The Bugle - Good COP Bad COP

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

Stewart Lee and Felicity Ward join Andy with a focus on the environment from a UK perspective. Icebergs, COP 28, Axolotls and the Parthenon Marbles are all in the news. A note to Josie Long to listen to this episode.PLUS: Become the owner of an exclusive episode of The Bugle, on 12 inch vinyl! Become a premium member NOW! https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateThis episode was presented and written by:Andy ZaltzmanFelicity WardStewart LeeAnd produced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A- audio newspaper for a visual world, the world's most authoritative source of unauthoritativeness since 2007. I'm Andy Zotsman, it is the 1st of December 2023 and we are just one more than average, long month away now from this absolute shithead of a year being rightly terminated. And to assess where we are at this this precise point in human history, I have the most excellent pair of co-hosts with me today. If you had told me 40 years ago that I would in four decades time be sitting in a windowless room in London about to record a podcast with Felicity Warden Stuart Lee, I would have responded what you're talking about. But such is life. That is exactly what's happening right here right now. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. I, you would have said, who are they? 40 years ago. And what is a podcast? Exactly.

And then you've actually even thought I've never actually listened to a podcast. I don't really understand. I don't really understand people keep saying, I lie actually. I listen to some that I was on. I was from making a film. And I listened to them.

I went on them. So I listened to them before, but I don't. I'm not one of these people that people go running with them on, don't I? Well, I always get recommendations from other people, like, right, got to listen to other ones. People give me these recommendations. I put a listen to one episode, and I'm like, not for me. I always just listen to this American life.

Oh, yeah. I love it. It's the only one consistently. There's one that I can't say it's called the bugle or something. I don't, I don't, I don't. But it's a lot of blah, blah, blah. I'm smart. I'm English, you know. And it was... I'm not smart. I'm English, is that. Are you a cat choice?

All podgoth. No, no, just the bugle. I'm not a bugle. I never thought about calling it the bugle. I just thought it'd be cute. Yeah. It could be presented by you and one of the bugles. Yeah. I mean, the horn could do it.

Is it bugle something? Oh yeah, they were a band for a form. It was sort of new wave band. Of course they were. Well, they were so technical that they became yes, the prog rock band. Why? Yes, co-opted them and into a version of yes, basically.

And then yes, started to sound like a new romantic band for a bit. It's like when you have twins and one eats the other one in the room. Yes, we have the bugle. We haven't we. You must know video killed the radio stuff. Yeah. That was the bugles.

Oh, you're cool. One member of the bugles is presumably a bugle. Right. But it's about with 2G. I mean, I think we need to just wrap the podcast up here. I don't think we're going to blow any more minds after that little fact. Cover the one you need to know. Wasn't a video did kill the radio stuff. Yeah. wrap the podcast up here. I don't think we're going to blow any more minds after that. The fact that we covered the wedding. Wasn't a video did kill the radio stuff?

You knew it. What you've made of podcasts. Well, that's the rebirth of the radio stuff. Oh, yeah. It is in an unlicensed frontier. A young man, Andrew O'Neill was explaining this to me the other day. Yeah. The podcast has managed to make massive stars of people that we don't consider of any value.

If you think about it, the podcast is actually the Easter of radio. It's the rebirth, it's the coming back from the dead. Look, I don't know if that'll make the cut. I can't help it. I mean Easter's... It might have done, but it's Christmas is coming up. Christmas is coming up to be fair. Yeah, you don't.

It's confusing. They're all across the street. There's band-easter anyway. They play the Woke mob. Yeah, they're band, well, they're already band Christmas. They're band-easter. They're band-easter. And it's just f**king pentacoste.

And that's right, it's a bunch of chews. Yeah, it's nothing sacred anymore. But it's going to be 360 days of Ramadan. That's what they're going to do. Ironically shoving it down our throat. Right, I think we're nearly ready to start the show. Yeah. Oh, we got it. We are recording on the 1st of December 2023 on this day in 1878 Rutherford B. Hayes became the first American president to have a telephone in the White House

Which was must have been very I don't know who Who's their phone. I don't know. I mean must have been tricky. That's any You know wanting to have high-level diplomatic calls, but maybe There was no no other country had a telephone Yeah. It's a bit like when CB Radio came out. You'd talk to any of them. Just doing more code with a self. Just on the hang-up. According to his wiki pedea page, the founder of all truth, Rutherford B. Hayes believed that education was the best way to heal the rifts in American society, which shans absurd from a more advanced modern perspective. But some people did actually think this at the time. We now know of course

that to heal the rifts in American society what you need is guns, opioids, vitriol and stolt, stone coal, crazy TV stations. But we can forgive his naivety, he's only just got a phone. As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week while I count down to Christmas, it's the 1st of December. Have you got advent calendars? I don't, but I will. You're right. Oh, my buy one today.

Yeah, I'll get one. Right. Yeah, and a Christmas tree. Right. Although my kids think you should have think it's wrong to get one before about the 14th. Right. They like to get one really early.

Yeah, of course. And also, on one-on-one tour, if I go to York or it's an old place like that, I was going that the Christmas shop place and I buy a figure of from local history and it kind of embroidered kind of stuffed figure that you hang on the things I've got it's an old one and I've got some bloke Harold from Hastings what I've got. Not Harold from Navers, that is a different I've got all the different kings and things. I hang them on it. And last year, I went to an exhibition of folk horror

at the Somset House Gallery, and I've got folk horror ornaments from the Wiccoman and things like that. Your tree must be heaving. It isn't, it's only a very small as well. But, you can't see the tree. No, but there's one of the things I do to keep myself sane on. I could go half-hist to Christmas ornaments. I would want to go to the different. Ironically, it makes that's good. There's one of the things I do to keep myself sane on the road. I could go half-hist Christmas on them. Ironically, it makes you look mental. What do you know? It's an organ.

What did he do? It's an organ. An organ. Oh, he's killed by the Romans. Most British saints, but their main thing was that they were killed by the Romans. Oh, right. Okay. Or the Vikings. Right. So he didn't stand for anything, you know? He didn't stand for anything. I have any baili stood for Britain. I owe.

I really hate to kill the couple as well. Oh yeah. Say Edmund Campion day to day, of course, I'm sure you're all celebrating it later. Oh right. Someone went to Catholic school. Oh well. Well there's a number of different sent admins. That's the problem.

There's a lot of you know, two. Yeah. It's hard to brag about yourself, you're also venerating the wrong one. Don't you hate that? It's Jimmy's several all over again. Yeah. Actually, the other one, the main sent admins, his head was cut off by the Vikings,

which meant that he couldn't be buried whole, which meant he wouldn't go to heaven. But then a dog is the head, stayed alive and shouted, how are we on the head? And then a wolf came and got it, and carried it, and put it with the body. Right, this is a lesson in how history used to be written. LAUGHTER

We have as our section in the bin, this week a bugle advent calendar. This year, each day of December, we will give you for free a line for a modern day parable for you to try to write the kind of routines that made Jesus star of the first Christmas, the first ever arena comics, selling out 5000 seat venues, albeit ones without a catering license in his heyday. For the first of December, in your Bugle Advent Calendar of Wisdom, do not blame the break dancing tortoise, it spins not for the joy of the groove. For the second of December, for a person without hope is like a pogo stick without footrests. At the third of December, your word of wisdom, your words of wisdom are drink not from a snowman's corpse,

lest ye too should melt unto dust. And finally for the fourth of December, it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a rich man to live in taxis exile in the Cayman Islands and own some yachts. So do work those into your advent parables and we will have more through the rest of December. Also, in the bin this week, a special Christmas music section, now, sure, now a big part of your life is, what's your view generally on Chris Mish music as a... Did you know that I was involved in a Christmas number one? Where are you? Yeah, no one knows, which gives you an indication of the failure of the chart...

Successful. Well, enough to say. Yeah, my routine of mine was heavily sampled into basically the vocal line of a song called Coming Over Here by Asian dub foundation and we gave all the profits to Kent Refugee Action Network and it was a Christmas no new year number one about two years ago. Oh really? Yeah and in the in downloads and sales, physical sales but not in not in streaming because at streaming Nan just sits in the kitchen with Wands, lost Chris Brisson and Luke forever. When is they Nan, do you mean me? Yeah, well, probably me.

And there's a really good 12-inch of remixes where they took loads of other bits of the routine and chopped it all up. Oh, right. I'm very excited. And yeah, and there's a quite embarrassing video where I look like one of those people used to be in punk bands who've now got diabetes With some like really cool bloke's playing behind me. Yeah, it's great And is it played out a lot of Christmas office party? Just make it, no, it isn't. I've played it all

But yeah, but it's really funny actually. I was telling someone the other day That I had a Christmas number one and if you say that to to someone, and they've not heard, they think you've must have gone mad. You've got to have a Christmas number one, actually. It's like when people go, I used to be a king of Spain, I was like, you're the guy on the bus now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a guy on the bus now.

Anyway, we review this week's, this year's big potential Christmas hits, including Little Badonka Donkey, an AI crossover duet between the late post or British mega star songstressena Gracie Field to hit the charts in 1959 with Eric Boswell's famous Donkey'sploitation-ditty little Donkey, and the contractually beheaded six-foot six-foot six-inch country star Trace Adkins, who's 2005 hit Honki Tonk Badonka Donk, is widely credited by historians as setting Western

civilization back 1500 years. Also we, we look at especially Remix Christmas theme version of the Velver Underground that I'm waiting for the man. We are a girl, as I said, first of December, in Middle-Lose Christmas or will his rainders get hold of it again? 26, that means a good price. In this economy?

That's quite an old song. Ha, ha, ha. And also, we review, what is that screaming woman doing in my fucking brand new manger by Ian the Inkeeper featuring the hygiene inspectors. And 50 years after they almost topped the Christmas charts, 1970's British glam rock was wizard back with, I'm quite happy with it being Christmas once a year,

a sober and reflective reassessment of their economically naive and socially divisive 1973 number four hit. I wish it could be Christmas every day. You're like the Grinch, you know. What's wrong with Wizzards? Just nice, though. Well, they save your eye for the Tories. At least Birmingham's glamorot sensations alone. Well, they finally accepted that 365 public holidays a year would leave mountains

and himalayas of debt even for future generations whilst the world is. Just what a capitalist would say. The relentless promotion of Christmas would marginalize other religious festivals, stoking tensions at a time when the world needs compromise between faiths, not inflexible dogma. It's a good list of nots that as the original, but far more socially responsible. That section in the bin. Top story now. Well, the environment is being fixed. As we speak, the world's leaders are meeting in Dubai at COP28,

the environmental conference, super franchise, that just keeps turning out sequels year after year, even when they become derivative, unoriginal, unambitious and pointless, as is generally the way with sequels. I know you're both massive fans of global environmental conferences, so you particularly enjoying this one, Flesty. Yeah, this is a good one, isn't it? This is an absolute beauty. As you know, the president is also the CEO of an oil company. Is that, I've got my details right on that one? Unbelievable. And there are accusations of oil deals being struck

but he is saying that that is not happening. Now, if they are happening, that is gas lighting and at this level, absolutely unacceptable. Now if this gas lighting was solar powered, then absolutely they could go through. It's the unsustainability of the manipulation that I don't agree with. It's possible that this man who is a chair of UEA's national oil company had not, is possible that he could chair a conference ultimately fixed on the eradication of his own company's main product. It's possible. This is how I do this for I was on

telly, but it's a bit like asking Colonel Sanders to share a conference on making the whole world vegan. Or I've got another version of it. It's a bit like asking Ron and MacDonald to be the mascot for the International Cal Methane Reduction Day. And then, or, but this is niche, but some people really like it. It's a bit like asking Ted Nugent to compose a song for International Don't Fly Around in a Helicopter shooting wild pigs with a machine gun day. Which, and most people won't know who he is, or that he did that. But the people that did know that, we think that's great. I think even if they don't, the image of anyone called Ted Nugent in a helicopter shooting

wild pigs, great, I'm on board. Yeah, it's a good image, but will it shame Sultan Al Jawa into not doing oil deals at the anti-oil conference? I should point out that he's from the UAE, not the UEA, which is the University of East Anglia. Oh, God, that's why I was so baffled by this story. I mean, I know that standards of slips in education and that is basically up for grabs and one as commercial business. But I thought, salt and alcohol have taken over the University of East Anglia, probably explaining the reduction in funds of its famous English literature to profit, and was converting it into a thing based on the ownership and acquisition of climate unfriendly energy companies. Right. Now I realize the seven pages are written

about that, completely irrelevant. Yes, so this is the 28th cop, and we're all familiar with Good Cop bad cop when we're now reaching the hypocritical cop, belated and ineffective cop, half-ass promises cop and cop, we're pretty sure was a very well-known criminal until very, very recently, seems to be the one that we're in the middle of. Now I guess, I mean, in a way, I mean, holding it in Dubai is... Bald? Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know...

It's awful isn't it? A whole new conference about how to slightly mitigate the impact of the end of everything in a city that is a metaphor for the excesses of and costs of our oil addicted global economic system is almost... It's almost waspishly appropriate, is it not? Can you... Is there a better place to hold a conference that is guaranteed to fail? You're right.

I think that it's like when you, would you prefer to call someone racist after they behave racistly and then go, I'm not a racist, or would you prefer them to say, yes, I am a racist. I just think if, you know, it is going to fail, no one's going to agree, it's going to achieve nothing. Hundreds of people are going to catch planes to get there,

emitting so much pollution into the air, probably negating anything that they agree, so why not have it in the UAE? Why not? This is the kind of thing that I mean, every other week I write a column for the observer about the news. And sometimes when David Mitchell is extra busy being in a play, I have to write loads in a row.

And by the end of about 10 weeks, I mean, I don't know how you do this, because this kind of news, trying to think up jokes about it, it makes me so depressed to having to deal with it, and to have to read it. And I mean, I just, it's so awful. I don't know how anyone involved can not be so ashamed themselves that they just kill themselves. It's just absolutely horrendous, isn't it? And that's why the young people feel utterly let down

and are chaining themselves to bridges, because it's just a smack in the face, isn't it? Everyone is just absolutely obscene. And to work, and in fact, tourning Christmas number ones, I did a benefit for just stop oil the other day, because I'm a terrorist basically. But a young woman who cried on the bridge was there. Right, remember she was ridiculed for crying on a bridge? Yeah. She chained herself to a bridge and then cried, and all the papers go, look at that,uled for crying on a bridge? She chained herself to a bridge and then cried and all the papers go, look at that young woman crying on a bridge. Basically, if you're not chained to a bridge crying, you're not paying attention to it.

Everyone should be chained to some sort of structure emitting fluids from some orifice at this point. But I'm in for a Christmas number one. Right? Yeah. And fat, she's done, she's really stuck it back to them in a really unsolved conscious way where she's aiming for a Christmas number one. Yeah, and fat, she's done, she's really stuck it back to them in a really unsolved conscious way, where she's made a video of, which includes footage and samples of her crying on the bridge, which is the thing they all thought was ridiculous. What's her name?

We're right it down. While you're doing that, Stu half an hour ago, I wrote this while trying to write jokes. I wrote, do you know Andy? I love doing this show. I love hanging out, love making gags and jokes with you. But I find satire hard and it literally only occurred to me today

is because it's also f***ing depressing, isn't it? Like we make jokes about these corrupt politicians ruining our waterways and aren't we smart for noticing and bringing it up, but geez, at the bottom of it all, it's just sad. We watch our literal life source be tampered with by the appointment of people who do not think they'll ever be affected and could not give a shit about the people who will.

Yeah, there you are. Yeah, I mean, you're a cool, I write exactly the same thing. Exactly, right. It's Louise Harris and her song, saying called We Try It, is now number two in iTunes downloads, which again you'd think would be news, wouldn't you? But because it's, because of who it is, it just won't get covered except in a derogatory raid by Sarah Vine,

the Daily Mail. But she's number two. And what I said to her when I met her was, I went, I had a Christmas number one actually, and she went, who are you and obviously didn't? Because of her. Well, I said, you need to try and concentrate all the sales in, actually, it's number two.

Anyway, and that's without the advice, that's even without my advice. Right, as a former Christmas number. Christmas number. So that means, like, loads of people don't think it's ridiculous that she cried on a country above the M25. So that's what she she calls herself she goes I'm the girl who cried on the gantry with the M25. There's one of the things about the just to pull a lot is they kind of don't they don't they're so believe it they

don't realize how they can they make themselves sitting targets for Sarah Vine type columnists by crying on gantry's but they have every right to do that you know and so she's owned it. And you can buy a record of her crying on a Gantry, set it to a kind of reasonably nice sort of pop song about it. Well, what you've got there is you've got, you've got how media is consumed. So written media in newspapers, that's been consumed

by older people like us. And we get out-read, younger people are online. Younger people are streaming music, younger people are streaming music, younger people are downloading music. That's how they're consuming their news all online. So it's just, you know, the people that read papers will be dead soon. Yeah, so actually, although we're both...

I mean, we all will. Yeah, although we've both expressed very depressing thoughts about the cruelty of Andy asking us to even try and write jokes about the other. He's a real prick. That's what you're saying is young people, they're getting different information from different sources and they feel differently about this. They're hopeful, they're activated, they're motivated.

I have nothing but faith in Gen Zed. I think they're extraordinary. They're taken to the streets. They're protesting all the time. They put their bodies to the streets. They're protesting all the time. They put it you know They put their bodies on the line. Yeah, it's very easy to in our our heeded middle class homes to go Oh, look at all their you know if they wanted to they're not getting their message to the right people It's like you yeah, they will they are clearly yeah, they are yeah, they're it's to each other

Yeah, and they will grow and they will grow and they will grow and they will grow. And they will keep recruiting younger people and younger people, and we will be phased out. And I don't care if they even go, you're probably a boomer. I mean, I'm the last generation of Gen X. I'm nearly a millennial. But if they want to write me off,

I would rather be written off and watch them grow in their strength and their hope than have any of us have anything to do with it. Do you think that's the most positive thing anyone's ever said would rather be written off and watch them grow in their strength and their hope than have any of us have anything to do with it. Do you think that's the most positive thing anyone's ever said on this normally quite cynical probably? I think it might be actually. And it goes very much against the branding of this show, which is that the hopes of the

young should be crushed. I'm on anti-depressants, question mark. But I mean, having my kids at a teen, I just yours about the same. And there's an element of where you want to expose them to the news, but also protect them from it, because it is so sort of unremittingly awful about the field. And I sort of reached a bizarre point as a parent where, you know, I've recently found my son, my younger child, alone in his bedroom selling illegal weaponry on the dark web.

I hate that one that did you that. And I thought, well, Elise is not listening to the today program on Radio 4. Thought you know, that's, you know, that's now better. Yeah. Yeah. He consumes news differently online, you know? Objectively, we are a lost making planet. Yeah, so, you know, long term that destroying everything on it

might actually make sound economic sense. Why doesn't it need to be lost, me? I don't want to jump ahead. I know you've got an order for these stories. I mean, we're on the first story. Well, I know, but the Axe lottle, right. Oh, yeah. He's got, he wants to talk about this campaign

to save the Axe lotl, which is a, um, lizard amphibian thing in a, in a lake in Mexico. Mexico walking fish. Yeah, Mexico went down. Now, 20 years ago, there was 6,000 of them. Now there's 36, right, in that lake, right. But they're really popular because one of them was in Minecraft, so people really like them. But the problem that, that Axolotl has got, so people really like them. But the problem that the Axolotl has got, this is why nature is lost making, is no one owns it as a brand or represents it. So this image gets used everywhere by mine. If that's a character in Minecraft, it would be earning loads of money for nature. So basically things from the natural world need to have representation,

ideally we have a lot. Very tough deals for them as you know. Well I want to see that. I mean, so I mean, well maybe we should talk about the axelons. But then, but then, I see nature's things from nature are used all the time to make money, but they don't get any money like Disney has got Donald Duck to duck get any money from. No, it's got Mickey Mouse to mice get any money from that. It's got goofy., Demise get any money from that. It's got Goofy. To Goofy's get any money. There they are. No, right.

And so it's sort of, it's kind of, we kind of forget that we do monetize it all the time, but it doesn't, but rather like people that write for Marvel Comics, it doesn't get any money from the character. I think the problem is actually, if they're trying to start a campaign in Mexico, where they ask people to virtually adopt axolotls.

And I hope it is not a visual campaign. Axolotls are one of the single ugliest animals on the planet. OK, look, I'm just going to have to jump in here because I mean, the axolotl, unquestionably, has a distinctive vibe, particularly the luchistic axolotl, which is a rather pasty-faced creature. They're all pasty-faced. Got a plumpish, jowly face with weird sticky outgills around the sides of it, the head

that makes it look like it's got fairly advanced axolotl-pattern baldness. I would say that's a strong look for this, and I'll resent you suggesting that it isn't. I would describe them as, and I'm sorry if you take this person like, an embalmed penis wearing a rough. All right, actually that was my online dating project. We had a... That was his nickname, it's course. And that was just a teacher. He wouldn't know.

Well, he's not out of Birmingham glue yet. We had an axolotel as a pet. Right, you. Well, he's not out of Birmingham glue yet. Ah. We had an axolotl as a pet. Right you. Of course we did. In Australia. Yeah, really. They're deeply unusual family. Right.

How you feed an axolotl, one, every day you assume they're dead. They look dead and they don't move. And then they move and you're like, oh god, I know, okay, they're not dead. What you do is you cut off a tiny bit of liver and you stick it on a wooden skewer. And then you lower it down next to their mouth and they stay very still. And then eventually they go, they go,

and that is terrifying. What a relief when ours died. An absolute relief. That's monstrous of the thought of that. They are prehistoric. Yeah, it is there so ugly I was there was because people are asking them to adopt them They won't get adopted because they're not attractive. Yeah, well, they become more popular because they are now stars of Minecraft

I mean, I'm not I'm not an actual ottle, but I am adopted and I can tell you that when I was a kid I was given this book about being adopted to explain to me So I always knew it was called Mr. Fairweather in his family by Sheila Katzenger. I think I'm saying it was very good There's a scene in it where the mum and dad go to a big room full of babies and Woman from the charity goes do you want that one and she goes no? I don't think that's quite right for us and they then they will come back another time. And the next time they come back, because we've got this one now. And they go, oh, that's more like the other one. So I was thought I'd been, I thought that you were actively chosen, that, you know, your adoptive parents would

choose you over another baby. Like getting a mud crab at a Chinese restaurant. Yes, picking it out of the fish tank. But my mum actually said that that wasn't the case even though she'd given me this to Sonny's book and that with the Church of England Children's Society, very good chance it's called the Children's Society now and I pay them money, but you know obviously as I should, but they they just said we've got one for you, it's take it or leave it, you have to have it. So that's how you get rid of an excellent, you basically put it in an amphibian, you could get any amphibian,

right? You might get a nice looking frog or something, but if you get the axelot, you have to keep it. Okay. So because I think with this adoption is, you don't get the axelottle. You're sponsoring it. Yeah, but yeah, you buy it dinner,

but no strings attached to apparently on the other side. Just, you don't have to come come afterwards is that what you're saying? Um, actual rows that was short for Axelotl. And then a gram of it. It's just an abbreviation. I'll write it in the middle. Axelotl rows was just real. His middle name was Lottl.

Yeah. But I mean it's been a tough third millennium for Axolotls because I mean then it's brought a lot of it on itself the Mexico based amphibious evolutionary quirks. It can't be asked to grow up so it doesn't ever get rid of its gills like proper amphibians do. The, and it's got this permanent smirk so it's been, so basically it just looks all the time like it's ins this permanent smirk so it's been so basically just looks all the time saying it's insulin like it's sardinically grinning yeah yeah but taking a sideways look at the news in the lake that it lives in in Mexico so presumably just to know with the other creatures that would then eat them to teach them a lesson

also the destruction there and that's what I have it to say for a hundred years to help either so um but it interestingly it's renowned for its sensational ability to regrow limbs under organs. Did you all, ever, did you, we attempted to like chop its leg off and say, if it grew back? I was tempted. Right.

But I didn't know. Right, that's for baby. I was tempted to chop its head off, not attacking. I didn't want to kill it. It was just a weird thing to have in your house in a fish tank, always looking at you. Like a, Like a Mona Lisa with less artistic integrity.

It was a story Stuart that I know caught your eye because you've always wanted to be either the UK environment secretary or the spouse of the UK environment secretary. the UK environment secretary or the spouse of the UK environment secretary. And, well, as you mentioned earlier on in the show, this potential conflict of interest of the wife of Steve Barkley, I think you just have to say everyone is an interim now, interim environment secretary. Yeah. Well, it's another thing of what we were just talking about earlier, of the impossibility of trying to achieve anything about the environment when everything's so utterly corrupt. I mean, we know that in Australia this week, the

argument against privatising Australian water companies was made in Parliament by reference to what's happened here. They basically said, if you want your rivers and sea to be just full of excrement, then do this. Because that's what's happened in Britain. We're now in the international. We're well-liked. Of awful. And you know, what's happened is everything was sold off to companies.

The companies maxed out everything like a borrow against the companies to give all their shareholders money. Now all the companies that own the water and a system are in massive debt, they have a spat at the on infrastructure. We've left the EU, so there's no rules stopping them from, because of Brexit, there's no rules from Brussels about water quality or whatever. So it's completely, you know, just out of control. And that, you know, the Brexit thing's interesting, because there's now so much, so much human excellence in the English Channel as a risk of hardening to a crust and migrants will be able to walk out. But the, but the, but the, the, so it's got to be, you've got to do something

like you've got to stop the water companies continuing to play massive shared evidence to their shareholders whilst not investing in the infrastructure and while it's cheaper for them to discharge sewage into the rivers than it is to pay the fines. And one of the people that's responsible for this whole story, the new environment sector's wife, is on the board of Anglia Water that are being investigated for thousands of hours of sewage discharge and he, as environment secretary secretary should be holding it to account Which is bizarre because that means his day job is to is to ask us to stop doing that But then at night they go home. How was your day dear? I investigated your company. How was yours?

I tried to avoid being sentiently by your department. It's absolutely idiotic. It's like having Batman married to the Joker or It's absolutely idiotic. It's like having Batman married to the Joker, or it's as if I've got another one. As if Dick Dastardly had been married to Yankee Doodle Pigeon, which is a bit niche. That's the world we've got there. But I just think you need to put that out there. No government can say they're serious about the international laughing stock of our pollution issue, when the new environment secretary is married to the head of those, had one of those companies that are doing it, they're not to be cooperated with, they've got to be held to account. Unfortunately, you know, it's, it is a big business issue as well,

which is always on good and ugly. It's just quite hard to monetize fishing turds out of rivers, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, there's not a really way round that, unless you can find that you can use them to fuel our craft. In which case, we've got a huge surface here, if anyone can find any use for them. Well, I like to think that we have like a race to the bottom inspiration reciprocity agreement

where we are using you as an example of what would happen if we privatized our waterways and you have used our immigration system of shipping people off in humanly to other countries where you tried to do that with Rwanda and good on you for trying. Yeah. And hopefully they stick with that very useful, cheap, humane plan. But I think it's really sweet that the Commonwealth are looking at how we can get to the bottom. Sharing is caring.

Sharing is caring. One final item of news, this involves the interim prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who's found another creative way of getting absolutely f*** all useful done by canceling a meeting with another prime minister because of what that other prime minister said he would like to happen to some two and a half thousand year old bits of marble. Incredibly creative from Sunak, this regards the Parthenon sculptures, or which have been hiding in the British Museum disguised as the Elgin Marbles now for over 200 years. The Greek Prime Minister Kiryakos Mitsotakis was due to meet Sunak in London

this week last week, but Sunak cancelled at the last meeting because Mitz-Attackis had said that the partner sculptures should be returned to Athens where they allegedly were made in part of the most influential period of creative expression in European civilisations history. That would say that one, wouldn't it? A. Would. So, I mean, they did offer the Greek Prime Minister the consolation prize of a meeting with deputy prime minister Oliver Dalton instead but they when that is a serious bull. I mean we're at home we ordered a new fridge freeze this week and it

couldn't be delivered it was really annoying because they said they could deliver it in any end they said they couldn't get it up the step to go on our back door so we mean, that was pretty annoying, but at least the company responsible have the decency not to offer us a meeting with Oliver Dowden instead. So it wasn't. Oliver Dowden should be allowed

near anything to do with culture, right? When he was culture secretary, someone in an interview, I saw someone said to him, what's your favorite kind of theater? And he said commercial theater. Like it's a genre. Like theater that makes money.

Right. It's a genre of, you know, yeah, I mean, it's a genre. Like theatre that makes money. Right. It's a genre of, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's a difficult situation, the path. I mean, obviously, I think they should go back to Greece because I was really about this French art thief, Stefan Brightviser, who's called. And he didn't sell, he stole £2 billion worth of art, right, from, and but he just kept it in his little nice, little suburban house in his bedroom with

his girlfriend, and they used to like to wake up to the most beautiful things in the world. He had no, he couldn't sell it anyway, because it was so hot that stuff he'd got. Yeah. But he basically, that's kind of what we are, is the British music. The British music. The kind of place where in the world just taking all this stuff during a period where we felt that other people didn't understand what they'd got. So how are they going to get it back? That's the problem without causing a diplomatic rout. Well, I see what I did. When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Something Wicked This Way Comes By Ray Bradbury

and I bought it in 1980 in a rather nice edition from Panther with a paperback with a slightly spooky picture of a weird man on the front. And then I, when I moved, every time I've moved, I've put all my Ray Bradbury paperbacks in the line, and I've realized it isn't there, and it really depressed me. And I tried to buy it, but that edition, I wanted the same edition, I'd read as a kid, but it wasn't anywhere not even on eBay, so it must have been quite a short print run of that. Then, in 2018 months ago, I was at Josie Long's in Glasgow, the comedian Josie Long where she lives with Johnny from Johnny in the Baptist, and I saw a copy of it on the shelf there, and I realised I remembered I had lent it to her in 2005 when I was touring

with her. And she never, and I thought, you know what, it's been really embarrassing if I go, is that mine? And you've still got it 17 years later. So I took it off of shelf when she wasn't there, looked inside, it had my 12 year old writing and she put in my bag. I don't want to cause a fuss. And that was the best thing to do. And that's what greasening to do. How do you do that with 17 statues? I don't know, but 17 statues? She doesn't even know that I've done that. She'll know now. She listens. But that's what they've got to do. You've got to get them out. There's no one's British people aren't going to notice

they've gone. Are they? No one's interested in culture here. A little bit of chloroform on a cloth, security guard, over the mouth, backpack. Very sturdy backpack. Break them down. And then reassemble the other end. Yeah, yeah. I've got a little song that Rishi Soonak could sing. I say Elgin Marbles, you say Parthenon sculptors, I say international collections, you say stolen items,

British, museum, Greek, history, let's call the whole thing up. Christmas number one? I've got Christmas number one written all over it. I haven't followed that semantic issue, is that what they call them, we call them the Elgin Marbles, off-demanded stole them,

but they rightly call them after the place they were from. The Parthenon Sculpture, yeah. Which is what they are. And they call them international collections here. We call them stolen items. I say we like I'm Greek, I'm absolutely not. I'm married to a Greek family.

Oh right, what do you think you should be allowed to come in on this? You've got your tea by us. It's true, I actually think. I think they would choose to make such a fuss about how we have to preserve this culture when every other aspect of the arts and Britain is being underfunded, destroyed, dismantled. Why is he suddenly getting, you know, we've smashed up the BBC, they tried to sell off Channel 4, they underfund all theatre, everything gets pulled everywhere, you're pulling arts, teaching out of schools, you have you having, you know, and yet at the same time we must keep

those old sculptures that we stole off the Greeks. It's an attempt to create a cultural wedges she was usual and it's like, those bloody Greeks, they're trying to steal our Elgin Marvel's. Only Lishy Sunak can be trusted to keep the Elgin Marvel's here. I mean, there are the various arguments put forward for why we shouldn't give them back questions of post such as if you give the path and on sculptures back where will it end? Which the answer is, I guess, I don't know in my end there. Each case is different, but this was a public artwork.

I said one of the most influential creative periods in the history of European civilization inextricably linked to its location. So even if you generally think stolen things should stay where the people who've stolen have put them, as long as they were stolen a long time ago by a British person in a natty outfit. I think the Elgin marbles is quite unique. It's a unique artwork. Also, if Elgin hadn't filched the marbles in the first place, people say they'd been a much worse state than they are now.

And I guess the answer to that is if British people have tried to build the marbles two and a half thousand years ago when the Greeks build them, they'd have been a small earthenware pot with a crudely drawn bison on it. See, when you talk about the Elgin marbles here, you may as well be talking about Australia, just the whole country. If we had installing it and started a white colonisation, what kind of society would you actually have? A better one? Just better.

One that was meant to be there, one that belonged there. Well, what you would have had is one where the ecosystem would held together better. Oh, perfectly. I am still astonished. Like, even I feel like, and this might be wrong, even if you asked very right wing, very racist Australian people, if you were to choose between a white person and an Aboriginal person from country, from the land, like from that part of Australia, that I think even them would say,

I think the Aboriginal person would be able to maintain the land better. I think, and I don't know why we don't push that harder at a governmental level. Having said that we did just vote as a nation, 60 something percent against Aboriginal people, even having a voice in Parliament, not even a binding voice, just our voice, just our voice. Amazing. The other thing people say, well more people visit the British Museum than visit the Acropolis

Museum, which was built specially for the pathon marbles. But if that was the only criterion in the British Museum would be giving them to the Louvre in Paris, which gets even more visitors than the British Museum. Or possibly putting them on a pornographic website, which gets probably the most visitors in the world. And some of them are absolutely f**king filth, those Greeks were absolutely out of it. They were filthy. They absolutely loved it, didn't they? But also, they're stats on that.

Not everyone visiting the British Museum sees the path on the sky. I've never known me looked at them. But they're in quite a grey sort of room. So you think they're camouflage then? Also, I don't understand, like, if I go there quite a lot and look at specific things, that's not one of the things I've seen there. But also, you know, if you go to the British Museum there's lots of stuff you can look at and you might go to see the Partholome Scubs you might not. But if you go to the Acropolis Museum and you get to the room that these

marbles will end up in at some point and you think I can't be asked with this bit then you have to question what you're doing not just it happens but out of wherever you live so it's a good point. Can we just say have you seen the front of the Greek newspaper? No, it's just a picture of Sunak with something like f*** off. I saved it. Well, the old saying goes, I fear the Greeks even when they're asking for what is rightfully there. It's... I saved it. It's... Well, the old saying goes, I fear the Greeks even when they're asking for what is rightfully theirs.

There it is. That's the Greek newspaper, Greek National News newspaper. I'm just gonna... I'm just gonna... You just see that with f***ing cue bars to the Greek on it. What? That is that and the series is our international standard. That is not real. It is. It is...

F***ing cue bastard, the front of a grisky paper. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Ah! Oh, they got it. To be honest. 99.9% of all satire can be summarised in the words f*** you bastard. Yeah! They get it. Absolutely. Ah!

Ah! Ah! Well, I think that's probably a good note to end all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's wet in my day. It's worth it. Right.

It's plugs time. The bugle live towards taking place in March, the first of March in Glasgow, third of March, in Norwich, the 19th and 10th in Birmingham, 16th in the Warrick Arts Centre, the 24th in Leeds, 28th in Edinburgh and 30th of March. In Solford, by your tickets to all of those, instantly. Also, if you want to join the Bugle Voluntary Subscription Scheme, to help keep the show free, flourishing and independent, go to the BuglePockoss.com and click the donate button. Premium Level Voluntary Subscribes, not only get access to thebugelpogos.com and click the donate. But in premium level, voluntary subscribe is not only get access to the new exclusive monthly Ask Andy show in which I evade all your questions, but also the forthcoming bugle vinyl record, which we are recording next week, and hopefully that will also help us pay for Stuart's rider of 100 flasks of cabbage soup, which I assume you're still just half before every good thing.

Well, last time I toured with Andy in the early 90s, I was on a severe weight loss, involving cabbage soup. My friend took cabbage soup in high school for her skin. She drank a lot of cabbage water and her farts stink. And so loud, so voluminous, is that the word I used? And it's just plugged all his work. What are you doing for this? Okay, I'm actually going out to Australia next year for the festivals. I'm doing Gold Coast, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Think Perth as well. I have no idea the dates. They're probably not even on my website. So just keep googling over a time if you heard your city's name. I'll be doing a show on the central coast. Next June I will have a show come out called the office on Amazon Prime. I don't know if it will come out

before then. And apart from that I'm just gigging around the UK. I'm back on tour with basically until April at Gleisqueth here at middle of December to middle of January and then I've got a benefit at the Hackney Empire for a homeless charity on the 1st of February with Rob Briden, Kevin Elden, me, Thina Cookbrenu, Rosie Holt, Fern, Brady, and Celia AB. Good for you. Celia. Yeah, Celia AB, yeah.

She's great. Thank you for listening. Bueller's, we are off next week, but we'll be back with a couple more shows before Christmas. Until then, we will have a sub episode out next week. I think Chris is nodding. We have enough. I mean, literally half of this is so. How do you?

So we'll be sort of back next week and fully back the following week. Thank you for listening. Good-bye. Hello, Bueglers. It's producer Chris here. Before we get on with the show, please forgive me. I would like to very quickly plug the show I make with my friend and adventurer Richie Firth. It's called Richie Firth TravelHacker and it's back for a 6 season next week. It involves me or Richie or both of us traveling all over the place, trying to keep our shit together whilst we visit interesting and exciting parts of the world. It's a nice bit of escapism and I urge you please subscribe to Richie Firth TravelHacker. Give it a try.

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