The Gargle - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ REVIEWS SPECIAL

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

This week's special episode of The Gargle rounds up the very best of the reviews that our guest editors have brought in to the show. 🥴 A classic hangover☀️ The sun🥜 Pistachio nuts👨��� Having a moustache🦆 Cupping a duckling🐦 Pigeons⭐ Reviews💰 Coins in the bra📱 Texts from parents👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Old relatives🔋 Eating batteriesThis episode was produced 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. Hello and welcome to The Gargle, the world's premier topical comedy podcast containing no politics whatsoever. This week's episode also has notably less Alice Fraser. As you'll possibly tell from the sound of my voice, hello, being quite dissimilar to that of hers. But it does have bonus me. I'm Chris Skinner. I'm almost entirely irrelevant to this project, but here I am. Now, as is tradition each week on the podcast, the guests bring in something to review out of five stars. So please enjoy this week's special episode as we round up the very

best reviews so far. And do feel free to rate the reviews out of five stars as you listen along if you're listening in the metaverse. Right, Ped, hit play. As you know, every week we ask co-editors to bring in a review of something and mark it out of five. Tiff Stevenson, what have you brought in to review? Today I am reviewing my hangover. Basically, this episode is being recorded the day after England won the football. And also, last night I won £250 on an online slot machine.

Wow. No jokes. Just. So I had two cocktails last night, a Negroni, followed by a Manhattan which is a lot of liquor um and i i'm in my 40s now i know shock horror don't all like literally like go and fact check this you're like i can't believe it she looks 25 but i am and every hangover in your 40s is sisyphean like it's by the time you've pushed the rock to the top it's time to get drunk again um so so here's here's my review of my hangover uh i went to bed about 2 a.m proceeded to be forcibly shunted around the bed by my complaining partner my snoring sounded like and this is a direct quote bagpipes being trodden on

i woke again at 4 a.m where i proceeded an inventory of every mistake I've ever made, concluding with the fact that I am an awful person. 4.15am I went to the bathroom and had a horrible time. 4.30am back in bed with blood running to my head quicker than it runs to Matt Hancock's penis in an office setting. I proceeded to take two codeine whilst feeling incredibly vulnerable. The cat seemed to sense this, so attacked my feet under the duvet repeatedly.

5am to 10am, sleep before waking to the strains of my alarm, Anthony's song by Billy Joel. To be reminded that working too hard will give you a heart attack. Attack, attack, attack, attack, attack. 10 to 11 a.m., one hour of shame penance followed by nausea. 1130, so happy to be alive, I have reached euphoria stage.

Hangover, a four out of five. Hit nearly all the buttons, but no vomit. That's excellent. Four out of five. That's pretty good. I approve of that as far as hangovers go. Classic, really. Classic of the genre.

Classic hangover. Josh Conneman, what have you brought us in to review for today? So this ties into another story that we're going to touch on, but my review is for The Sun. First of all all love the early stuff the sun um by that i both mean sunrise and warming my face in spite of a gentle breeze nourishing all life on earth with your rays love that but the sun's new stuff i would say arguably too aggressive rising sea levels destroying public transit equipment with heat.

I just feel like they're trying too hard. Go back to your roots. Just kind of dawn, you know, photosynthesis. It's okay to play the hits. I don't want to say anything too cruel, so I will just say one star, which doubles as a negative review and just a description of the sign.

Nato Green, what have you brought us in to review? I'm going to review pistachios. Pistachios, f***ing one star. Pistachios are a bad nut. Wow nut wow obviously in the objective all-time universal rankings of nuts they are in order as follows almonds pecans walnuts macadamia peanuts hazelnuts then pistachios interestingly uh peanut is a kind of a banana thanks for nothing Frazier

shelling pistachios is painful and frustrating but not fun like peanuts which are fun to shell resulting nut tastes like wood with a rancid spray on it pistachio ice cream are bad they're not versatile as a nut I have many cookbooks and cooking magazines.

And because I'm this person, I have a cookbook database site to organize my recipes. And I have 8,390 recipes on my shelf. And I looked it up today just for sake of comparison, I have 470 almond recipes, 264 walnut recipes, 245 peanut recipes, 107 pecan recipes, and only 84 pistachio recipes. They don't do shit. Pistachios are the muscles of nuts. But instead of a beard like muscles have

that you have to peel off, you have to cut your finger by getting them out of their stupid shells. Pistachios, one star. Every week, our guest editors bring in something to review out of five stars. James Colley, what have you brought us in today? This week, I thought I would review having a mustache, which has been a new acquisition of mine,

and one I think it's particularly fun to announce in an audio format because as a listener, didn't it just change your opinion slightly you didn't know that was coming but all those jokes were coming through a mustache you could hear the slight pop filter that was coming from over my lip yeah it's nature's pop filter it was actually also part of the motivation behind getting a mustache because i thought in these modern times what is the most upsetting thing i could reveal while taking off a mask when you take off a mask and reveal a mustache like the ph level in the room changes like everything is just a little bit different there

it's like a drag queen taking off her wig and then there's a smaller wig underneath and you're like yes queen in many ways isn't a mustache really just the original mask you wore underneath your nose exactly it's why the groucho marx mask is the most famous mask it is a mask that comes with a mustache attach. I thought the other reason I really liked it is that you can't be shy when you have a mustache or someone is calling the federal police. They're kicking down your door and they're searching your hard drive.

You have to be forward. You have to be outgoing. It's a real putting an ultimatum on myself. We cannot be shy and hiding anymore. You're out here or else. So I'd say so far, mustache, four stars stars do you know what i would like if i had the ability to wear a mustache is uh the feeling of you know having a soup at 12 o'clock in the day but then getting a gentle reminder of it at 4 p.m in the afternoon when you need that afternoon kick

and you have that that sweet center soup coming in to your mouth you know it's a flavor saver it's a little you know it's a little bento box for uh food particles of course with the beyond blue initiative uh for men's depression uh it's always really nice to see someone who cares about male mental health all year round and it is actually a fun um particularly as it's very new to me it's a fun surprise anytime i go to the bathroom and look at the mirror. I'm like, oh, oh, wow. Yeah, OK, that's still on my head.

Highly recommend Four Stars. Benjamin Partridge, what did you bring in to review? I'm reviewing the experience of cupping a duckling in your hand, which is something that I did this weekend. I'm going to break it down into the classic pros and cons format. So pros, first pro, it's relaxing because you can't focus on anything else apart from not accidentally crushing the duckling. In much the same way that we'd all drive more carefully if we all had a

baby strapped to the front of our cars, holding a duckling at all times would provide a useful solution to the modern cluttered brain. pro is softness these things are mondo soft they're like an almost unbelievable level of soft in fact when you're holding one it takes almost all of your willpower to stop yourself wiping your ass with it um third pro it makes you think about the duck that it will become when it grows up and just how delicious ducks are uh duck for me is definitely a hall of fame meat uh in the cons there aren't many cons to be honest one is that without your glasses on it can look like a discarded tennis ball do not i repeat do not hit it with a racket uh the other is the major con the only one major con it's the same con that applies to all living creatures, man and beast. No matter how cute it looks, it has an anus.

And this mini potential Vesuvius will leave your hand looking like the smouldering remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum, unless you are careful. Don't make the same mistake I did this weekend. So in conclusion, cupping a duckling in your hand is the ultimate metaphor for life. If you grab it with both hands, it can be wonderful and transformative. But you have to make sure you grab the right end.

With a duckling, as with so many things in life, when you hold on to it, make sure the anus is facing the other way. Four stars. Alison Spittel, what have you brought in to review? I've reviewed pigeons this week. And this comes from being in lockdown as well. My bedroom is right next to a balcony. at the start of lockdown my boyfriend got covid and he was away for a couple of months in in another room to be honest with you first month was for safety and then the rest i think

was just him being happy on his own but i but uh i started making friends with these pigeons uh that were on my balcony. I thought I was Snow White. I thought this is a pandemic. The birds are my friends now. I went back to Ireland for two months. The birds betrayed me in the worst way possible. They shat that much on my balcony that my boyfriend's bike is destroyed.

There is acid out of their shit. I always thought if your bird shits on me, it's good luck. But if a thousand birdsits on me it's good luck but like you know if if a thousand birds shit on me very much not good luck very much a a help hazard there pigeons have been really ahead of the game in bringing down statues that they didn't like yes they have where's where's the twitter accounts against the pigeons that's why i want to ask right and also like you said paul had a look at some pigeon eggs with a drone right i've got pigeon eggs on my balcony have you ever seen baby pigeons

they are the ugliest animals i've ever seen in my life they're disgusting they are the embodiment of teenagerdom they come out of the eggs and they look like teenagers and they act like teenagers as well where they just hang around in corners. And the other thing is, I've got my balcony. I've put lots of stuff on my balcony to deter the pigeons. I've got this anti-pigeon tape, pinwheels everywhere. My balcony now looks like if the Teletubbies had made a compound. If they got into drug making and they took precautions, right? My balcony is very whimsical and very, very highly protected against pigeons.

And I am giving them a two star out of five. I liked them at first, but now they're overstaying their welcome. And I don't like them now at all. And also, they kept shagging on my balcony all the time, like really overtly loud. And at the start, I was like, oh, this is great. It's nature and stuff. And then I started assessing why did I think it was great and I remembered I'm a catholic and I was like no I will not hear

Annie Shaggin near I'm ex-catholic I'm very residually catholic I'm that much like I'm that residual of a catholic I don't know what is mental illness and what is residual catholicism like that's the way I am but anyway I think I've talked very passionately about these pigeons uh yeah that's how I feel you know what you need to do to get rid of them what you need um like a fake like a dummy seagull I think I was in Norway the first time I saw a seagull take down a pigeon and it was horrific but uh that will scare them off. I don't know because I've had to get myself a super soaker and I open up the door now and I just, you know, I'm like an action person.

I'm like Arnold Schwarzenegger, except instead of saying something cool before I shoot them, I go, f*** off! Which is my thing. If I was ever in an action film, that's what I would be shouting constantly. Go away! And then I'd shoot my gun into them.

But that's, yeah. So I think my neighbours think that I'm mentally ill because I just keep shouting out at different intervals, f*** off, away from me, all the time. Well, you know, all I've ever wanted was to be a villain in an action movie. So maybe we can arrange this. We really could last words it'll be like the slow motion showdown scene in the church at the end of face off but when the pigeons start flying you freak the f**k out

that would be I'm sorry I'm laughing very hard because I just love that film so much and the memory of that has made me so happy but yeah pigeons are my downfall I hate them so much even the young'uns that's how I feel 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 a cast.com and he's ultimately what have you brought into review uh i've brought reviews in uh to review it is art looking back at itself in a mirror. Exactly. I thought it was appropriate. Reviews are

when all is taken into account a questionable means of reviewing things. Whilst a well-researched and objectively minded reviewer may provide insight and expertise, it remains necessarily a subjective exercise that can be coloured by various forms of prejudice and assumption. In the wrong hands, a review can be actively and sometimes willfully misleading

in its portrayal of its subject and of no use to the reader or consumer. The uncontrolled expansion of reviewing from a few published writers to the entirety of the population of the world has brought greater democracy to reviewing, but also, as is so often the case, at the cost of any meaning and reliability. This is not to suggest that people should ignore all reviews,

but it remains incumbent on the review consumer to take reviews in context and with the knowledge that in this age where everything is reviewed, including reviews, they might be absolutely full of cranky brain shit. Whether they are reviews of a new Hollywood movie, a retrospective

of an acknowledged great artist, a medium-grade hotel or a box of f***ing paperclips. Three stars. Alison Spittel, what have you brought in to review? Because it's a money, it's a cryptocurrency special,

I have decided to review keeping coins in your bra. I am a bra owner and a coin holder as well. And I've decided to combine the two. I've always been a person that has kept stuff in my bra. People have been a bit freaked out by that. But, you know, it's nature's pockets. Like, I do see it as a, you know, a gift.

And the thing I want to review is uh putting coins in your bra if you leave them in for all day and then take it off number one it feels amazing because you take your bra off and all you can hear is coins fall you feel like you've just done really well at a game or something like that you feel like sonic the hedgehog or something i've used the pickup line play your cards right and i pay out like a slot machine yeah do you know what it's nice it's nice to bring the fun of an arcade game you know to the end of the day with a penny drop and what i love as well is that they leave they leave little markings behind so uh sometimes green which freaks me out but apparently uh it's it's the type of metal in the coin but i end up looking

like an inverted mr blobby if i keep too many uh coins on me josh mr blobby was a was a uh children's cartoon no he's not a cartoon it's a real person who used to basically f up shit on kids tv and people used to love it and he's got like dots all over him. And that's my review. I'm going to give it 3.5. He looks like a Japanese mascot for diseased penis treatments. Big time. Yes, big time. I'm picturing him.

The only cons is that it's really kind of frowned upon to pay someone out of your bra straight away. If you go to take coins out of your bra straight away like if you if you go to take coins out of your bra and give it to someone at a garage you know there's no more nice small talk it's it's quite angry at that point it's something about the body temperature that creeps people out i think people have a strong sense of what temperature money should be but my tits are cleaner than my hands like that's what they should. I read that scientific study.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I know where my tits have been. I don't know where my hands have been half the time with what they're judging. I haven't rubbed my tit off the side of a banister, you know, going down a metro or something like that. But I have with my hand. So I think it's cleaner i i genuinely think we need to get over get over get over tits wet and just just get on with our life how many stars uh i'm gonna go for 3.5 i'm just i'm just got the image of me rubbing my tit along

the banister of a busy a busy subway just going you need to get over yourselves guys i'm an anti-masker for tit this is for your own good in my day you know when i was a kid we used to rub our tits off everything and we were fine and josh gullman what did you bring in for us? I came here similarly just to review the concept of coins with no bras involved. So here's what I think about coins overall. It's just a medium of currency. Excellent sound, right?

They make a great sound. Decent to touch. Horrible smell. Worst taste. Funded arcades and casinos. They let magicians and wealthy ducks think they're better than us. Still good for a wish in any fountain, which I appreciate. Although, because of inflation, it now costs several dozen quarters for a wish.

I say two stars. Not great, not terrible. Co terrible coins two stars even when they didn't come out of a bra i find that society really hates when people throw coins they get quite like oh my god he threw a coin very disrespectful yeah treating people like they're fountains or something like that you know that's That's what it is. You're like, what do you think, I'm a fountain? Yes. It feels like something Joe Pesci would get mad about in a movie. Like, what are you throwing the coins for?

You think he's a fountain? Make a wish, buddy. Bang, bang, bang. What do you mean I look like a fountain to you? I look like I'm in the middle of a mall. Children are gathered around me. I'm spitting water out of my mouth listen that's such a good point anytime you picture someone throwing change you just picture like the the villain in a children's movie like keep the change

just like whipping 11 cents at somebody. They're quite hard. They're very hard. But hold on. Throwing change, disrespectful. Peeling off dollar bills, throwing them in the air, celebratory. Now we're at a strip club. It's Drake's birthday. Oh, could you imagine being a stripper and people were paying you for coins?

I'd be like, no. Get notes. get notes. That shit bruises, you know? Well, see, in Australia, the smallest note we have is the $5 note. And all of our ones and twos are coins. So strip clubs are a lot more dangerous. What do people do at strip clubs? I think they give decent tips.

Honestly, I think we've got to consider that. Just start making bills, start higher. And then it's just like, yeah. Then when you're like, oh, here, just keep the change. You're like, wow, $100? You just bought a Snickers bar. James Nukise, what have you brought in for us? Well, due to being still stuck in a different country to my parents,

I've brought in, for family theme, text messages between me and my parents. So very quickly, Mum, on Friday, really loved your latest newspaper article. Thanks, Mum. Thought you'd enjoy it. Shall we have a bit of a catch-up later? I'm just watching the news in Melbourne. Looks a bit funny. It is. Let's do that. Maybe after dinner? Sounds good. All right. Talk to you then. I give it a four out of five. She could have been funnier. She is my mom. Dad, son, can you send through the thing you mentioned in your last call? Sure, dad. What's your email address it is the one you have okay dad i don't think you've

emailed me from it i might have for your birthday i didn't love you so i'm going to give that a four as well because that's that's pretty good for my dad that's good comedy bad parenting i think that exchange i didn't email you for your birthday. It's the best birthday present of all. I don't know if you guys have encountered this. He has a PhD. He is very intelligent. He's a gifted orator. He is useless at the written life. It's amazing to me how he can write thesis and check thesis and be so bad in texting and emails. Andy Zaltzman, what have you brought in to review? Well, I've got some of my old relatives that I've reviewed. Great Uncle Herbert never really found true happiness,

personally in a joyless marriage or professionally in a career in car park management. Herbert allowed a sense of generational bitterness to fuse with his personal lack of fulfilment, creating a distant, intermittently resentful elderly relative whom children beg not to sit next to at Christmas, despite his oft-repeated claim that he once ran over a corgi dog that he thinks might have belonged to the Queen. Two stars. Great-Aunt Grenivieve,

a frightfully tedious obsession with minor medical ailments, could be leavened by entertaining outbursts of irascibility about unwanted insects and underbrewed tea. An obsessional stickler for the rules when playing board games, Great-Aunt Grenivieve lacked even a rudimentary humanity when dealing with anyone under the age of 40, frequently finishing conversations with the words, well, you wouldn't have been allowed to cry about something like this in the war,

young lady stroke gentleman. Unverifiable rumours about a wartime incident with an American GI and the wreckage of a crashed Messerschmitt added to her otherwise minimal mystique. She would blush crimson whenever a war film was on. Enough said. Two stars as well. And Ian, second cousin once removed, aged seven, soul-breakingly irritating.

A one-child argument in favour of Armageddon. So those are my reviews of my clearly fictional relatives. Alison, what have you brought in for us? I've decided to review putting batteries in your mouth. Yeah! All right! Yes!

It was a childhood pastime of mine. I stopped doing it. Pastime implies almost a schedule. It would have been, Alice. It would have been. I just really liked the feeling of batteries in my mouth when I was younger.

And I used to like rolling them around the back of my gums. And then I forgot once I had a battery in my mouth and just chewed. And a lot of acid went into my mouth and I spat it out. And that was the last time since I had a battery in my mouth and just chewed and a lot of acid went into my mouth and I spat

it out and uh that that was the last the last time since I was a child that I put batteries in my mouth but um in preparation for this podcast I realized five minutes before the podcast I hadn't thought of anything to review and I saw a battery on the table popped popped it in my mouth and thought I would describe the feeling for you now. Please, please. Please do. I mean, you could have just remembered. But go right ahead. I know.

No, you need the short, sharp energy burst that only comes from having a battery in your mouth. Exactly. I was like, I'm not going to let down Alice. No, you need the short, sharp energy burst that only comes from having a battery in your mouth. I was like, I'm not going to let down Alice. I'm not going to go in half-arsed. Like, I am so... This is like a romantic gesture in one of those rom-com films where the guy just does something that the lady really didn't ask for.

Definitely. And yet, you've won my heart. rom-com films where the guy just does something that the lady really didn't ask for definitely you've won my heart opens the back of the boom box takes a d battery out john cusack chews on it while his face just stays still um yeah this is my version of running through an airport for you the raiders of the lost ark meets john cusack that we've all wanted the face melting so the first feeling of putting the battery in my mouth nostalgia i felt eight years old again like i took it out the back of a furby with my lifeless furby looking at me while i eat it's life force that's what i said then uh i remembered since being being an adult, I have fillings, right, that I didn't have when I was a child.

And what can only be described as a massive shooting pain going around the top of my head. I mean, talk about a comedy circuit. I know. And as I went to spit it out, my tongue hit the back of the battery I mean, talk about a comedy circuit. I know. And as I went to spit it out, my tongue hit the back of the battery where the power goes in, and a little buzz hit me,

and I spat it out, and I said to myself, I must never tell anyone about this. But then I remembered I did it for a review. So I am telling you. So all in all, I'm giving it three out of five. Three out of five uh three out of five

uh five for nostalgia but minus two for pain and uh danger so that's my that's my review oh i mean allison spittle that leads us on to our next section which is our science section uh your self-experimentation has gone celebrated and applauded. Let it not be lost to the tides of history. If I don't see some fan art depicting you licking a battery, I will be deeply disappointed in our audience. If the audience wants to know it's a double A, just for scale, if they want to do that, they can.

Well, there we go. Some absolute 10 out of 10 reviews out of five stars there. We'll be back next week with something or other, something or other, or something or other, as we hurtle gently towards Alice's return. This has been an Alice Fraser and Bugle Podcasts production. The producer is Ped Hunter. The executive producer is Chris Skinner.

Oh my God, he is so great. Until the next time, goodbye. 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.