The Bugle - Starmer on the ropes, Trump's social media antics and Olympians resulting to penis enlargement to win big!

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

On this week of The Bugle, Andy is joined by Neil Delamere and Alice Fraser, as they delve into the week's news, from the latest on Peter Mandelson, to the growing pressure on the PM, Kier Starmer. Elsewhere in the world, the trio touch on the controversy shrouding the winter Olympics and Donald Trump's social media antics!🇬🇧 Mandelson and Starmer: Andy, Neil and Alice, get to grips with the latest Mandelson headline, and weather time might be up for the PM.⛷️ Controversy at the Winter Olympics : Andy, Neil and Alice, get to grips with the latest controversy surrounding the winter olympics, as some athletes result to penis enlargement to give themselves the edge on their competition.📱 Trump's Social Media: Finally, the trio break down the latest 'racist' thing to come out the White House, this time a meme shared by the president himself!Andy's Links: andyzaltzman.co.ukNeil Delamere's Links: https://www.neildelamere.com/Alice Fraser's Links: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraser🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive video editions, and the righteous satisfaction of funding satire:http://thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch Realms Unknown on YouTubeProduced by Chris Skinner, Laura Turner and Harry Gordon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Newspaper for a visual world. Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4,368 of the bugle. I am Andy Zaltzman, here in the shed of an immediately unquenchable fact. It is the 10th of February, 2026. The world is still, as we recall, turning, despite what the naysayers would have you believe. And I'm joined from various hemispheres by Alice Fraser and Neil Delamere. Hello to both of you. Hey, Andy.

Hello, Andy. Hello, Buglers. Lovely to be here. How your February is going? I refuse to believe that it is already. February. I'm still entrenched in January. I'm not ready to let it go.

It's too much too soon, too much a year. Coming at me too fast, I feel, can we go back to the time when you would ask your parents if they'd stay for a cup of tea and half an hour felt like a week? I'm in very good form because I just went skiing for the first time in my entire... adult life or indeed child life and you find out who really believes in you

because I told my dad I was going to go skiing and he said you take to it like a duct to water and I told my physio and she bought a new car she actually genuinely rang the dealership while I was talking to her and said do the car I'm buying do you have a more expensive car because I've just come into quite a considerable amount of money

his hampton his hampton paid for my kitchen so I think we're going to get an upgrade so yes I have been enjoying myself

on the slopes swish swish I went skiing once when I was a child and I didn't take to it like a duck to water

I think I took to it like a duck to a Chinese pancake in that it was more entertaining for other people than for me a duck to a series

of high velocity pellets is how you took to it I took to it like one of Dick Cheney's friends to Dick Cheney's friends to Dick Cheney's JD's aim. We are recording on the 10th of February. The 12th of February is Charles Darwin Day,

the anniversary of Chuck D's birth way back in the early 19th century. But we ask, was he right about evolution? If so, how do you explain the fucking wasp? It's a complete waste of time. As always a section of this and also the current state of humanity. Fuck you, Darwin. You were clearly wrong. Obviously the point of the wasp is to exist so that people can see it buzzing around them, get stung by it and then go wasp the fuck is that?

And to provide like 46 of the 47 odd presidents in the US that we've had. That community is generally wasp. As always the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. The 14th of February, famously is Valentine's Day which

a relic of of days gone by when cards still meant something. And for our Bugle Valentine's Day guide, we tell you how to tell someone you think you might love them without it getting imposingly weird in the modern age, which is probably quite difficult, I imagine. It's been a while since I was courting since I'm approaching my 30th anniversary

with my current partner, stroke, first wife. for the for the fellas listening we give you a guide to how to express genuine romantic emotion without sending an unsolicited picture of your prongulum which a surprising number of people seem to struggle with

we also tell you what dead thing to give to someone to show your affection flowers yes roadkill no it's it's one of the kind of curious things that flowers are considered a romantic gesture giving someone something that is technically dead and then just sits

they're gradually degrading as a harrowing metaphor for the inevitability of decrepitude and death. It's a bit of a weird way to tell someone you love them, I've always thought. Flowers, yes, wreaths, no. All about the presentation. I think flowers are a nice way of saying

I will love you, even when I've cut you off from all of your family and you're slowly dying on the inside. I guess you're just, you're just, send a certain message. And also we give you a guide to the least romantic food stuff so you could give to your intended on Valentine's Day, including the Dona Cabab and Ratatoui with the original recipe, the one with actual rats in it.

Anyway, that section is in the bin. Top story this week, United Kingdom in crisis. Strange times as what were this being, the 2020s and the 3rd Millennium, and basically any year after about 50,000 BC. But particularly here in the UK, the Labour government is in and pleased to lease according to your preferred level of media hysteria. A bit of a tiz, a full-blown crisis,

a total volcanic meltdown and or a force 10 fuckstorm. Kier Stalmer is desperately trying to cling to his political surfboard in the after slurry of Peter Mandelson resigning from the party I mean booted out of the House of Lords after the Epstein files revealed that he was close enough friends with the sex offender and people trafficker to be photographed in his underpants in Epstein's house,

which to me, in terms of your level of friendship, I don't think you can deny that you were quite close with someone if you've been photographed in your underpants in their house. I mean, it's like they can't find a picture of him not in his underpants in his house. It feels like that was, you know,

into the house, shoes off, pants off, welcome. I don't think I've ever felt comfortable. enough with a friend to be in my underpants in their house please none of my friends contradict me on this one. This stuff is so weird. I mean, like

oh, and the stuff that Peter Madelson took money for, Epstein gave us husband 10 grand for an osteopathy course, presumably because you actually have to do professional qualification to be able to find Peter Mandelson's spine. that's why he did it. I heard a political correspondent yesterday on the news saying that the government has the taint of Peter Mandelson over.

And I think we all saw that in the underpants pictures. Tim Allen has gone as well, Tim, which is one of Kirst Amher's AIDS. And like when you've lost Buzz Lightyear, I think. I mean, that's the death net for your government, isn't it? Like, they thought, as we speak now, they thought yesterday that possibly Kirstam was going to go. because the idea of getting rid of Morgan McSweeney, who was one of his top eights as well, was that that was going to stop the Roth.

So, you know, like the American Civil War and someone has gangrene in the foot and Starmar is going, listen, we're going to cut off the toes to save the foot. But he's got gangrene up to the nipples. He's full on jelly green giant from like shoulder level down. So the little pickies going to the market

are not going to cut this. He thinks he's Glinda. He is not Glinda. He's the other wood. He is fully green and we don't know if this is actually going to, up until I think it was three. three o'clock yesterday, people thought he was going to go because the Scottish Labour leader, Anna Sauer, he came out and said the Kirstammer should go.

And there's no way he did that without expecting the rest of the cabinet to come and join him. I'd like, I would like, what a clock he came out and said that? Like, you know when you're 15 and a young lady being an idiot and you jump off a quarry into into water and you go like, we're all going to do this. And all there went to go. Yeah, yeah. No, we're all going to do this. That's what he said. He went, Kierstammer should go. and he turned around half or down a cliff face

and everybody else was in the minibus. Basically, the Labour Parliamentary Party they basically said that this was a fancy dress party when this was not a fancy dress party and the Labour leader got turned up dressed as a chicken to a funeral and nobody else went. That's basically what happened.

I'm sort of holding onto my seat with both hands on this one because it will be an extraordinary thing if the UK Prime Minister goes down for being peripherally involved in a loud one of his employees to get away with being in these documents and nobody in the US eats it at all. Like that would be, I mean, it would say something and I'm not sure what it would say. I mean, the thing about this whole scandal that just is eating away at me is like, don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends are awful people. But also, these contemptible little f***ks

being willing to carry water for a certified convicted. commercial grade pedophile pimp, just so they can be in the room where it happens is the saddest thing I've heard all year, and I've taken ice cream away from my baby. But like, in defense of Morgan McSweeney, who

said that he's the one who, you know, advised that on the appointment of Madison, like, how could he have known about Peter Mannington? Like, only Peter Manning's previous behavior and all the evidence of a CV would have suggested this. How could he have really known?

How can someone losing his job twice before because of his weird attraction to wealthy people tell you that he might possibly lose his job again because of his weird attraction to wealthy people? How could he possibly have known that he was going to do this again having already watched him do it twice? You've got to factor in that the internet was down on the day that they appointed Manelson,

so they couldn't check his Wikipedia page. I mean, all the big journalistic questions are burst. out of this story, who, when, what, where, and why the fuck? Seriously, I mean, sure, we needed someone who could communicate with the incoming American president on a spiritual level and had shared mutual friends, including the devil himself, that they could chat about. But really, was this necessary?

I mean, it's easy to say now that Peter Mandelson was like an annoying person in a queue at an airport when you've cut it a bit of a find to catch your flight in that he came with way, way too much baggage. It's easy to say that with hindsight, as indeed it was easy to say, with foresight or as it's also known as I may have said on the Beagle before preemptive hindsight which is a quality that we should be looking for in our politicians

Peter Maniltern's past is so chequered that his CV has been used at the end of the British Grand Prix to wave at the car to tell them the race is finished as you say he's resigned and been involved in various scandals previously as the famous old saying goes

once bitten twice shy twice bitten thrice willfully naive, thrice Britain, maybe stop putting your fucking head in that crocodile's mouth. But, I mean, these are lessons that you can only learn by trial and error.

Kirstama did say that he now regrets, actually I've got a full list of Kirstarmer's regrets here, but I'm not sure we've got full three and a half hours to get through them all. But he does regret appointing, Mansell. He said he regrets believing Mandelson when the controversy cake,

former minister told him he barely knew New Epstein. But in terms of the sort of checklist that you have, and like I say, I mean, the logic of appointing Mandelton was because he had the character traits required to deal with Trump, you know, black belts in duplicity and obsequiousness,

mutually embarrassing former friends, a proven absence of moral compass and a willingness to communicate directly with Beelzebub himself as when necessary. But as a checklist, before appointing someone to a prominent position, such as Ambassadors to the USA, you'd want to ask at least some of the

questions. One, is this person the kind of person who might have links to Jeffrey Epstein? Two, did this person actually have links to Jeffrey Epstein that everyone knew about? Three, might this person be the kind of person who might pass on secret government information to someone like Jeffrey Epstein, despite Jeffrey Epstein being known to be Jeffrey Epstein? Four, has this person been sacks, sack resigned from previous high profile public positions on multiple occasions? Question five, if you type into a search engine, this person name and the phrase conflict of interest does steam start to emerge from your computer

six when you look at this person directly in the eye do you shiver and seven is this person called Peter Mandelton those are seven potential red lights that they have driven straight through there hold on Andy maybe this is maybe this is just what diplomats do right maybe do you remember those chocolate ads like when the butler would come out with a pyramid of chocolates at the embassy's reception and people thought they were Ferreira Rochet

Maybe every one of those little gold foil rappers contain a little piece of market sensitive information. Have you thought about that? They're like little fortune cookies. And somebody would open it up and go, ooh, with this news of a preemptive eurozone bailout, the ambassador is really spoiling us. Maybe we're just too naive.

Possibly. It really annoys me, actually, is your point about this idea that, oh, we need somebody, Mandy can do the dark arts with Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the most quixotic. US president in the history of the US. He makes it up as he goes along. He wants

to invade a random piece of Danish territory because he says it's needed for the American defence. That is US foreign policy based on the colours of the Irish flag essentially. That is an invasion of Greenland by the White House and Donald

Trump. That's all that is. I mean, I'm looking at some of the emails that Mandelson sent including telling Epstein all of these secret confidential U.S. government documentation and information and saying that he was trying hard to change government policy on bankers' bonuses, giving early information about these bailout packages. And also, I think what really struck me was he suggested that the boss of J.P. Morgan should, quote, mildly threaten the chancellor over bonuses.

and I'm fascinated by what the prospect of being mildly threatened by J.P. Morgan's boss looks. Like, what is a mild? Why, I ought to push you quite firmly in the shoulder. Oh, you're going to feel the back of my hand when I check your temperature in a disapproving way to imply that I don't think you've been looking after yourself well enough. I'm going to tell your wife, I saw you eating a cupcake, even though I know you've agreed to go keto as a family. I know I shouldn't get caught up in that.

But I'm also, you know, I really want to look for the positive, even in these most negative of times, Andy. And I think the upside here is that they say men don't talk to their friends about anything important. And I feel like this disproves that. You know, you can't have it both ways, Movember activists. You know, men talking about their friends. feelings and state secrets around a campfire that aims to connect them with their vulnerable

male soul and or trafficked young people, men being understanding and empathetic with one another about sometimes needing to get away from it all and commit crimes against God and man. You know, there's a poster in a cafe near where I live that's marketing a men's retreat where men go into the bush to do drum circles and not wear shirts. and cry. And, I mean, what was Epstein's Island but that? Yes, men retreat actually might be a pretty tidy solution for some of the problems that the world is going through at the moment.

It's another, well, another tricky millennium for the patriarchy currently. In terms of the sharing of this sensitive government information that Mandelson is alleged to have done, the kind of information that presumably would have had and obviously do not share this kind of information sticker on it with another sticker saying, especially with a known sex offender and crook. And he is now facing a criminal investigation with the potential charges under the misconduct in public office law, which dates back to the 18th century, which carries a potential life sentence,

which is probably less of a concern if, like Peter Mandelson, you have nine lives. But back in the 18th century, misconduct in public office could include, for example, hearing about a newly discovered land and not instantly saying we should definitely add that one to the collection wearing a wig that was only quite ridiculous rather than completely fucking ridiculous and passing on sensitive government intervention

to convicted sex offenders so he could be in trouble under that old law but in terms of the the political chaos that it's brought about that we said mentioned a few minutes ago

this Labour government is 19 months into a five-year term. It has a 170-plus seat majority in the House of Commons, given to them via the UK's quirkly enumerate electoral mathematics in the election in 2024. And yet, despite this, the government is exuding the stability and calm authority of a failing fourth-term minority regime that has just announced a raft of unpopular new policies, including a new 200% income tax rate for anyone in the bottom 98% of earners, a maximum of five minutes of electricity per household per month, and the compulsory drowning of puppies in front of school assemblies

and the introduction of 10-year jail sentences for anyone who says um or er during a conversation. And yet, so here they are in what should, I think, objectively still be the honeymoon. Historically, this is still the honeymoon phase of a government, basically a year and a half into a five-year term with a massive majority, and yet they're clinging to power like a greased hippopotamus to a cliff-off. What a Sherlock Holmes denouement that would have been.

and they have like I say one third of the way through with a parliamentary majority that even Vladimir Putin wouldn't turn his Russian nose up at. So they're in this honeymoon phase but it's a honeymoon in which the two spouses are already staying in separate hotels

they are chopping through their CD collection with a chainsaw and the divorce lawyers are prancing around in the lingerie ordering champagne and lobster for the hot tub. It's a very strange situation. How long do you think Henry DeYearth was in the honeymoon phase? Well, he's got shorter and shorter, I think.

Yeah, but if you were just like the second or third wife, you really would you insist on the same, like you want to be treated equally. You would want the same amount of months in your honeymoon phase as the previous wife, wouldn't you? I mean, it would be the stipulations. I mean, it wouldn't be my first stipulation. Please don't cut off my head.

It would be my first stipulation. But after that, I wouldn't insist. And you went in a rant there and all I could think of was what I would use by five minutes of electricity you'd want for. I didn't hear anything. after that. Like, that is a major.

I think that should be one of those questions that a psychologist asked you. If you only had five minutes of electricity a month, what would you spend it on? I mean, the answer shouldn't be tasering my neighbor, but I think it is. Yeah, I guess you've got to do what's most important to you, I suppose.

Yeah, like, imagine, I'm getting at four minutes 30 and my other neighbor has a heart attack and just a defibrillator on the wall and I go, yeah, but I really don't like that. Anna Sawah, the Scottish Labour leader. at Eta's about earlier on Neil called on Stama to stand down and said the distraction has to end

adding massively to the distraction. Like a priest calling for greater respect for the sacrifices of previous generations in wartime whilst wearing a sexy Donald Duck outfit in twerking the cenotaph. It really did not help at all. I'm just trying to do

less we forget in the Donald Duck force. Starmer is moving apparently to get Mandelson deluded and has been heard complaining that it is harder than he would like to strip lords of their titles and I agree with him

I think we should strip them all of their titles start them from scratch and see how they go you know you gotta earn lordhood knightship status bring it back to the days when you just have to find a crossroads and challenge anyone passing to a duel to the death and just hope one of them was King Arthur.

That's the only thing that gives legitimacy to a title in my mind. Winter Olympics News now and the quadrennial festival of, what don't know, brings humanity, snow and ice and physics together in a frankly spectacular three-way contest. is underway in Italy. The early stages were sort of overshadowed by one of the greatest controversies ever to hit winter sports, the so-called penis gate controversy after there were allegations that ski jumpers had been injecting their mambulums with a special acid, higher lyronic acid, in order to expand the girthickness of their prongulums

before having being measured up for their special suits because extra surface area in the suits at age distance in ski jumping. I mean, if this did genuinely happen, this is one of perhaps the greatest cheating scandal in sports history. It'd be hard. I mean, most cheating scandals

you know, a bit depressing at their heart, particularly if you're a sports fan. But this just tells us so much about humanity. The asset apparently could expand the circumference of the male dangler by 1 to 2 centimetres. That is a 200 to 250% increase

if I'm not wrong. but, you know, it's a, Alice, you're our Winter Olympians, private parts correspondent. Congratulations. This, I mean, you've been obviously very busy with this story. Well, I mean, it's an obvious counterbalance to the traditional effect that cold has on penis size. But just to disambiguate for,

listeners who might not be subject to constant targeted ads about how every week that passes moves you further away from fitting into the increasingly unrealistic beauty standard for women. Hyleronic acid is the thing that it's a filler. They put it in, it's the thing that women put in their lips to make them not look like lips anymore. You know that thing where it looks like they're having an allergic reaction to joy. That's the hyalronic acid, it's very safe but it continues to attract water to itself

so that what you inject ends up swelling and it does not, it's not a temporary fix as they were selling it to many women. It can stick around for much longer and it can migrate under your skin. What a joy. A penis gait is what we used to call a vagina and the bigger your ski suit in the Crotchal region

the bigger your ski suit, family show, the bigger your ski suit. in the crotchal region, the bigger an advantage you get because the more fabric you have, the slipper you are through air. So people are trying to increase their body measurements so that they're allowed more surface measurement on the soup. It feels like there are other ways to get a bigger body than by going directly to injecting things into your piece.

I suspect someone just wanted to put lip filler in their wang and they decided to become an Olympic ski jumper. It is a long way around to go. But, you know, it feels like they're jumping to this as the first solution in a possible range of alternate solution. You've ran out of salted dinner. Need to wedge a door open. Quick, inject my penis. The IKEA flat pack is one dowel short.

Someone had hyaluronic acid in my penis. I would never inject filler into myself down there because I would be afraid my penis would lose its expressiveness. I think it should be a roadmap of your life, of your ups and downs, of your, like your laugh lines, your crow's feet. As my granny used to say, your experiences should show on your penis. Nobody wants just an unexpressant pillow penis.

You want something that says, I have been here. I have left my market world. Look at me. lip filler in your penis is I think Connie Francis has followed up to lipstick on your collar didn't sell quite as well

back in the less I've a kind of a technical question here okay right so you get measured for your suit this is the idea it's a ski jumper would strip to the underwear

and they'll have their suits made up based on their measurements including crotch height and that's determined by a 3D body scanner right so I mean you have to do that early in the morning, otherwise you're thrown out of the airport security queue. I assume, right, if, if, if, if, girth is what you're looking for, before the filler incident, would it not be then, how do I say this, would it not be to your advantage for you as, as a male ski jumper,

to be slightly excited when you were originally being fitted for your suit? well I mean there's so many questions that arise from this this story I mean I guess some people Those aren't the only things arising from this story Am I right am I right high five Hive but I mean My concern is that it's just tricky for the coaches are going to be put in difficult situations awkward situations with their their athletes

You know Jeff you're doing really well with the the actual ski jumping aspects of the sport but I'm afraid your wang is not quite doing it for the team right now. And yeah, that's an awkward conversation, isn't it? And just as an athlete, I'm trying to put my mind in the position of these athletes. There must come a point in your sporting career when you start to think, is this getting a bit too serious? Is this getting too far away from the simple love of sport and competition

that I learn to love as a youngster? And I imagine that moment comes when someone, your team doctor is waggling a syringe at you in a vaguely crotch with direction saying, honestly, mate, it's not technically on the band list. It won't hurt that much and it's going to girth you up a treat. This is as much of a win-win situation as you are ever going to get in professional sport. I am 100% a real doctor. I'm wondering what I'm going to be a real doctor. And this is definitely hyaluronic acid. Doesn't matter what my card says, I am definitely a real doctor. To be clear, this claim has been dismissed by the FIS,

as a wild rumor. Oh, don't say that. It has, look, I report the news. It has been dismissed as a wild rumor and now everybody who did inject their penis on the basis of that rumor will just have to deal

with having a lumpy penis that looks like the lips of a lady at a tennis club. The life you've signed up for. It's just the latest controversy to hit ski jumping relating to cheating in this event. The Finnish legend, Pucco, vitamin was disqualified from the World Championships last season.

and after it emerged he had an eagle strapped to his back. The Germany's Habsburg-Krautman-Stuycklapper was denied victory in the prestigious Four Hills competition after hypnotizing the judges after he landed, so they multiplied his distance by 12. And America's invidious Whamperl Jr. was found to be a hologram projected into the arena. This discovered after he landed smoothly in the crowds beyond the landing area with a distance of 320 meters.

So I guess it's a sport that just, you know, those little fine margins make people, go beyond the laws. Well, did you see that one of the winners, by the way, the Winter Olympics throws up the best athlete names. Where else could you watch a man called Mac Forehand and Breezy Johnson

win Olympic medals, or certainly compete, right? Now, Breezy Johnson won an Olympic medal and then it broke. I thought that that was her name, but now I'm beginning to think Breezy Johnson is one of the side effects of having injected. it.

I'm going to ride gas into your way and having too much of a soup. Well, since, what do you mention, Breezy Johnson, she won the women's downhill, which was overshadowed by the injury to Lindsay Vaughn. And this to me is one of the greatest sporting stories.

There was an article from before the Olympics saying Lindsay Vaughn is getting ready for the final act of a lot. an illustrious career. And when I say before the Olympics, I mean before the 2018 Olympics, when she was 33, which is historically a pretty old age for a skier, subsequently she'd retired for five years. She was a 2010 Olympic champion, multiple world champion, one of the greatest athletes of the millennium. She retired for five years, had an artificial knee, basically had a knee replacement, and then came back to

skiing over the age of 40 this season. She's won two World Cup downhill. races and is leading the downhill standings in the World Cup. Then a week before the Olympics had a massive crash and was winched off the mountain in a helicopter with a ruptured ACL, the celebrity knee ligament that you really only ever hear about when it goes wrong. Normally that kind of injury, you think several months, sometimes years out, sometimes in the past career ending. Lindsay Yvonne decided not only to compete in the Olympic Games a week later, but to do

so in the downhill. most absurd, physically demanding and dangerous discipline available when you wang yourself down a mountain at above most national speed limits on a course specifically designed to be particularly grueling on your legs, the well-known limb of which knees are famously a really important part. It was all said to be one of the greatest sporting comebacks of all time, possibly the greatest sporting comeback sort of all time, to win Olympic gold aged 41 after being retired for half a decade with one functioning leg. But sadly, physics have so many have discovered over. over the years is a worthy foe so consistent and von just 12 13 seconds into her her attempt to ruin

people's excuses for not doing stuff all the time well lindsay von won the Olympic downhill at 41 with a nap and knee so you can get out of bed and do your homework she clipped a gate and was thrown off balance and splattered out broke her leg in multiple places she was winched off a mountain in a chopper for the second time in less than a fortnight i'm sure rosska wilde wrote a line about that in one of his winter sports articles when he was a junior hack at the Atlantic. Shattered leg, shattered dream. And instead, it's added to the range of excuses people can use for not doing stuff. Well, we also saw what happened to Lindsay Vaughn when she tried to do something when she wasn't feeling 100%.

But anyway, having given the world one of the... But anyway, so she finished her Olympic career, presumably, having given the world one of the great instances of sporting bravery, a classic in the human staring physics in the face and saying, you don't own me, genre, a magnificently heroic face. to almost certainly conclude a career of staggering success. It was truly, it was one of the most extraordinary things I've watched in sport, I think. Unbelievable. By the way, the article you're thinking of is all of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at our kneecaps.

I think that was the Oscar Wilde quote. She is unbelievable, right? She, like you said, downhill skiing at about 80 miles an hour with a knee replacement from previous surgery and no ACL from 2.0. ACL from two weeks ago rupture. She's basically the only person who's done the Paralympics and the Olympics at the same time in the same event. She's unbelievable, but it turns that you do you need your needs for downhill skiing.

And it shows you what she did and what others have done at the Winter Olympics is that there is a sport in the Winter Olympics that should not be there. Downhill skiing is insane. Luge is in skiing. Double luge is insane. If you haven't seen double luge, if you've seen double luge, the position to get in, if you imagine Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore finished a little bit of crockery

and then just lie directly backwards in ghost and then slide off the side of a mountain that's what double looges is skeleton is insane she does this at 80 miles an hour and gets winched off a mountain in a helicopter and you just and then on the coverage someone says

and now we go live to the curling where one of the handles has fallen off one of the brushes there is a sport that should not be in the winter Olympics and it's not downhill skiing. Afterwards, she said it wasn't a storybook ending or a fairy tale. It was just life.

I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. I tried, I dreamt, I jumped, as Julius Caesar so nearly said. A slight different comment from someone below the line on the Daily Telegraph said, Deluded middle-aged woman thinks her damaged legs are suitable for high-speed skiing. And those show the two sides of humanity

in the internet age, one of the greatest athletes of all time, trying to do something completely unprecedented and frankly ridiculous and a grumpy pseudonymous idiot on the Daily Telegraph website. Well done at humanity. Other exciting sporting event news now, and well it's not just the Winter Olympics that is seeing thrilling races. The nuclear arms race.

could be back on, another blast from the past, a bit of 60s and 70s and nostalgia, could be coming back after the expiry of the New Start Treaty, well, the New Start has reached a new end. We've had five decades of nuclear arms control, making sure we keep humanity safe by only having enough nuclear weapons to eliminate the entire species 50 times over. And this could bring in a new age in which we have enough nukes to wipe everyone out a thousand times over and still have changed for the bus home. So exciting times.

Alice, you are the Bugle's impending nuclear Armageddon correspondent. Exciting times. Yes, yes. I mean, I hope you're enjoying listening to the last episode of the Bugle because the New START treaty expires on Thursday, the treaty between the US and Russia that prevents nuclear proliferation. I am watching all of the documentaries and movies that terrified my parents' generation in order to get to the right.

level of paranoiac under table training my children to flee from nuclear winter. The only hope I can see for us, Andy, and as you know, I try to take a positive slant, even on the most depressing news. The only hope we have is, do you know about jumping fleas? Do you know about fleas? You get a flea and it jumps and then you put a lid on the flea. And at a certain point, you can take the lid off, but the flea has become acclux. to never jumping higher than the lid.

So maybe they've just got used to not proliferating and we can just back slowly away. Set against that is who is in charge of these nuclear arsenals to men who have never seen a bad incentive they didn't want to immediately run towards and smother with kisses. So, you know. Yeah, the fundamental flaw, Alice, I guess, is that fleas are way more intelligent than humans currently on the world rankings.

I mean, this happened amidst what's been described as, well, the end of the rules-based international order in the Trumpic, Putonian era, and the, well, the Sabbath, not ready the end, the, the gangland slaying of the rules-based international order. I mean basically So start is ending at quite an awkward time Imagine if you've trained an orphaned seal From babyhood until it's a full-grown seal And you've prepared it as best you can For life on the outside in nature where it belongs And then the day and place you release it

Just happens to coincide with the Orkastock Festival of Marine Carnivores It's just bad to unlucky timing I would say Unlucky timing And this is really the flea circus problem right? Because you rely on there being the lid there to atrain the fleas, not to jump higher than what they perceive the lid to be. But both Trump and Putin are men who have never seen an empty patch of air they didn't want to headbut. We're in serious trouble. The doomsday timer was set at 85 seconds to midnight in January, which looks pretty bad, especially given the clocks go forward in March.

I think we're all going to die in the 29th March. I think that's how it works. Can I ask a very simple question? I know the treaty is past its expiry day. Why does the treaty have an expiry day? Are we being overly cautious? Can we cut off the bad bits and still use it? Is this best before or is it used by?

All I'm asking is a simple question. I'm not an international statesman. I'm not an international diplomat. but I'm asking you to see, is it cheddar or is it avocado? Which is it? It's unfortunately, because of the technology available at the time, the entire treaty is stored on floppy disks, and so it cannot be upgraded.

What can we not have used the power of human laziness? Has nobody in the Kremlin or the White House heard of auto-renew? Do you think I still won my Disney Plus or Paramount Plus subscription? No. I don't. Just most people would make people unsubscribe from the treaty. That's what you have to do. Make them read slightly more than one page of terms and conditions to even see the unsubscribe from the Star Treaty button. We will be safe for eternity. That's it. That's how you solve this.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I've been trying to cancel a mobile phone subscription from the two months I spent in Australia. And it is proving to be one of the most epic journeys of self-discipline discovery that I've ever been on. Trump rings whoever's in charge of the treaty and they go, due to a high volume of calls, we'll be with you whenever. This call is very important to us. You are number 9,099 on a list and then he gets bored and the treaty just continues. Yeah.

Peace through in online chat. I've solved it. I've solved it. By the way, I have been in a bunker. I made a television show recently and we visited the bunker that the Irish government had in the 1960s and 70s because everybody was terrified of Armageddon in case

those nuclear fallout. And let me tell you, we were not adequately prepared. I could tell you this because you know that the radiation would have gotten into the bunker when you were standing in the deepest, darkest part of the bunker where the government would have been evacuated to and you

still have 5G signal on your mobile phone. America News now. And look, I mean, this is a headline that shouldn't happen in any parallel universe. But President of America posts racist video of predecessor, deletes it after a public outcry and then basically doesn't back down from having posted it. Look, I guess with Trump, there's nothing that's surprising now. You can't really change your opinion.

You can't sink in your estimation. You know, you can't get colder than absolute zero, as physics fans would tell you. But even by Trumpist standards, this was one of the most horrendous, overt and unashamed displays of racism that he's perpetrated. yet. His staff blamed a staffer initially Caroline Levitt, his White House spokesbushitter, described the outrage as

well, confected, I said, fake outrage, or a term along that. I'm not sure it was really fake outrage, given that he had posted a video which had Barrack and Michelle Obama superimposed on the

bodies of apes. I don't think that is fake out. That's one of the most, I I mean, there's a lot of fake outrage. I think it's one of the most genuine bits of outrage there's been for quite a while in America. I mean, is there any way that he can beat this in future? What's the next gambit for Trump in terms of trying to appall America and the world in new and exciting ways? The problem here, or maybe an excuse, may I offer an excuse for Donald Trump here, perhaps to put into context this racist incident.

The stuff that they're doing is so much worse than the stuff that they're saying that they can be forgiven for not expecting people to be upset by the stuff that they're saying. The argument against racist speech or racist stereotypes is that it might lead to dehumanization and then maltreatment of an oppressed group. And I think they've kind of oarept that bound

and are well and truly into the hitting immigrants and just doing racist things rather than thinking or saying racist things. It's definitely, I feel, from the perspective of them being surprised at people's outrage, kind of a closing the barn door off, the horse has not only bolted, but also stolen all your stuff and burned your house down.

I mean, I think it was fairly enlightened the response from the only black Republican senator Tim Scott saying that this is the most racist thing that I've seen coming out of this White House. Not this is very racist. This is the most of all the other racist things that have ever come out of the White House. This is the most racist.

That's how much racist stuff is coming out of the White House. But is it more racist than building warehouses to store brown people in because you don't like the look of them? Like I'm just saying. I mean, that's pretty racist. apparently it originally aired so it was a kind of a mixture

it was the splicing in of Obama the Obama's words at the end of it and the start of it was videos with all sorts of conspiracy theories and they were originally aired at an event chaired by Mike Lindel and he owns

mypillow.com so I have checked this and you can buy pillowcases from my pillow but you do have to cut out the eye holes yourself. Just be aware of that. He thinks of...

He's cast as a lion, isn't he? Donald Trump and this? He's the king of the jungle. I think he thinks of himself like as the lion from the lion the witch in the wardrobe. I'm thinking more Wizard of Oz myself.

I think he's... I don't think it's... I don't think it's a flex he thinks it is. Caroline Levitt, as she said, please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.

I mean, their president being an overt racist might matter to at least some of the American public, I think, and probably quite a lot of bugle listeners in America, and said that it was just a video from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. And even if there hadn't been any overt racism in it, just the fact that the President of America

reposts internet meme videos of himself as a cartoon king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King aside from any copyright issue does that not show that human human civilization has basically reached its end point there is even without the racism this is fucking ridiculous

you can say what you want about Karen and Leva but I mean her trial is going to be grateful Well, that is all from this week's bugle. Thank you very much for listening. We will be back next week with NATO Green and Helen Zaltzman, the quibbling sibling. Do come and see my tour show. The tour fully commences this coming weekend,

all details and ticket links at andesaltzman.com. com.uk. Neil, anything to plug? Yeah, I'm going on tour. I'm a tour at the moment. We added an extra date. in the Lesnarc Theatre, and we're all over the UK and Ireland, and the stand in Glasgow and the stand in Edinburgh,

or sorry, the stand in Newcastle and all over the place. So they're all on nealdelamere.com. Alice. The gargle is back. That's right. The glossy magazine to the Bugles Audio newspaper for a visual world is back by moderately popular demand. But realms unknown is not going away.

So stay, subscribe to both feeds. We are doing alternating weeks going forward. my running theme for this year is doing two things at once. So I'll also be doing my show A Passion for Passion, as well as my new work in progress show, tentatively titled, Oh, Man, which will be in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle, London, and then Edinburgh.

I'm also, if you want to join my writer's meetings, I'm also writing two novels at the same time because I can't decide between them. So feel free to join my writer's meetings over at patreon.com. slash Alice Fraser. Thank you for listening, Buglerers.

If you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep this show free from adverts and any political interference and flourishing for the rest of time, go to wwwprogast.com

and click the donate button.