitten progressively

by more and more venomous snakes. And I've actually been trying to do the same thing myself with XL bully dogs, whereby I'm not sure the same thing is happening because my legs do just seem to be very, very sore all of the time. But who knows in 40 years time, I will be impervious to dog violence of any kind. So I'm willing to do for this. I have no time for Excel bully dogs. I will not let any dog tell me what spreadsheet to use. Google Sheets does just as good a job.

Don't let that. Well since we're on the subject of Venom, a subject that well, we were going to cover last week, but we ran out of time. And that is the hugely delicate, sensitive subjects of the UK Supreme Court ruling on sex and gender from a couple of weeks ago now. And like I say, it's a sensitive subject that generally erupts into a volcano of ranker whenever and however you discuss it. The linguistic obstacles and imprecisions will continue to muddy the eternally swampy waters of this discussion. And now it's not often that technical legal rulings about the precise meaning of words in specific individual pieces of legislation whip the British nation into a blumange of disputatious, triumphalist, point-scoring oppositionalism. But as I said, it's 2025, we are where we are.

And the Supreme Court last week ruled that the meanings of the terms woman and sex, specifically as used in the wording of the Equality Act 2010, refer to biology and do not extend to cover transgender women. The ruling supported women's rights based on biological sex. It also supported the rights of transgender people and emphasized their legal protections

against discrimination and harassment. And delivering the judgment, the Supreme Court Judge Lord Hodges said, "'We counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. It is not.' At which point everyone,

and it felt like even more than that, interpreted the judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. As I said, it's 2025. We are where we are. Thus was the complex and nuanced 88-page judgment reduced ironically to a binary win-lose scenario. Now, there were a number of things that could be and have been heavily disputed in that. And the argument then seemed to boil down and or up into a pyrotechnic argument about toilets, which didn't touch on a very significant element of the toilet debate, which is that public toilets barely

exist anymore. Why? The fact that we're even arguing about I mean, these toilets are essentially either somewhere between hypothetical and homeopathic that the public toilets are down by 50% this millennium so far. It's just so hard to monetize the wares. Anyway, the full implications of this really... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no unsafe place for women. And I have to say, every time I'm pissing down my leg in a park somewhere, I think, boy, do I feel safer than not having a private place to be when I'm doing this. It is one of the strangest mutations of a debate. Anyway, but they've got the full implications, like I say, yet to become clear. Will I, for example, as a biological male, be legally obligated

to, is that the term, to check what is in everyone else's underpants, what's in their souls, what's in their inner monologues, and what's in their mitochondrial DNA before I can confidently take a WASP? What if trans men who've lived as male for decades and have had full gender reassignment surgery are using a urinal that is rightfully mine that I fought numerous world wars for the God-given right to point my Blonker out? What then? Anyway, these wrinkles will be ironed out in time once everyone has stopped shouting and pointing at everyone who isn't clearly a definite Barbie or an indisputable Ken. But amidst the howling and scowling, there is a very important public

safety question, and that is this. It's not just for women's safety, it's also for men's safety, and it's for the safety of the entire trans community and the entire non-trans community. The safest thing to do based on all the available data and statistics is to ban all men from ever going out in public or staying in their own homes. The statistics on this are incontrovertible. This is where the danger lies. I haven't thought through the logistics. I think we'll all just have to hover in our doorways. But long-term, it is going to make everyone safer and end all this dispute about who uses what toilets if no man of any type is allowed to do anything. Finally, some British common sense has come to the debate. All fixed.

And that's how Andy's Oatsman got cancelled. 650 odd episodes in, it was a matter of time. It's extraordinary how heated people get over this because I mean from my perspective, obviously I don't want to extend but I sort of go around thinking, I mean, does anyone really know what it is to be a woman? Does anyone really know what it is to be a man? I walk down the street, I think, does anyone really know? I don't know what it is. Am I? I don't know what it is to be a woman. Does anyone really know what it is to be a woman? Then I see someone who has eyelashes on the headlights of their car and I think she knows. Okay. There are some people who it really, really matters to and I want them to be Joe Rogan. He's being a man really hard all the time. He knows. I'll leave it to him to decide.

Why doesn't Joe Rogan decide on gender policy? Well, that is basically the world we live in, I think. I live on an island where half a million people in the northern part were born on the island of Ireland, but feel British. And you know what I say to them? You guys, you guys are British. Whatever you truly feel, I think we need to, as an island, evolve a new way of thinking whereby you can be that and I can be this.

Let's all just live together in peace and harmony. Thank you. There's certainly a bit of an irony in the situation that a lot of the people who seem to be most furious about the concept of some people changing names and pronouns quite happily started calling Camilla the f***ing queen just because someone said they had to. Anyway, as you say, this might be the last ever bugle as the unstoppable tides of cancellation flow in both directions through the windows of this sinking podcast. But anyway, if that doesn't happen, we will be back next week with issue 4340. In the meantime, Alice, anything to plug? Yes, my book is out today in American bookshops. If you want to go to an American bookshop, you can go from anywhere in the world,

but probably if you're in America, it's probably more convenient to go to your local bookshop and ask for a copy of A Passion for Passion, which is my ridiculous silly book about romance novels. I enjoyed writing it so much. It makes me so happy. Please do go and buy it. Buy it for your friends. Buy it for your enemies.

Buy it for your frenemies. Buy it for a local an enemy. I've also relaunched my podcast Tea with Alice where I have difficult conversations with interesting people because I think having a conversation over tea is the most fun thing in the world. So that's tea with Alice. And you can get that on your phone. David, anything to plug? Like Bob Dylan, I can't stop doing comedy.

I mean, he doesn't do, this has been a terrible intro. I keep touring. I keep this comedy going. And then what the world didn't need was another podcast and me and Max Rushton of The Guardian are doing a podcast called What Did You Do Yesterday where we make people go through what they did yesterday. I believe the term I'm not supposed to use is in excruciating detail. Also, if you like science fiction and fantasy, you should listen to my podcast, Realms Unknown.

It is the sister podcast to the bugle replacing for now the gargle. So science fiction, fantasy, games, movies, books, galore. It's a lot of fun. That's Realms Unknown. Look for it on your podcast app. It's got a picture of me riding a dragon. You can hear me hosting the news quiz for the next few weeks. Also, if you are a cricket fan, I have a new column at The Observer, which you can find online or on paper. We'll be back next week until then goodbye.