The Gargle - Sex toy shoes | Banana art | No anus

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

John-Luke Roberts and debutant Alex Kealy join host Alice Fraser at the Edinburgh Festival for another live in-person recording of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle - with no politics!🙈 Monkeys using shoes as sex toys Banana-taped-to-wall art All mouth and no anus creature 91-year-old Eagle Scout ReviewsProduced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Everywhere. Acast.com This is a podcast from The Bugle. to the naked eye as a ragged man on horseback. His lathered steed has the rangy lines of a courier's mount. You order the drawbridge lowered. Your men hastily obey. The man and his beast clatter to a halt in the courtyard and he dismounts, falling to one knee, presenting a scroll. What news, man?

My liege, he pants. This is the gargle. The Sonic Glossy magazine to the Bugle's audio newspaper visual world. I am your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Alex Keeley and John Luke Roberts. Let's jump into the top stories this week. Our top, top story this week is recycling news.

This is the news that monkeys are using shoes as sex toys. That's a real thing. This is part of a series of stories that people keep sending us of things that monkeys use as sex toys. And eventually I've just folded because I don't want people to keep sending me these stories. Apparently they use rocks as sex toys. Apparently they use, I assume, other smaller animals that can't get away.

I don't know. But there are male and female macaques in a temple in bali who are pretty rampantly horny alex keely this is your first gargle can you unpack this story for us pretty worried why you said alex keely before um i i i mean the thing that i really enjoyed with it is what there's one sentence where it just said unlike our own species um masturbation uh rarely leads to actual ejaculation for other male animals, which is such a boastful thing. Like a really pathetic other skills thing on the Humanities CV.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. We come everywhere at anything, so much the bible tells us not to so yeah scientists have been watching monkeys masturbate like scientists do yeah they've been they're well-fed monkeys and what do you do for a job um me no you're a monkey i thought you were you were trying to draw a light like no no no similar to scientists in watching monkeys. No, no. Comedians are the masturbating monkeys.

We are, yes. We're the masturbators ourselves. Reviewers are the scientists in this instance. Yes. Watching the monkeys masturbate. That's a great name for a memoir. Watching the Monkeys Masturbate by Brian Logan. They use rocks and cheese.

Red like a three. Because they're provided with food That means that they don't need to find food And they can spend more time on their hobbies And if masturbation isn't a hobby Then what is it? You're true You don't get paid for it

I don't get paid for it I mean yeah You'd have to get on OnlyFans And monkeys can't use tools that well With the fingerprint lock screen. They described it as tool-assisted masturbation. I like the idea of that, just whacking it with a hammer, seeing what happens.

I mean, this is the problem. As a tool-using species, we now have a real insight into our own past. It's like, oh, we used tools first to make fire or to carry... No, we didn't. That is not oh we use tools first to make fire or to carry no we didn't that is not what we use tools first for we use tool we found a horny looking bone it's sax toys wheel suitcase suitcase with wheel sax toys in suitcase with wheel exactly uh sentient sex toy with a suitcase that has wheels carries itself around after you ask him to be masturbated with we may finally have an answer to the question of

if an infinite number of monkeys were given an infinite number of typewriters, what would they do? They'd all just rub them on their genitals. Your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by the inexorable March of Time. The inexorable March of time coming for you today. And for our first trillion time customers,

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water. ACAS powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Here's a show 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. Now it's time for our next top story. This is our art news section.

John Luke, you're our art correspondent. This is the story that artists are arguing about who first committed this act of art of taping a piece of fruit to a wall um you're a big uh rival of many other artists gatherer of vendettas can you unpack this story yeah so an artist called marizio catalan i think or or something like that he has been selling for over $100,000 instructions on how to tape a banana to a wall with duct tape to make a piece of art which he names Comedian,

which I find insulting. And about 20 years ago, someone called Joe Morford did the same thing with a synthetic banana and an orange where he duct taped the banana to the wall. It's been pointed out legally they are at the same angle as he and the tape is roughly in the middle um so i don't think there's a question about who did it first there's just a question about has any uh copyright infringement been

committed and because it's an idea there probably probably hasn't um but i i mean yeah, it seems to sort of come down to, that's a terrible idea and you stole it from me. How dare you successfully monetise my crap idea. That's the key thing with bananas though, if they are straight duct taped to the wall, that's quite serious. But if it's like that, it's a kind of sideways glance at the news where it's just sort of like a skew, like a sort of a rhyme. Yeah, commentary.

And then if you write, this is not a banana, but it is a banana. Maybe of course... Then you open a gap in the space-time continuum. It might be a way of stopping monkeys masturbating all the time because if they have to work out how to get the duct tape off,

they wouldn't be so satisfied with the food they've been given.'ve got a question for you john who yeah are you um you write that joe morford is coming for you because in your uh poster from four years ago don't you have banana duct tapes your head oh i do oh i do have a banana duct tape your screw mate oh no he's coming for you i can't does your head constitute a wall i can say i definitely did not make a hundred,000 from that show. Oh, no. I don't want to be sued by Joe Morford.

Actually, it might be good for publicity. Publicity, yeah. Yeah. Not even comedians are stealing. Not even artists are stealing my art. Or not even fine artists. I was in a cafe the other day with a friend of mine. There were a bunch of American actors next to us.

And my friend leaned over and said, Ah, Americans in a cafe. the podcast you can't turn off. So one of them said to the other, Who do you have to kill around here to do good publicity? And then they started planning a murder. Amazing. Because they're like, I just can't get in any newspapers. Like, do we need to do something really awful?

And they were sort of joking, but also they were Americans. Can I raise a banana mystery? Yes. On that street performance here in Edinburgh, where we are, in the Edinburgh Fringe, I've seen several different street acts doing the same thing with like a little music box and loop pedals and things, making music and like dropping beats and that kind of thing. I think maybe a bit of beatboxing.

Different people dressed as bananas doing it. Oh, so so it's the new this is the newest thing maybe maybe i mean can we tape them to a wall and see who gets off first i don't know if it's coincidence or and when i say gets off we're talking about the monkey it's like when you get a juggler or a fire form it's one of those kind of setups where you know they just turn up in the street and then but you know they do the ballot with the other street performers and they get that time at that point of day but why the banana what is the association between bananas and um and dropping beats although i suppose you would drop a banana skin as i was saying before we need to tape them all to a wall and see who gets off first gets off first like the monkeys

do you think do you think you could would it be that you tape a massive man in a banana peel to the wall and then

you label it like Westminster rather than comedy it's pretty satirical hard yeah hard hitting

hard yeah hard edged I'm gonna do that and then you're gonna have to sue me to get the money

you deserve I mean why don't we set up some sort of horrible court case for next year so we can all get publicity where we all name our show the same thing or something we could do a sort of I sue you, you sue John Luke, John Luke sues me

kind of like all mutually reinforcing PR I think we should all call it Alice Fraser something Alice Fraser something. Alice Fraser versus the people of this room. Alice Fraser, litigator. That's all the time

we have for our art news now 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.

John Luke, what have you brought in for us? I have brought an experience that I had today. It was raining. It was 8am in the morning? I have brought an experience that I had today. It was raining. It was 8am in the morning. I was sitting in a cafe. Somebody walked past with an umbrella over their head.

But I couldn't see that. The hands were free. So the umbrella was just over their head, but they weren't holding on to any stick. And I realised they zipped it inside the front of their jacket. So the stick of the umbrella was in their clothes. the umbrella was obscuring their head but keeping them dry. And I was initially horrified by this. It was sort of a terrible biblical horror, a kind of awe that such a thing could happen.

This was before I really realised exactly how it had gone on. Then I was delighted when I realised what had happened, a shimmering, shining delight. And then I was heartbroken. I'd never seen this person's face or I'd never been able to put a face to the person who'd been able to create such a wonderful moment for me. I don't know if I cried because the rain meant to tell, but I certainly felt a deep sense of loss when they were gone and the experience had disappeared.

Even though in the depth of that loss, I could feel hope. And you see, I've always felt the pressure to conform in public and so I thought I couldn't do this myself this would be so hard for me to do but it gave me hope that maybe there was an access point for me in the future to experience something like that and I could be as brave as them because of course the obscurity the anonymity of it would give me that that thing so it was a really like transformative beautiful experience for me. So I give that three stars. Was Meryl Streep there just explaining to you that although you found that like a bizarre thing now, in three or four seasons' time you would be wearing that

and you don't understand the kind of normative way in which fashion progresses? I wish she had. I wish she had said that she could have cheapened the experience of art to the experience of fashion for me, but unfortunately, Meryl Streep was not there. Alex Keeley, what have you brought in for us to review? I'm reviewing the smell of my venue.

Oh, excellent. Let's contextualise this. In the midst of an 11-day bin strike, your venue is still pungent. Well, I think it's very important to say that i think um you know it didn't need the kind of nitrous oxide boost of the bin strike it was already very strong contender i think prior to industrial action so yeah the strong contender i think the aroma of the rum rum the hive is putting a selling performance and it's my tip for appalling smell of edinburgh 2022 uh when the nominations are announced this afternoon

run don't walk down the cobbles of Midbury Street to experience the opposite of a sensory deprivation tank. Sure, the floors are sticky, but if you wondered if air itself could have the texture of stickiness, wonder no more. When watching a show there, you won't be able to avoid the elephant in the room, namely that it smells like an elephant died in that room.

And so I give it five Febrezes out of a possible five Febrezes. I think that's my yeah my start rating thing is as soon as you mentioned the smell of your venue

I knew exactly which venue you were talking about the smell has been there for years and it's never been removed it's like vomit

mixed with vodka isn't it yeah it's it's gross and I mean look do I I mean these flavoured vodkas have come

one step too far it's just time travel vodka the taste of the future And I mean, look, do I... I mean, these flavoured vodkas have gone one step too far. It's just time travel vodka, the taste of the future. That's all the time we have for our reviews section. Now it's time for Evolution News. This is the story of a creature that is all mouth and no anus. Alex Keeley, can you unpack this story? Can you disimpact this story

so this is what it's sort of an evolutionary ancestor of us right apparently not they thought it might be

it's now not they've now reclassified it so we've lost a kind of distant relative and that's because of the no bumhole no I think

I'm not sure the bumhole thing is salient to it I don't know though it's a fun Anamrishai title I think the, I'm not sure the bum hole thing is, is salient to it. I don't know though. It's a fun and a shy title, I think. Maybe it's because,

no, humans couldn't exist without, but no, I don't believe it. None of our ancestors. The one thing we've always had is a bum hole. And I will stand on that. That's my heel to start on. To be fair,

when you're first, when you're first being made, you are just a hole. You're just a mouth, you're just a little, you're a little donut, which is to say, you know, a mouth, you're just a little doughnut which is to say you know a tube and then you just lengthen out and become more complicated but

you're essentially just a tube from... Oh god I'm having an existential crisis now watching that. You're the smallest bucatini pasta that exists. Yes and then you stretch out and it sort of all tangles around and sort of loops about. You go through a few silly, you go through a little Tony and then you end up as a sort of complex spaghetti with a few sort of odd bulges in it. Sorry, sorry to break that to you. Hot, horrifying natural presence. Yeah, apparently they were originally called deuterostomes

which is us, that's what became us, these microscopic creatures but they've decided that the little bag creature, I'm going to call it a bag creature rather than a tube creature, is more part of the spiders slash insects category of stuff. I'm a scientist. But they're like super small, right? Less than a millimetre. Yeah.

I always think it's so when they're that when they're that small when they're like yeah that's a spark that's that's that that's the ancestor of spiders rather than humans i'm like is i mean how are they keeping these fossils tiny surely you'd lose them before you had a chance to check whether it's got an anus or not yeah also again i feel like so many of these these scientific discoveries just allow you to back-engineer someone whose job it is to check what has an anus and what doesn't. What's your job?

I'm an anus analyst. Yeah, it's like your job is overall anus inspection, but your sub-interest is also science. I'm an analist. I mean, I'll leave it to the boffins. But how do they know that it's a mouth, not an anus, and not an anus and not a mouth? Yeah, maybe this creature's been upside down all along

and Australia is in fact on top of the world. Have we ever thought about that? Australia, the anus of the world. Or, yeah, Tasmania, the little hat on top of the world. I just think this is fascinating news. So they'd misanalyzed it as possibly our ancestor because it has little dots around its mouth, which they thought were

pores that were sort of precursors to gills. But then they realised that they were spines that had dropped off. So instead of vagina mouth, they had penis mouth, if you will and that's a spider thing we're on the fish things yeah basically yeah that's a more insecty thing rather than a gill thing yeah and wait and so is fish the way that we get is it

like spiders we never fish guys i'm willing to go with that i don't know i'm happy to like i don't know anything i don't know anything about it but this is the great thing about the gargle I find out very I find out this information very specific information in small pieces

over long periods of time because I remember this story some time ago that there's five different evolutionary origins for crabs yes but they all end up with crabs

they all end up with crabs crabs is a very efficient shape for things to end up as but it doesn't mean you're related just because you look like a crab doesn't mean you're related to anything else that looks like a crab so it's one of those like um you know how like quite annoying twee hips and beer shops have like decision trees outside of their um shops where it's like tired have a beer not not tired have a bit it's like that except instead of have a beer it ends at crabs yes yes every decision all roads lead to crab i can't wait for us to turn into crabs it's gonna be so great

you can't wait you want them to uh make it snappy now it's time for our heartwarming slash possibly slightly creepy story that a 91 year old man from virginia has fulfilled his dream of becoming an honorary eagle scout uh this is a piece of heartwarming news out of america where you know they don't like mentioning the things that are not so heartwarming uh john luke yeah were you ever an eagle scout no i was i briefly joined the scouts i had a lot of fun in cubs went to the scouts then we had a lot of fun in Cubs. Went to the Scouts. Then we had to identify, walk around collecting leaves. And I thought, I'm done with this.

I liked it before we got to play games. So I snuck out of Scouts very quickly. So I don't have much sympathy or empathy with this Robert King. He was 91. If he really is a king. If he really is a Robert if he really is a Robert he went to a retirement community called Paul Springs

which doesn't sound like a very you know what should we let's call it something springs ooh like water springs or rainbow springs well

Paul yeah Paul Springs they sat him down and they say apparently this is a system they have they sit down with the person and say,

what are your regrets from life? At 91, you might get halfway through and keel over. And also, Chris, if it's a retirement home, is Paul Springs spelled P-A-U-L or P-L-L-A-L-L? Because then all of those is much grimmer than the other. Yeah, if it was short for Paul, there was three. And they asked him what his regrets were and he said he had one regret in life.

In the interview he's crying he's had one regret in life. I've had about 33 regrets this year. And his one regret is that he never did the work to become an Eagle Scout. And so they made it happen for him to finish off the work he would have had to do to become an Eagle Scout and so they made it happen for him to finish off the work he would

have had to do to become an Eagle Scout and they made him a certificate saying bald Eagle Scout because he's not really allowed to be an Eagle Scout because he's 91 and you have to be 18 or under to be an Eagle Scout but now he's got a plaque on his wall made by the retirement home because he hung up a birdhouse which is all that was apparently remaining on the list of things he had to do before becoming an Eagle Scout and I don't want to make fun of him I do but what a thing to do

and I bet also I bet like you can tell that he's going to come out that he killed a hitchhiker in his 40s or something but his one regret is that he didn't become an Eagle Scout you never reconciled with his son

who'd got into Scouts and he hadn't he was quite jealous of that so he just wants to get into Scouts he doesn't really care about it yeah that's that's more heartwarming is it more heartwarming i don't know unless his son said he wouldn't love him unless he was an eagle scout

in which case his regrets would be having such a shit son i wish i was never born or that i was born but you proceeding that had made it to eagle scout and i didn't have to live with this shame upon my head. Alex Keeley, did you ever do scouts or anything like that? I did do scouts. I mean, I saw it was a predominantly like a marshmallow delivery mechanism, really, rather than anything more substantial. I think all I learned was to eat marshmallows off a campfire,

which is not a very applicable skill in life. Did they do any of those weird orienteering challenges where they just drop you in the bush with a with a compass and a bottle of water um i think they do that in australia all the time it's not okay there should be much more like urban version of that right given the proportion of world's population that lives in cities it's always like oh you need to be able to navigate through the bush it's like no in reality it's like what if what if google crashes for the day and how do you what how do you get how do you navigate your city rather than yeah yeah take away your phone yeah take away your phone find your way to the central line yeah you're right when there is a proper underground map is he yeah yeah okay fine but i just i think there must be an equivalent

of what i don't know what urban orienteering is is that like parkour or what is you know i think urban orienteering is making your way through an awkward conversation with a smelly person on a bus. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like, how do I get through this without somebody losing their temper or their mind? Well, I've got a compass. Here, sir. Look at this compass.

And there you run. That's how you get out of it. Look, all I'll say about the Eagle Scout guy is that I think it's like when someone who was in a sketch group gets nominated for the Edinburgh Award as a Best Newcomer. And I think, no, the comedy equipment of 91 doesn't count. That's true. That's very true. The only thing about the story is that after all this, he had a regret that he's not an Eagle Scout. He still isn't an Eagle Scout.

This is the end of the podcast. I'm coming to the end of the podcast. I'm coming to the end of the podcast. I'm flipping through the ads at the back. Flipping through the ads. There's an ad for a blue duck, which is a duck that upsets you. And Alex, have you got anything to plug? The thing I have to plug, I've undermined by my review, but I've got a show in the Spanish room in Edinburgh at 4.15 in the hive

it's about Silicon Valley big tech companies well there's lots of good jokes in it and I think there's a high gag rate if you like that John Luke what have

you got to plug? Well I'm doing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe for I guess two more days depending on when this goes out called A World Just Like

Her Own But at 3.15 at Monkey Barrel which is a fun silly journey through parallel worlds and a slow, shifting pathway through heartbreak. Yes, I think that's... I've been plugging your show from my stage every day, and what I say is it's... The premise is that it's a show made of one-liners,

more or less, of a world just like our own but... dot, dot, dot. Your eyeballs are gumballs or whatever, but then it sort of turns into a very beautiful and heartfelt meditation on the human condition. Great. That's what you put it... Yeah, yeah.

Three stars. That's it. Three stars. Three stars. Three stars. I am going to be filming my show, Kronos, in London on the 11th of September at the Museum of Comedy at some point in the afternoon I think it's 4 p.m. tickets are available via my website alicefraser.com

um follow me on twitter at alliterative a-l-i-t-e-r-a-t-i-v-e also on instagram or patreon.com slash alicefraser for a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials podcasts and blogs as well as my weekly tea with Alice salons. I've been having very nice salons, live salons here in Edinburgh which has been actually nice. When you say live you mean with people? With people. I've said come and have tea across the road with me and I get to find out that the people who've been in my

Zoom salons have sides and backs to their heads which you know I could never have been sure of before. Yeah, I revolve around them very slowly. If you enjoy the gargle and feel like you've stumbled across a story that would be good on the gargle, send it to us at HelloGogglers on Twitter. We'd like to say thank you to our roving reporters this week,

Radomio, who sent in the sex toy shoe monkey story, Valenthian, who sent the banana tape to a wall story, and Robert Silito and Sofa Kingme, who both sent in the all mouth no anus story i would like to note for regular listeners that belenthian is the name of one of the characters in a dancy lagarde novel so that's double points from me this is a bugle podcast in alice fraser production your editor is pet hunter your executive producer is chris skinner i'll talk to you again next week you can can listen to other programs from The Bugle, including The Bugle,

The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.