The Gargle - Fight Club | Roomba | M&Ms

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Sarah Keyworth and Tom Neenan join host Alice Fraser for episode 46 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast - with no politics!🥊 China censors Fight Club 🚘 Lamborghini space NFT 🤖 Robot vacuum escapes Travelodge⭐ Reviews🍫 Sexy chocolate slavery💀 Dead man taken to Post Office for pensionProduced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels

or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.

Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. to the gargle the glossy fun day sunshine fun shine companion to the bugle all of the news none of the politics with your host alice fraser the woman says but doctor i am alice fraser and you're listening to the gargle the glossy lifestyle lift out supplement to the bugle all of the news none of the politics your guest hosts for today are tom neenan and sarah keyworth hello hello please get a new doctor are you ready ready to edit this magazine with me? Yes, I am. I've never edited anything before. I'm being too polite and I'm waiting for Tom to speak first.

And then there's just an awkward pause. Because we're both doing that thing, like when you stand either side of a door and you're like, no, no, no, please, you, you. And then, yeah. So it's going to be a fun one. But I'll hold back like half the time if that's helpful. Okay, I'll hold back all of the time. What about neither of you hold back?

Neither of you hold back, both go through the door. The audio gate is wide enough for both of you. You've invited two of the most polite British boys you could possibly find. Nobody's going to say a word in this podcast. We're going to sit there enjoying it. It's all going to be... I think it's called a gaggle of Hugh Grant's. Good, possibly.

A cardigan of Colin Firth's. Before we plunge into the body of the magazine, let's first have a look at the front cover. Today's front cover is a photograph of an elbow with the headline Remember when these were erotic? The full feature on page 42 is just the word no in enormous letters. Today's political cartoon originally appeared in The Hull Echo, not a paper from the British town of Hull,

just an online forum devoted to perverts who climb into shipwrecks and lust for the screams of the drowned. The political cartoon this week is of two Italian men. You can tell they're Italian because a dash and a ah have been put at the end of every word they're saying. And they're standing in front of two cars parked next to each other. One car is labeled UK government lockdown parties. The other says Russian troops on Ukrainian border.

The tire on one of the cars has no air in it. So one of the Italian men is saying, hey, this satire is a flat. The fact that they're Italian has nothing to do with anything other than making the satire pun work and the entire thing seems to be a cry for help that is the satirical cartoon for this week now it's time for your top story segment of this week's magazine and it's a film segment our magazine as always is very cultured and this therefore is about Fight Club. Sarah Keyworth, you're a good boy. Can you explain this story about Fight Club? I will explain the story because you've asked me to but I think we all know that we

shouldn't really be talking about this. Not because that's not a joke from the film, that's a joke from this story which is about how China has censored Fight Club. Just to clarify, you're not quoting the film's rules here. You're quoting the actual body of this story. I'm quoting both. I'm quoting both. This is a very meta joke. This is two things at the same time.

This is a censorship joke and a Fight Club joke at the same time, and they're just making out. Are you suggesting they're the same joke? They are the same. It's the same thing. This is why this whole thing is so ridiculous, is that China have essentially said the first rule of Fight Club is that you're not allowed to talk about Fight Club.

But you can watch most of Fight Club. You can watch almost all of it apart from the end. They've altered the ending so that if you stream it in China, rather than the original ending um and then i'm going to say here spoiler alert and then pause so that if anybody wants to skip this though if you haven't seen fight club what have you been doing are you a toddler how are you listening to a podcast so the original ending in which tyler's plan to take down modern civilization beginning you see it starting uh instead it cuts to a black screen

with text that reads uh through the clue provided by tyler the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals successfully preventing the bomb from exploding this is my favorite bit coming up after the trial tyler was sent to a lunatic asylum receiving psychiatric treatment he was discharged from hospital in 2012. That's my favourite detail of the whole thing, as if people in China are like, hold on a minute, is he still there? This is completely absurd in every single way, but I also kind of love it because it's just the most nonsensical,

like surely it would have been less offensive to just ban the whole film to just be like you can't watch this it's too much for you also having said that and having had a go at people who might be upset about spoilers i've never seen fight club that's the big twist here that is a twist i've never seen it i also you've not seen it ever seen yeah it's a such a cult classic and it is so beloved of young men who clearly don't realise that it's satire, that I have written probably in the realm of tens of jokes about Fight Club and I have never seen it. But this is the thing, like I've made assumptions

about what Fight Club is about so much that I've been like, I don't think I need to see that. I've now read loads about Fight Club and I'm like, maybe this is more interesting than I thought. the way on my screen now it just says Alice and Sarah ended the zoom call and went to and went to watch Fight Club they were released in 2012 yeah I had one reference point in my head so now I think the whole thing sounds completely bonkers I've recently found out that the character of Tyler is imaginary. So it seems like the Chinese authorities

also haven't seen Fight Club. So what they could have just written is Tyler was awoken by a prince with true love's kiss and they all lived happily ever after. Have you seen Fight Club, Tom? I have seen Fight Club. I used to do poetry when I did live stuff and my first joke was a little limerick that went, the first rule of Fight Club Tom? I have seen Fight Club I used to do poetry when I did uh sort of did live stuff and my first joke was a little limerick that went uh the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk

about Fight Club Fight Club Fight Club Fight Club Fight Club oh no I'm banned from Fight Club it was always a winner but um I have seen it because I was sort of a I was around the age that when it was released I thought it was so cool. And then you sort of just realised that a bit of jaded nihilism and some violence is basically what every boy thought was cool around that time. But yeah, I want to watch, I want to live in a world where China

do that to all the films. Like I'm pretty sure if you watch Up in China, it is three minutes long and about a couple who are trying for a baby. And yeah, I think that sounds very nice to nice dude basically what China does to films is like that bit at the end of Muppets Christmas Carol where Gonzo says uh tiny Tim who did not die and I'm like I quite like that I like the fact that they they put a positive spin on it but um but yeah I I'm I have seen it and I concur with you guys.

I think it's fine. Yeah, I wasn't that bowled over. It's not the only other film that has been redacted like this by the Chinese government. Other great redactedness highlights include the five minute version of The Wizard of Oz,

where Dorothy is arrested for dangerous driving right up the house lands on the Wicked Witch. And Squid Game, which shows a bunch of kids playing a Korean children's game, then cuts to a caption saying,

that's all it is, what was all the fuss about? No further questions. I think the best thing to come out of this was that Sarah made a censorship joke within a Fight Club joke and thus made it also an Inception joke. So that is mind-blowing. More mind-blowing than The Twist.

That's the smartest thing I've ever done without really realising I'm doing it about a film that I've never seen. So good. And making it about another film that I've never seen. All I've learnt from this is that I need to watch more films. Definitely. Although you've had a few spoiled for you now.

I'll chuck in one more spoiler. It turns out that Bruce Willis is dead at the end of Armageddon. Sorry to spoil that for everyone. I like the idea of a governing body just putting at the end of every single film, regardless of what it is, just a little flash up that says,

the government won, don't ask how. You don't need to know. Their version of V for Vendetta is very strange. Your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. Are you tired of people agreeing with you? Do you feel left out in conversation? Do you have a deep need to feel clever? Try Devil's Advocate, the contraceptive for your entire personality. And if you've accomplished something in your life, try moving back in with your parents. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by moving back in

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is brought to you by the end of the universe if it ends with a bang and nobody's whimpering i'm just gonna say sorry you're bad at banging and sometimes when i'm out at a bar i'll encounter people playing devil's advocate on their phone instead of engaging with the people whose faces are literally right there in front of me. And that's when I reach for half a glass of water, half a glass of water. It's literally a measured response. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.

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Everywhere. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Now it's time for your NFTs section, our classic NFTs segment. Not as always in this magazine, but uh something's part of the zeitgeist and nfts return and return and return until they become almost entirely worthless except for our continuing uh to impress people with the idea that they are worth a lot rev up your cynicism lamborghini has entered the world of nfts uh tom neenan you look like you're wearing a wealthy jumper uh tell us about this story my jumper is wealthy i am not yeah thank goodness the the people's the people's car manufacturers lamborghini

into the world of nfts basically what they're offering is a thing called a space key which from what i understand it is a piece of carbon or something which is sort of frozen in a big block and um on that uh no that has been to space so well done if you've bought that you've bought something which has been to space like all debris um and that has on the back of it a barcode and if you scan that barcode it takes you to a special artist's work that's sort of space themed as well so um so I think that's well worth the money. I'm excited because I actually, I have a Lamborghini. I don't have a Lamborghini. I have a sort of a link to an online receipt for a picture of a Lamborghini. I don't have that. I just, basically, I don't, I don't get this story.

NFTs are a bit like hedge funds, like rich people have them. And I literally don't understand what they are. By all means, if you have the money money you can buy a piece of carbon which has been to space with a qr code on the side or just a big neon sign that says i've got too much money please help me what i don't nfts a lot of them are like a lot of them are monkeys aren't they i saw paris hilton and jimmy fallon monkeys which picks up which is why don't just get a monkey like it's a talking point there's strong butler potential and also when you buy a monkey you get a monkey whereas when you get an nft you buy a an online receipt on a database of an image that you sort of own yes you own the link to a particular copy of a terrible jpeg and the whole thing about these nfts is that they are not always but

way too often they're an extremely openly obvious ponzi scheme that's being run by people with the aesthetic sense of a fungal toenail and the morals of the fungus itself i like this story because unlike most uh nfts and in fact in opposition to the very idea of NFTs, you get a physical object with this NFT, which is nice. And also the idea that it's been to space. I don't want to burst this bubble, and I'm not talking about the NFT bubble, but everything has been in space. We are all in space.

Earth is in space. Yes. We're all in space right now. It's not special. Yeah. It took me a long time to get my head around what on earth this is uh i've come to the conclusion i'd rather have a car good choice very good choice i'm so confused by the whole thing so lamborghini have sent this this

bit of carbon fiber up into space and then it's got a qr code on it and then they're selling it off as an nft which proves ownership of an exclusive bit of artwork which i think is probably the biggest you in history to people living in poverty this is the most pointless thing i've heard anybody do also surely i know you're saying that everything is in space and it's not impressive that it's been in space. I think the thing that's been in space is cooler than a drawing from someone you don't even know. This makes no sense. It's like hiding your child's artwork under a pile of diamonds.

This reminds me, and I've just remembered this, when my brother, my twin brother brother whom i love very much convinced me to buy him a bunch and i mean a bunch and i mean like half of my savings worth of magic the gathering cards because they would quote unquote accrue value uh and then promptly forgot about them for 15 years uh until uh you know which was fine i had also forgotten about them. But then he encountered a young person who was into Magic the Gathering and then just gave him all the cards. And I was like, okay, fine.

But that was like my life savings. There's no joke here. I'm just really angry about it. My brother did a similar thing once where he convinced me to put two marbles in each of my cheeks because he thought this would have humor value. And then he took both his hands and slapped both my cheeks and I lost teeth. So maybe the moral of this is that brothers are trash and nothing is real. How many teeth and how much are they worth and can we buy them?

Two baby teeth. My favourite thing about this whole story is that no matter what happens and no matter how ridiculous, inexpensive things get, you can't escape a QR code. Nothing trumps a QR code. Now in an inevitable chain of association in my brain, I've remembered another family story which is maybe too revealing but my grandmother uh had all of her children's baby teeth set in a gold charm bracelet uh all of her three children's baby teeth set in the same

jingle jangly horror show of a real gold brace real gold yep real gold bracelet that's really tricky isn't it a lot of teeth that's really tricky isn't it because like somebody sometime will come to buy that and be like it is real gold but it is also full of children's teeth so how much do i want the gold and how little do i want the teeth it does save you biting the gold to see if it's real i guess it's kind of analogous to this because it's something which is undeniably valuable yet you can't shake the feeling it's quite creepy at the same time like that's the same as his lamborghini nft in a way god that's yeah what the best outcome for this whole thing is that you scan the qr code on this bit of space fiber like carbon fiber and uh then you immediately get sent your grandmother's gold teeth necklace.

That's all the time we have for our NFT news because now it's more tech news, a tech uprising. Fans of Terminator will be delighted to know that Judgment Day has arrived but the machines aren't turning on humans, they're trying to get away from us. A Roomba has escaped from a travel lodge. It's broken free of its cut-price hotel prison and gone on a very British rampage. Sarah Keyworth, you're very clean-looking.

That's a lie. Would you like to unpack this story for us? So this is a robot that is a robot hoover that failed to recognize the boundary of the door of a travel lodge in cambridge left the hotel and was found later on uh under a hedge uh the thing that upsets me most about this story is that everybody quoted in the article is talking about the robot like it's a like it's a it's a sort of sentient being that went on an adventure sort of talking about it like it deliberately dawned out of the

door uh when in reality this to me sounds like a it's a manufacturing issue it's a that's a broken hoover this is what these these people want you to think they want you to think that it's not their fault. The robot just decided to leave. But in actuality, the sensors are broken and you deserve your money back. Yes, social media was cheering the little rug muncher along. It was delighted when it escaped into the real world. It was absolute absence of natural predators, though eventually I assume it would starve to death for lack of electricity. So that's a sad story if you've interviewed this non-sentient object with sentience and life. Tom, do you have a Roomba? I don't. No, I got sorry. I got very

confused because I think I read the Chinese version of this story, which just said that the Roomba left the hotel and was immediately arrested. It was released in 2012 no uh yeah i don't have a room but because i i am genuinely quite scared of them something knowing the internet's my house better than i do i'll be honest uh so so yeah i think it's terrifying what you've never sucked dust out of the corner of your room with your mouth i don't know that intimately you see and that's what's scared now i think we're fine at the minute. I think it's just when the Roomba and the trouser press start collaborating that we should actually start worrying.

It's just that, you know, some machines are cleverer than others. And this one, obviously, it went to Cambridge, so that's good. And so, you know, obviously it's going to have a head start on the others. But no, I think it's exciting. It's like a little rookie cop who just wanted to get out there and clean up the streets and i respect that i don't know it was found under a hedge so i assume it was just waiting to suck someone off yeah it's uh it's life in the city went downhill very quickly i've got to get some electricity somehow i was to say this is the worst gritty reboot of E.T.

E.T. Clean Home. But now you've made it dirty, so I'm going to retract that line. I also just think that it's worth saying for anybody outside of the UK, it is a real measure of how nice Cambridge is that this is headline news. Stay in your homes. There is a Hoover on the loose. Most people who live in Cambridge never actually see the Hoovers that clean their houses. Well, that's all the time we have for our tech uprising news, because now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week,

our guest editors bring in something to review out of five stars. Tom Neenan, what have you brought in for us to review today? My own current, I would like to review the daily online word game Wordle. If you, like everyone else who's sort of on the internet has been enjoying Wordle, then this is my review for you. At first, I was sceptical about Wordle. I gave it zero stars. Then I saw a few people posting about it. I started to enjoy it so I gave it two stars but those two stars were in the wrong place so then I had to find sort of another place to put those stars and add some new stars in and I started getting into it so then I gave it uh four stars and by that point I thought it's fairly obvious what the word's going to be and so finally i'm gonna uh end up giving it five stars for

wordle and the word is stars five stars stars for wordle thank you very nice tom neiman this is this is our week for like recursive jokes that show off the cleverness of the joke teller without necessarily being um as hilarious as we think are. Much in the way of posting your word or score is satisfying only to you. You might induce at best jealousy, at worst contempt. Sarah Keyworth, what have you brought in to review? Today I will be reviewing the star rating system. So the star rating system is a classic system of rating usually used for creative endeavors performances films albums it's essentially a camped up version of give it a number out of

five because creative professionals hate numbers but love shiny shiny stars the premise of the system seems like it would work with five stars being the best and one star being the worst but recent critics have butchered the form of late by awarding half stars, which completely undermines the concept. There's no such thing as a half star. It's just a smaller star. The closest thing we could actually get to a half star would be a fragment of a star as it explodes in its moments of death. And so when someone gives a show a three and a half star review, what you're actually saying, it's three stars with a bit of a star corpse.

Even more upsetting is that some publications have moved into a 10 star rating system, which means the whole thing is a sham. For instance, a film called Jonah, a Veggie Tales movie, which is about singing vegetables that encounter some car trouble and get stranded at an old run-down seafood joint, has had six and a half stars, which is actually two and a bit stars higher than my 2019 Edinburgh show.

Overall, I give the star rating system the number two out of the number five. That's all the time we have for our reviews section. I think that might have been our best reviews section since Alison Spittel reviewed Chewing on Batteries. Now it's time for your sexy chocolate slavery section. In light of recent accusations slash court cases about child slavery, M&M's has diverted people's attention

to the culture wars by rebranding their sexy M&M characters to be non-gender specific M&M characters, specifically the green M&M lady now is a green M&M person who wears sneakers instead of high heels. Sarah Keyworth, how do you feel about that? I think this whole thing is is so amazing essentially what's happened is for years and years the green M&M has lived I'm using the pronoun her because I think that is as how she she has previously identified I don't think the green M&M has has vocalized any actual desire to change her pronouns, but they sort of been changed for her. And it would be nice to actually get her point of view

on this, but she essentially, she wore go-go boots, big high heels, and she was very free with her sexuality. And Miles Wrigley, the company who make M&Ms have decided to rebrand to make her less sexy because they presumably thought that this was offensive to women who are made of chocolate with a green casing of sugar around them. I mean, the real question is whether she identifies as being a product of child slavery. This is true. This is true, actually, of whether or not she'd like to keep the go-go boots as they are sort of a lasting memory

of the childhood she was robbed from. I think the whole thing is very misguided because it sort of suggests that it's feminist to put all of the women who like wearing heels and sneakers so that they stop being filthy, filthy sluts, as opposed to just celebrating the green M&M for the filthy, filthy slut that she is. It's a depressing trend history because people forget that like frosties you know tony the tiger on the packet used to have a huge penis and he used to shout they're horny that was what he used to and then obviously snap crackle and rename themselves retired didn't he really yeah and they had to get pop in exactly too long at the game and he was like no

gotta gotta tap out here yeah and um obviously colonel sanders just used to have the middle name shag shag colonel shag sanders and i miss him i miss him for that so yeah no i think it's just a shame you know it's just a shame that more and more food mascots are losing their sex but i'm worried next that they're going to come for the caramel the cabri's caramel bunny which obviously is the sexiest of all the mascots voiced by miriam arglies obviously and uh i don't know if you had that in uh in australia but over here a lot of a lot of people had their sort of first first uh intimate rumblings to um a rabbit trying to sell them chocolate yeah but there was a real sort of spate of people trying to rabbits after it so this is why they're this is why they're changing the legislation on sexy junk food brands in hindsight take it too seriously and yeah it's probably a wise thing

actually yeah here it was caramella koala and yes he did have a creamy caramello voice but also just as a general um public service announcement to all the listeners of this audio magazine chocolate and sex is not as sexy as it tries to make itself sound it's a recipe for a yeast infection is what it is yeah chocolate and sex it is like combining two things that are good does not make something doubly good you know like getting drunk at a swimming pool you know it's two fun things but together it doesn't make for any any fun at all so there was a science here like everyone was going after this we're all going to go and get drunk at a swimming pool and then we're going to cover ourselves in

chocolate and have sex yeah fair enough i disagree with i've never been more offended on a podcast in my life and also what's the problem with yeast infections leave yeast infections alive finally someone's speaking up for them the new m&m mascot is a yeast infection also another psa from the magazine don't leave yeast infections alone do treat them as soon as possible, treat them with kindness. Now it's time for your death section, death and fraud. If you were going to commit a crime and you had to enact the plot of a popular old comedy, you could probably do better than what two would-be fraudsters in Ireland did this week,

which was go for a mostly live-action remake of Weekend at Bernie's. I say mostly live-action because Weekend at Bernie's is famously the movie about taking a dead guy and using him as a puppet to fool people into thinking he's alive. But in that movie, the person was actually alive and not actually dead, as in this instance. Tom Neenan, can you unpack this story for us? I'll unpack it and then I will scarper when I get found out

that I shouldn't have been doing that. Yes, it's in Ireland, right? That's where we're headed for this story. What an exciting time because, yes, so apparently this guy, you're giving this to me because I now have to struggle with some beautiful, I'm sure, Irish names that don't always match up to how they're spelt in terms of pronunciation. So it's Declan Horny, is that correct?

Yeah, he used to be the brand mascot for uh rollers so let's go with that let's go with declan horny i mean you've got to forgive him for a crime every time he's applied for a job in the past people have rejected him for assuming it was a prank call exactly and he's there shouting at them, I'm horny, horny, horny, horny. It's a very popular track in the UK. Anyway, he took an older man who called, now this is Pader Doyle, is it Pader? Which sounds a bit like in Family Guy, you know, whenever Lois is like,

oh, Pader! I don't know that's how it's pronounced. Anyway, on a five minute walk to the post office, and according to him, and I have seen no reason not to believe him the man he was carrying passed away on on the way there and then when he tried to withdraw his uh his pension um was it was discovered that the man in fact was deceased and then he um he ran away apparently he had been dragged he started dragging his heels which i think is an understatement on the way to the post office and then he sort of went very limp when they tried to when they tried to get out he said um apparently people that the person who was serving at the

post office sort of suspected that something was off uh probably from the smell but it turned out that yeah that this this this heist uh that happened uh that they took you know they think was foul play was was by trying to animate the corpse of a man who was already dead. I like this story, I think it's quite heartwarming. You worry, like, oh, will people remember me after I'm dead? And it's like

not only did they remember him, they took him out for a walk and tried to get his money, and I think that's lovely, and I'd like to hear anyone argue otherwise I you know I agree with you I also love this story I think it's great I think it's fantastic I think it's the most Irish story I've ever heard in my life it absolutely reeks of why waste a good pension you know because I read that one of the guys went to the post office asked for the pension

and they were like listen we can't give it to you unless the pensioner is here and to be fair to him they didn't specify the pensioner must be here and alive so he following their rules that they made went and got the pensioner and then suddenly he's doing something wrong it's absolutely ridiculous i also love there's a quote from a woman who lives beside the post office uh and she said that her daughter saw the two men carrying the deceased man into the building and she's quoted as saying she was leaving my house at the time and said the man looked unwell as his feet were dragging along the ground that's the most polite way of putting it isn't it she's just like he did look he did look a bit peaky i

wouldn't like to say that he looks dead he he just looked he looked a bit unwell i don't want to read i mean dead is too far yeah yeah yeah that's the that's the kind of uh that's the kind of compliment you get when you put on weight and uh girl from an all-girls high school says, you look healthy. You look so healthy. Gosh. Yeah. It's a wonderful story.

It's fantastic. Yeah. It's fantastic. It's about, you know, it's being inventive. It's giving someone like one, yeah, one final outing as well. Can I also just say, you know, it's not polite to assume somebody is pregnant, right? It's not polite to sort of assume they're pregnant if they seem to have put on weight, particularly if they seem to have put on weight around the middle.

But if you are eight and a half months pregnant or in my case, nine and a half months pregnant and somebody meets you who hasn't seen you for a little while and they assume that you're not pregnant, that is equally insulting yeah that is i thought you were going to say it's really rude to assume someone's pregnant and i can see here that it's also really rude to assume someone's dead so yeah just maintain eye contact um even if their eyes are slowly drying out wait for them to tell you that they're dead. Definitely. They have to proffer that information.

It can't be something you bring to the table. It's just etiquette. It's just that, you know, these people need to learn. Just because they're not drinking at a party or breathing or talking. I want to know what the rest of his day was. Did he, like, go to a fun fair? They left him at the post office.

So presumably he was just sorted into a parcel and sent off to the nearest town next day delivery to heaven i like that they're also launching an investigation as if there's any sort of more to it to be found i can tell you that it was the two men that brought him in yeah i mean and also given that it's Ireland, the land where people like to tell stories, it's less of an investigation and more of a, I imagine, a comedy festival. Everyone coming in and doing their one hour of bits

on this particular instance of horrifying social security malfeasance. And that's all the time we have for this show right now. Let's flip through the ads at the end of the magazine. Here we have an ad for shooting yourself into space. It's just a picture of a person strapped to a rocket and the byline reads, Did you fart so loud in a Zoom meeting that the speaker view highlight switched to your screen?

So that's firing yourself into space. You fart so loud in a Zoom meeting that the speaker view highlight switched to your screen, question mark. So that's firing yourself into space. Sarah, have you got anything to plug? Yes, I do. I'm doing various work-in-progress shows in the UK, unfortunately, this year. I'd like to go further afield, but I'm actually just a really good person and I'm not risking it yet. So f*** you all. But if you just follow me on social media then I will post about where I'm going to be doing shows thank you very much and I'd like to thank

our roving reporters Amir who sent in the Fight Club story Gadget Gab who sent in the Lamborghini story Bella Hahn and Amy Drawn's portraits who sent in the robot vacuum story and John Penny who sent in the weekend at Bernie's story that who sent in the Weekend at Bernie's story. That is delightful. If you would like to be a roving reporter tweet us at HelloGogglers on Twitter and one of your stories may make it to this illustrious publication. Tom Neenan, have you got anything to plug?

I'd just like to plug myself. Sounds odd. But just please follow me on social media at TNN on Twitter. I've got some things that are coming out in the future, but they're too far in the future for anyone to remember. So just follow me on that and then I'll remind you closer to the time.

Find me online at alliterative on Twitter and Instagram. That's A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E. Or support me on my Patreon, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts and blogs, as well as my weekly Tea with Alice salons, where we all just get in a Zoom room and have a chat. I will be doing shows in Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne this year and then in Edinburgh, so look for tickets for that. This is a Bugle podcast, an Alice Fraser production.

Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programmes from The Bugle, including The Bugle, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.