The Bugle - Space Junk, Big Trains & Hot Potatoes - Bugle 4359

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

The Bugle turns 18 — and we’re not done celebrating yet! In Part 2 of our birthday special, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Alice Fraser and Nish Kumar to take a sideways look at some of the week’s more alternative headlines.🚆 UK News: Double-decker trains could be coming to Britain — but is it a great leap forward, or just a taller disaster waiting to happen?🛰️ Australian News: Space junk keeps falling from the sky. Should we be worried, or is this just nature’s way of redecorating the Outback?📚 Online News: Wikipedia turns out to be even stranger than you remember — and possibly more reliable than your uncle’s Facebook feed.🥔 Bugle Hot Potato: Producer Chris Skinner finally reveals the results of our first-ever Bugle audience survey, and the findings are… troubling, hilarious, and statistically unsound.🎉 It’s been 18 years of world events, weird news, and questionable analysis — and somehow we’re still here.🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive videos, and the smug glow of loyalty: thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch Realms Unknown on this YouTube channel.Produced by 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 4,359 of The Bugle, the second half of our 18th anniversary live stream live show in London. Last time we heard from John Oliver this week, it's Nish Kumar and Alice Fraser, dealing with everything else in the world as it was way, way back, in late October of this year. Alice will also be joining me for the Bugle live show in Brisbane on 2nd of December. Tickets and details for that, and the Melbourne show on the 22nd of December are on the bugle website. My Australia special Zoltgeist stand-up shows are also on sale.

Details at Andy Zaltzman.co.uk. The shows are in Perth on the 26th of November, Brisbane on the 3rd of December, Adelaide on the 14th, Melbourne on the 23rd, and Sydney on the 2nd of January, and my UK tour resumes from the 31st of January. See you all at at least some of those shows. Also, the last few official limited edition, 2025 Bugle Christmas Jumpers are still on sale. Grab them before they take their place in the annals of fashion history, guaranteed to make you up to 20,000% more awesome this Christmas, give or take,

which is, of course, what Christmas is all about. But now, to issue 4,359 of the bugle, recorded on the 26th of October at the Leicester Square Theatre. Alongside me on stage in London was producer Chris, occasionally pressing buttons, as I got ready to introduce our two guests. Please welcome back from the other side of the world, Alice Fraser. Welcome back.

And from the other side of the stage, Nish Kumar. So, welcome. back. How is the interval for you, Alice, in Australia? The sun has come up, so that's a treat. That is a relief. That would have been... I mean, what a dramatic way to find out about the end of the world. Alice is sitting in... So, 2007, October 2007 is when the...

Who's been listening since the very beginning? Oh, thank you. Losers. F***ing losers. Fuck you. Alice, what were you doing back in 2007? In 2007, I was at university. I had just gotten Facebook so that my parents could see photographs of me doing fun things over the other side of the world.

More hopeful times, Andy. Nish, what about you? I was listening to the bugle, baby. I was a listener. Yeah. Yeah. Strong work. Strong work.

I was listening to the bugle. I was listening to the bugle, but then, unlike these losers who are in the room, you pick me out of the crowd like Courtney Cox in the Dancing in the Dark video. And since then, I've always seen myself as the Cox to your Springsteen. Right.

I've got photos. I didn't know Bruce had multiple penis syndrome. Why do you think they call him the boss? Um, Nish, uh, obviously, you know, this is the highlight of your week, but I'm not the only highly influential global media person you've met, uh, you've met this one. No, I, uh, uh, fittingly on the week of the Bugle's 18th birthday, I closed a very satisfying narrative loop. Now, long-time listeners will know, uh, and remember that my Wikipedia page was subjected to what can only be described as an act of cyber-terrorism. And,

I say that you'll remember it because you did it. So it actually started because my little shit cousins from Australia defaced my Wikipedia page because they found out I had one and that anyone could edit it

and they changed it so it said my name was Nishant in inverted commas Madam Lily Kumar then the defacement escalated they said that I weighed a total of seven I don't even know how many kilograms

that is there's about 15 zeros there. That's two zeros too many for me. Listen, I got junk in the trunk. Then I opened it out to the bugle and then it sort of became an act of cyberterrorism. It said that I'm often referred to as the brown John Oliver and was being lined up to be the first brown smurf.

Then they changed my website to a website called bury me with my money.com. I don't even know what the fuck that is. It continued. They said that one of my first Edinburgh solo show was called Who Is Bish Lunar? And then things really, I would say, got out of hand.

It said between 1999 and 2002, I started a semi-nude stage production of a Christmas carol that ran for four weeks every September. The show was cancelled after its 2002 run when it was revealed Kumar had been using the production as a front to launder money made in the illegal trade of Ivory Colonel Gaddafi face masks.

What's the golden rule? No smoke without. Then things got even worse. In October 2017, E4 announced that he is to front a new chat show project called Naked with NIST due to air in February 2018. The format has described that a fully naked Nish Kumar will interrogate a host of clothes celebrities

about the more intimate aspects of their private lives. Guests announced thus far are Lily Allen, Steve Coogan and Nigel Farage. The guests will be scored on the basis of how excited Nish gets. So I believe that is the sum total of the defacement, Chris. So just to bring things now fully round to a full narrative closure, this week I interviewed Jimmy Wales,

the CEO and founder of Wikipedia, who has a book out. I talked to him about it, and then he signed my copy of Motherbook to Madam Lily. Buglers, a loop has been closed. I'm heartbroken that naked with Nish isn't real. I'm not wearing trousers right now in honour of... Actually, this of all weeks, a chat show with Lily Allen would really pop off.

Right, should we get on to our first story of the second half? Chris? Oh God, hang on. I can't do two laptops. There it is. I could have done it all that. She could have actually used the, I'll do the next one on the, right. No one needs to see you have an asthma attack.

That's another one of your Edinburgh showton. Just smoke machines the whole time. Australian news now and Australia is at war simultaneously with China and with space. Alice, China has attacked Australia. from space by dropping bits of defunct satellite all over the massive sandy landmass. You must be very concerned

that the long-awaited war between China and Australia is finally coming to pass. Well, Andy, yeah, we've got pieces of debris raining out of the sky into the Western Australian Outback setting up the equipment needed to film Mad Max Funder Dome. Actually, I do have an inside source on this,

because my cousin Alice is a space archaeologist, and I have reliably been informed that saying my cousin Alice is a space archaeologist sounds like I've just made up an alternate universe version of myself who is more successful and exciting and fair. I do have previous. But I actually do have a cousin. My cousin, Alice, aka other Alice, is a space archaeologist.

She specializes in the mapping and tracking of space junk, and I asked her to explain this story to me. So fundamentally, scientists of space junk have been increasingly concerned that we're filling the sky with rubbish on decaying orbits around the globe, which makes it, A, increasingly dangerous for people shooting themselves up there that they might bump into something, and also inevitable that increasing amounts of space junk are going to start falling out of the sky. I asked my cousin Alice what the implications of this are, because I'm not an expert. And I don't know if we're talking like one more thing a year or 1,000 things at your gender reveal party falling out of the sky. Hooray, the baby is. Soyuz. Hey, it's better than the family you had to call their kid like her because a frozen dog coat-hanged great-aunt, Enid. Anyway, I did ask my cousin Alice,

but she didn't reply because she's too busy panicking about the implications of all this cascade of space junk that's about to splat us, I assume. I don't know what to think about this story because I'm not an expert and nobody listens to the experts anymore,

which I know that nobody is listening to Paul Boffins with their decades of expertise reading graphs while Johnny Come TikTok is making millions of money misinterpreting to an audience of tepid teens and quivering capitalists. The point is I know that nobody's listening to experts because this is the first time you're hearing this story in a comedy news show. And even if it's not the first time you're hearing about the story, you probably read the headline and figured you understood the story enough and you didn't click through. and if you did click through you didn't fact check and even if you clicked through and fact checked you didn't ask a space scientist unless you are a space scientist in which case you're not a space scientist in this field

and if you are hi cousin alice so apparently the tensions with China have just been raised from no worries to some worries which is pretty concerning for Australia Your 2015 Edinburgh show was called My Space Junk, wasn't it? And that was one of your most graphic shows up until that. Yeah, but it was a very out-of-date show about a then-largely defunct social media app. It took them a second, but they got there in the end.

Alice, is your cousin Alice, Alice Gorman, the Associate Professor of Australia's Finland? I read, she was quoted in the fucking arch. article I read about this. They said that she was called Dr. Space Junk, which really shows you, they are giving our degrees

for anything these days. I mean, it's an increasing problem, space junk. Our orbit is cluttered up with an estimate that over 10,000 satellites have been blasted into space since the first one went up there,

which I think was 1837. Six. Six, sorry. Over Fact check Fight check Fight bullshit with bullshit Um

Over Which I think it's going to be on The back of our The new 8 pound coins That are being produced next year But in Latin It will sound very sophisticated

Over half of the 10,000 plus satellites In space have retired from satelliteing And there are over 25,000 bits of space junk plinking around in orbit. And so there are quite big concerns, Alice, that there might not be enough space for all the billionaires to get up there as well alongside all the space junk. I mean, we're now for the likes of Elon Musk

who dream of living in orbit and running us from space. I mean, it is a genuine problem. They have to track the junk so that people don't hit it on the way up. But I'm hoping what will happen is eventually there's so much space junk that it provides a metallic shell that completely encircles the earth and protects us from global warming. That said, it could just cook us like a wet casserole and not 100% sure. It's like wrapping a fish in foil and sticking it in the oven. Which is fine if the fish is dead.

Don't worry. They will be. UK news now Oh shit Actually that was the perfect stick UK news followed by a British man going Oh shit Completely the perfect sting And I think should now be used

Every time we talk about the United Kingdom I'd like to see all BBC news bulletins Just start with the news really going Oh shit They're all do I say They already bleep out the first six words at the top of every hour on regular time.

So, Nish, you are the Beagle's UK correspondent. Bring us up to date with what's going on in this famous country. Well, massive news, Andy. Racism is back. Now, in many ways, racism... Okay, that was a bit of a worrying cheer.

Just ticket sales a ticket sale. Okay. The next three to five minutes could be very awkward. Racism is like the James Bond film franchise. It's intrinsically British. It's never going to go away. And these days it's largely owned and distributed by the tech industry. So, Katie Lamb, who's a Conservative MP who is describing as the future leader of the party and who is currently the shadow home office minister, said this week,

there are a large number of people in this country who came here legally, he, in effect, should have been able to do so. They will also need to go home. What that will leave is a mostly, but not entirely culturally coherent group of people. So we've now just gone from the whole let's get rid of the illegal immigrants to just, let's just get rid of anybody

like slightly darker than mid-white. Like that, we're really expanding the remit here. And there's a lot to unpack with that comment. Clearly, it's absolutely soaked in xenophobia and intrinsic prejudice. But my eye was drawn to the idea that even without immigration,

Britain is a culturally coherent group of people. This is a nation of royalty and football hooliganism. This is a nation where the working man and the aristocrat are united by two things. Tea drinking and binge drinking, where everyone from the humblest shoestiner to the wealthiest aristocrat is united by a desire to not speak about their feelings and then get so drunk they feel the need to smash up a shop. It's a nation of sexual repression and graphic pornography.

It's the nation of stiff upper lips and flares up our ass. It's the nation that produced the Beatles and... Shawddywadi and it's called the United Kingdom and it's made up of four countries three of which absolutely f***ing hate the other one but it's a bit harsh on Wales I don't mind him or something

listen the second they allowed Ellis James to be their cultural emissary they were so it continued racism news Sarah Pochin who is a Reform UK's MP for Runcorn and Helsby complained that every advert now seems to feature of black and Asian people

as she responded to a viewer on talk TV who had complained about the demographics of advertising. Pochin said the view was absolutely right and that it didn't respect our society, reflect our society. I feel that your average white person, average white family is not represented anymore, blaming the woke liberati and the artie-farty world.

First of all, just say my name. Okay, if you're going to call me out, don't do it euphemistically. Now, I will say, it's not clear what this absolutely imbecile is watching. Like what channel or streaming service she has tuned into that features exclusively non-white people in all of the adverts, but I do have one question.

Give me the name, I need to get on it. Because, and that's not just for my own career, that's for your benefit as well. If you put me on that network that's only screening adverts with black and Asian people, I'll have it done within the f***ing week. Now, West Street in the Health Secretary, as this morning described her comments as racist.

And part of the reason we sort of tied ourselves in knots about everything is we're no longer really sure what is and isn't racist anymore, right? So, now people are putting flags up in towns all over the United Kingdom, right? And they're saying that they're doing that had a solidarity for British culture

and hostility towards immigrants that are taken over the country. And some people have said, you can't say that the flag is racist. Now, it is the thing. This is part of my guide to what is and is not racist, right? The British flag is not racist.

If you were looking at it during an Olympics or a World Cup. If you were looking at a British or English, flag during an Olympics or a World Cup, that is not racist. If you're waving the flag because you read on a far right wing blog that you should waive a flag

to stick it to the immigrants and the Browns, that is racist. Objects can change depending on the context that surrounds them. That's why no one looks at pictures of Germany in the 1930s and says, boy, that place must have been chock full of Hindus. Listen, Hitler and Gandhi might have been swastika-toting

vegetarians who had issues with the Brits, but that is where the similarities begin and ends. And people keep asking fundamentally, are these rallies that we've been seeing in London races? So last month, there was a rally where 100,000 people descended on London to protest what they called, the kind of swamping of the country by immigrants

and a need to assert British culture and British values. Now, people keep saying, not everyone on that march was clearly racist. Here is where I land on this, right? 100,000 people, not all of them can be racist, right? However, it was a racist event. Because if you're still continuing to blame immigrants for all of the ills of society

that are caused by a collapsing economic model that is not fact-based and therefore it is quite literally a prejudice. Now to contextualize this, a week after that rally 100,000 people descended on Wembley Stadium to watch Oasis. Now, not all of those people can have been Oasis fans.

However, when they saw Liam and Noel Gallagher stood on stage what they could no longer do was deny that they were at an Oasis events. They can't say they can't say no this wasn't an oasis event

okay this was not an oasis event it was an event for people with legitimate concerns about people looking back in anger which is pretty much what the Tommy Robinson was not for the back no no that was about looking forward in anger um

I mean I may have said this on the bugle but I think you can't say that that protest was racist unless you judge it by the people who organised it, spoke at it and the things that they said. Other than that, there's no way that you can...

This is classic woke karate nonsense. Let's look more specifically now at the... Well, the Caffili Senate by-election. Big news. Which I know... Who voted in it? Yeah, congratulations. Well done. I did as well. I vote in every by-election

because I give a shit, you lazy f*** who's letting democracy happen around you find a f*** way and it was

it went I think it's fair to say additional that it didn't go particularly well for the ruling Labour Party who won every election

in KFELE for more than a hundred years but only got just over 10% of the vote Plaid Cumry managed to beat reform UK and I've never known

Plied Cumry be quite so popular in England as you have this week Lindsay Whittle, the winning candidate he said he promised to work like a Trojan

for every man, woman and child in Kifili. In other words, to spend ten years fighting a losing battle, then make a really bad deal involving some horse-themed merch. Andy, we hope that's what he meant. We hope he meant that Trojan and not the type of condom. Because otherwise, that means he works

most of the time, but occasionally we're going to need to source a morning after MP. Alice, I imagine the Kaffili by-election has been huge news in Australia. Yes, Andy, massive. It's eclipsing everything here. It's been taken as a referendum on Keir Stama's leadership of the Labour Party, Keir Stama, Sintient XL spreadsheet. He dreams not of a better world, but of perfectly aligned pivot tables

and a society where all emotions can be logged on a risk assessment matrix. His smile is a cell that has been manually formatted to emoji, colon, slight, underdash, upturn. On the bright side, while, yes, a hearty rejection of Labour's slogans before Bogan's approach to improving material conditions for the working man, it is also a bit of a spit in the eye for reform, Nigel Farage, Prejudge. to throw everything at the campaign, but they came in second. And there's an upside. It feels like if we're rejecting the sort of large institutions,

we're maybe also rejecting the up and coming institutions that hope to replace them. And I'm hoping actually that we go back to small village life, return to just voting for your six aunts into politics. And then eventually we can form principalities, and then larger, sort of. of nation-states and start the whole thing again. I mean, this, in terms of where Labour are now,

a year and a quarter or so, under a year and a half still since the election, obviously, you know, there's a disappointing result, and times are the essence for Labour, who are already, you know, looking ahead to the next election, they might realistically win, which is in less than 19 years now, the 24-4 general election.

Obviously, inevitably get thrashed in 2029, that's just the way politics is now, success is an impossibility. They'll flatline in 2034. They'll make a barely discernible micro-recover in 2039. So they'll be targeting enough seats to form a coalition in 24, probably according to my computer's predictions, with the newly formed progressive yesterday-tomorrow party, co-led by 102-year-old Neil Kinnock,

an animatronic Labibu, Claudia Winkleman, and whoever the incumbent Doctor Who is at the time. Which could be you, actually. Listen, I'd be happy to take down that franchise. I've taken down many others before it. Also, how has Labubu landed on your sphere of understanding? I can't be the only person who heard Andy Zaltzman say Labubo

and thought, have I misheard? With that f*** you learn about Laboubu? Sorry, Laboubu I from. Gold Labou! Sorry, what was that? Gold Laboubu. Gold Labou. Is that...

Were you expecting that to be a sort of Manchurian candidate moment and someone in the audience be activated to assassinate me or another? It really felt like that was a code word and no one has been activated. Oh, cold LeBoooooo-that was something that everyone shouted up. I've just remembered what that is. I made you look like,

for absolutely no reason. I'm sorry. Here's what happened. A couple of weeks ago, Andy, my career is in an interesting place. About three weeks ago, in the space of four days, I interviewed the former Greek finance minister, Janice Farifakis, about the current state of left-wing politics in Europe and in the wider world. Then, four days later, I commentated on an event where comedians

wrestled with pro wrestlers. And I wore a gold jacket, and someone in the world. the audience said that I looked like a gold lebooboo, which I then announced at the at-capacity Hammersmith Apollo, which prompted three and a half thousand people to start chanting the phrase gold laboo at me.

So when that person shouted gold laboooo, it was a reference to my own body of work, which I am. I'm sorry to say, not as familiar with as I am weirdly with Andy's body of work. I do apologize, that was an excellent and relevant thing to have yelled.

You don't have... You've got time. Yeah, who here filled in the Abugel First Ever Official Hot Potato Survey? Don't ask these animals their opinion. Should we do that now? If you want to. Let's do that now.

Right, so we'll come back. to a couple of the stories. So just explain exactly what it was, Chris. So we thought to celebrate our 18th birthday, we'd go official and find out truly what the world thinks, what buglers think. And the results are just in based on a series of questions that

we asked online. These are the results answered by a thousand people over the period of seven days. And so first of all, buglers really f***ate Donald Trump. 94.3% of them think he's had a negative impact on the world.

Just go back. Go back. Who are these people? Who are these people? Well, another fact that turns up later on that, I have nearly 1,100 people who are surveyed, five identified as right wing. Right.

So. Yeah, but also, I know these people, okay? Because as I say, I was one of them for many years. And so I understand the way they think. Those five will have answered in some fucking character. That's like, Attila, the hun or some shit. Well, it's a...

I tried to ask them a simple question. Should we be bleeping words? And we've got a proper wedge issue result here. Right. Where it's completely inconclusive. And you go, okay, fine. People just about want more... Some said just... Some said just... And then we got onto basically

four pages worth of answers. So... Honky, honk. Honk, ding, ding. Popty-Ping. I mean, 2016 at the Pleasins Yeah, that was 2016 at the Pleasins Someone answered not asked TBH Just one thing

Let's give them a bit of credit Just very quickly Bugles think conspiracy theories are bullshit Which is nice 99.3% believe in the moon landings 74% believed that absolutely all conspiracy theories are bollocks The one you most believe in

is the COVID lab leak and the Mandela effect And only 0.4% of you believe that 5G is dangerous. So, fair play. Again, they will have answered in character. Like, I know these people. They are, no offence, absolute fucking lunatics. And finally, I think the big issue here was we had to find out what your favourite sport was.

And disappointingly, cricket did not win. Oh, my good Lord. There is genuine shock in this room. There is. but also looking at that that's everyone's favorite sport people have voted a lot of times there that adds up to well over 100

they just had to say which one they were allowed to like more than one right okay well if anyone so 34.4% like cricket to the remaining 65.6% of you you are dead to me

but but Andy to be fair to the bugle audience cricket is not their favourite sport because carrying a single joke through time for over a decade and pretending that it remains relevant is their favorite sport. I got a message from John Luke Roberts comedian just yesterday saying, can you please unpack this for me? He had been accused of sucking up to the bugle and wasn't quite.

sure what was meant by that. So he said, I posted toying with changing my name to honky-tonk babadook-a-donk, and somebody asked me if I'm sucking up to the bugle, why would they ask me this? And I said, there was a bugle joke about a tank that was called the badonka-don tank. Many years ago, only bugle fans would think a 10-year-old joke would be in your head right now. That's their favourite sport Pun runs as a sport Pun runs as a sport Yeah pun running

Pun running There we go Well I mean that may Well you know I mean we saw what happened With the first instance of that sport Earlier on today Yeah it caused John to leave the call

Yeah As it caused him to leave the show initially Let's In terms of conspiracy thing I mean they are more and more ridiculous There was one last year that windmills cause cancer.

Did you say that it was generally reported that they were on right-wing chat rooms, this theory that went... Sorry? Did you have to tilt at windmills? No, you didn't have to tilt them, but the interesting thing was... Only this audience would heckle with a reference to Don Quixote.

The biggest group of virgins I've ever seen in my life. Nish. Nish, if that is Byron, I don't want to be by right. That's my favourite donkey, donkey ooty. Better culture, a bit of culture. Yeah, windmill's caught, obviously windmills don't cause cancer.

I know this, because my great uncle, Wilfred, never saw a windmill, didn't die of cancer. Join the dots. Admittedly, he died whilst trying on a pair of crocodile shoes way, way before they were ready. Right, let's move on now to double-decker trains news now. Hugely exciting news for fans of... or people who hate single-decker trains, I guess. Eurostar has ordered 30 double-decker trains

which could come into the service coming to service in the year 2031 at a cost of 1.7 billion pounds or to translate that into realistic UK railway infrastructure projections, could come into service as soon as the year 2197 at a cost of just 849 quadrillion and

maybe soluble if it rains and have square wheels that are so hot they melt the track on contact and the project will also come with a luxury 12-story six-star hotel for the exclusive use of bats. So, um... Britain has generally eschewed double-decker trains which are widely used in places like the entire rest of the f***ed world

and the reason we've generally avoided double-decker trains is it raises the possibility of people having somewhere to sit if they bought a ticket is not what rail travel is about would we have won the fucking war if we'd had double-decker trains to sit on no we f***ing wouldn't and also because Queen Victoria who was monitoring during the development of the railway network reportedly didn't believe in stairs.

Or was it lesbianism? I can't remember. It was one of the two, possibly both. So, increased capacity trains and wide a range of destinations across the continent we once called home. Raise the prospect of a huge increase in passenger numbers and experts have predicted the cues to board the trains

at St. Pancras International will take somewhere between seven hours and 12 years. So, um... Nish, I know you're a huge fan of having as many decks on a train. Yeah, I'm a huge fan, man. But I will say, this will not stand in this specific instance. We did not vote Brexit so that we could have two floors worth of trains

travelling to those frog-legging surrender monkeys. Okay? And the double-decker for buses. Double-decker's buses. That's Britain. Double-deckers are buses. and those chocolates we had in the 90s. That's the only thing.

That's the only double-deckers are for buses and 1990s chocolate. Not for trains. Trains are single decker. What is this? Bloody India, and they're sitting on the roof of the trains? This is not what we voted Lee for, and the only way this thing will fly

under Prime Minister Nigel Farage, the answer to the question, what if gow was a guy? The only way this thing is going to fly if that second decker is exclusively used for deporting him That is the only way. Now, we and the Reform Party,

I joined the Reform Party in the interval. Rejoined. Rejoined, yeah. I'm a huge fan of brown people in the Reform Party. It's like Turkey's voting for Christmas. My apologies. Fireworks voting for Diwali. I'm for it, Andy.

As long as the implicit class system of the double-decker is rigidly enforced, people on top, on top, people at the bottom, and also it is a topless double-decker like those roof-off tour buses. There's a tour guide up front, they're a jaded uni student. On your left, some tunnel, on your right, some tunnel. You can't see through the walls of this tunnel, but behind it is a terrifying weight of water that crush us all in an instant. I think we put the rich people up top, but we have. have it open, like the top of the double-decker tour bus, so that their top hats and or heads all get knocked off.

Train guillotine, from London to Paris. The French will welcome you with open arms and no pants. This is not why we voted, Leif. We don't know why we did. We're working through all the reasons. Double-decker trains? No. Making trade easy.

Also, it turns out, no. I don't know. I don't want to rake over the old smouldering colds of Brexit again. But, you know, net migration rocketed up to way more than it was before Brexit. So if you're an irony fan, these have been wonderful times. But I don't think we'll really move on as a nation until we start asking ourselves a very important question about Brexit, which is, is reducing massively complicated politics?

political and economic problems to vastly oversimplified binary choices. Is that right or wrong? And until we really, really get to that. So, let's move on to... That is classic, man. That's really good. One genuinely, genuinely, well, exciting, heartwarming story, which you might have seen last week,

about a woman who has Parkinson's playing the clarinet during surgery and playing it better than she'd been able to for years as Parkinson's advanced and she wanted to went deep brain stimulation during this operation and my father had Parkinson's for many years and is an absolute remorseless shit of a disease

so I'm not a fan... I'm sorry if I fend any Parkinson's fans in when I say that. On this show I always say what I think and I don't like it. Some people have expressed concerns that this is a dangerous precedent has been set whereby surgeons refuse to operate unless their patients

provide some entertainment and then it starts with a simple tune on the clarinet and before you know it you have to be juggling a basket of kittens whilst playing I'm too sexy for my shirt on an under-iron bagpipe before they'll give you so much

as a fiendectomy so also concerns that children will use this technique to cheat in music exams trying to trick their way to a distinction in grade four by sneaking in a brain surgeon under an unusually baggy hat. And obviously, you know, the relationship between medicine and musical instruments

stretches back through history. I mentioned on the bugle some time ago that Florence Nightingale developed the harmonica during the Crimean War as a means of working out whether patients were still alive or not. Just pop it in the mouth. I'll also can tell if they were particularly upset because they got a bit more bluesy.

but um and um also the cello and violin were invented as a means of testing the eyesight of clowns recovering from being hit over the head with frying pans could they tell her something was smaller or just further away so um um um alice i mean this is uh this is very exciting exciting exciting development call this an exciting and heartwarming story andy this is toxic capitalism it's not enough to be getting brain surgery the idea that we have to be constantly working, productive, turning our hobbies into monetised side hustles. Next, you'll be telling me she's Twitch streaming her clarinet brain surgery. The person who performed the surgery was neurosurgeon and Professor Kuma's Ashkan, the f***ing show off. When asked to comment on this procedure, he said that the clarinet playing helped to fine-tune the position of the electrodes deep inside her brain until she was able to play the instrument.

He went on to say, yeah, sure, it's impressive. that she can play a music instrument while getting brain surgery, but it's not exactly doing brain surgery, is it? He then referred news channels to his Etsy shop, his podcast, and his only fans page. And it's not unheard of for brain surgery

to happen with an awake patient, despite the uncomfortably Hannibal Lecter aesthetics of it. It does help to fine-tune the surgery. Unfortunately, now this patient is fully optimized, for clarinet playing at the cost of all other metrics. So, sure, he can play clarinet with a heartbreaking lyricism of a classical maestro, but if you ask her to count to ten, you'll do it in clarinet.

Hey, we're in real trouble, Soltzman, you and me, if they extend this to other art forms. They start getting us to do a gig while we're under brain surgery. I don't know how they're going to measure it. Well, he seems to be really struggling. The other dogs have to be like, no, no, no, I've seen footage of the gigs. This is how it normally go. Jesus Christ, I don't know what, have we cut the wrong nerve?

He's taken down a whole network. How has this happened? No, that's normal. The brain surgery is working. We have returned him to the mean. There was no signs of brain activity when you and me did that gig at Andover. Too soon. Too soon.

It's our own shared Vietnam. I mean, 18 years, Chris, Alice, what do you think, you know, another 18 years? What do you think the world will be like in 18 years, Nish? Well, I think it's going to be very difficult for us to do this show during the Road War. But I do think we will find... I watch Mad Max.

There's not a lot of people doing our jobs. The closest is the guy playing the guitar that shoots fire out of it that's strapped to the top of the truck. I mean, I guess I'm immediately human sacrifice. I have no, like, post-apocalyptic utility. So I guess I'm just, I'm out of the game. So I'm excited to know how you're going to keep this podcast going whilst we sort of are in a hand-to-hand combat war for food, resources and water.

I mean, just, you know, in terms of human sacrifices, sometimes bearded guys going through human sacrifices, they end up doing quite well long term. But that's... Yeah, but it's a real mixed bag because they somehow magically turn white. Alice, in, what, 18 years' time... Obviously, I'll be fine.

Post-apocalypse, people will always need puns and cricket stats. You see the director's cut of Mad Max. There's a lot of people doing cricket stats. There's a really weird bit where Tom Hardy just reads from a wisdom annual for half an hour. Andy, 18 years ago, you and John would source your news from reputable newspapers of note. You'd script up your jokes or lull gaggeries, as they used to be called, on wax tablets with soapstone stylises,

and then you'd seize your wooden megaphones and go to the amphitheatre, short for amphibious theatre kid, and you'd scream your jokes. into his mouth. It was a he, because of course, it was before women were allowed anywhere near satire as it was considered that access to too many facts

would blight our wombs. Anyway, the... Was it wrong, Alice? A lot of satirical shows outside of the bugle have maintained that policy, Alice. Tell me about it. Everyone else got a career

out of this fucking show. Anyway, the amphibious theatre kid would go to the houses and ponds of every bugle listener and tell them all the jokes in exchange for a wooden penny. That's how it used to be, now where we are now, 18 years from now, can you imagine how powerful the bugle will be?

What world-spanning influence we will have, what fully sentient bodonka-donk tanks will be sending out into civilization to assassinate plastic flamingo lawn ornaments. We will be, at the cutting edge of technology, will be be beamed directly into the eyes of children in 0.25 second increment ellipsies, for their microattentions against 18 other propagandists from all other quartiles of politics. In the brief period, we have these children's minds

before they grow old enough to subsume themselves into the Amazon Borg, an AI blob of glup that supplies infinite demand while demanding infinite supply. They'll subsume themselves into the blob of glup in service of one of three. They get to choose one of three God, Emperor Hivemind, business merger personality orbs,

Orbs, either Musco Trump, a Jabber the Hutt-style floating slumternity, Emperor Huawei Jin Ping, an eternal body made up entirely of dissident kidneys, or permafrost Putin, a shirtless cryogenically frozen zombie Putin covered in cheese curds. The best kind of Putin. Yeah, we will, of course, defeat all other channels and become the dominant micro-narrow eventually becoming everyone's second, fourth, and other even-numbered thoughts before we start serving ads and insisting everyone upgrade to the premium bugle service,

which will also have ads, but ads of a slightly higher quality. Just as long as the ads only have white people in them. This show is a bloody wokeest wet dream. A woman a brown and a Jew. At least Chris is here for some normal. That's what everyone says about me. Normal. I think that's the latest in a live bugle

before we've had the first you, Chris. I think they saw the sheer look of panic that whether this technology would work or not at the start of the show and gave me a pass. Have we got time? I think you can do a thing. Well, one final story reaching us. A collection of 1980s pop and rock stars.

Two in a night is rough. I've announced it there to record a charity single to raise awareness of the housing crisis. This emits reports that local governments are turning to porter cabins as a stopgap solution. Yes, this crisis could make prefabbed sprout up everywhere. All the people's more and more

People are living in crowded houses, creating a squeeze on accommodation. And let's face it, it's not a big country, but one whose housing is in dire straits. And we can't just stick with the status quo and have people living in a box. Is that long term the cure? I mean, sure, these buildings go out really quickly.

Just like that, wham. But it's a short-term fix. And soon enough, they'll run out and have to put in a new order. Now, obviously, there will be architectural in aesthetic and planning issues having porting cabins next to older and bigger buildings. Inevitably, it will be a problem.

The clash of style. Councils will have to make a call on that. And some people are making a political capital out of it, blaming immigration, but these kind of people, they just enjoy division. In terms of... In terms of the materials, use prefab to get a bad rap

because of what they're made of, but it's not valid, and we need to dispel these myths. These myths... But maybe prefabs are better than older natural material, certainly better than using lumber, because the beams degrade, they get woodworm. the timber frankly goes to Holywood.

Don't... Don't... Don't blame me for this. I didn't write it. I simply read it out. There we go. Oh my God. I don't know if that's a glimpse into the past for the future. 18 years from now.

Thank you all for coming here to the Leicester Square Theatre. Thanks to the Leicester Square Theatre. Thanks to Go Fast to Stripe for doing the Lifetime. Thanks to all of you watching at home, all up to 8 billion of you watching at home. We will be reporting on the world for at least the next 18 years.

I'm writing checks that my dietary habits cannot catch. Show you appreciate it once again for John Oliver. We can't hear you. He's not there anymore. The absolutely wonderful Alice Fraser! The unstable internet connection, Nish Kuba!

Playing for the Blue Days in the World Series. I've been Andy. Goodbye. Thank you for coming. Dolkman. Well, what a way to mark 1.8% of a millennium's worth of pure, unadulterated truth. Join us next week as we embark on the next 18 years of bugles. I will be joined by Helen Zaltzman and Josie Long. If you want to help the bugle complete the remaining 97.4-ish

percent of the millennium as a free, flourishing and independent show, devoid of advertisements, do join the bugle voluntary subscription scheme for which, alongside the warm glow of being on the right side of history, you will get access to our almost monthly Ask Andy show in which I, Andy Zaltzman, answer your questions about anything in the universe. to make a one-off or recurring contribution to our voluntary subscription scheme, go to the buglepodcast.com and click the donate button. And don't forget to buy your tickets, and if you want to everyone else's tickets to the live bugles in Brisbane on the 2nd and Melbourne

on the 22nd of December, and to my stand-up shows in Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, and to my UK tour extension, Zoltgeist, a second thwack, which begins in early 2026. Until next week, goodbye and thank you for listening. Thank you.