The Gargle - Soapy porn | Espionage | Bitcoin

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Richard Herring and Benjamin Partridge join host Alice Fraser for episode seven of The Gargle - the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle. This week: 🏠 House raffle🧼 Soapy porn���️ New subatomic particle🕵🏻‍♂️ Espionage crackdown🛥 NRA yacht🤑 Chemical weapon bitcoin purchase🎨 NFT auctionsEnjoyed the show? You're still in time to be an early adopter and get totally up-to-date by listening to a very-much-manageable six previous episodes. Go get em! Tell your friends!This is a show from The Bugle. Follow us on Twitter.This 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

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Acast.com. In a news landscape gone mad, the people cried out for a hero. ACAST.com We're the glossy magazine to the bugle's audio newspaper for Visual World. Welcome to The Gargle. Your guests today are the man who consistently insists he's not related to the one in the pear tree, Benjamin Partridge. Welcome to the show. Hi. And the other man who also has the last name that's a type of animal. What are they hiding with these Kaiser Soze names? Richard Herring.

Hello, how are you doing? I'm very well. Good. We're going to go through the magazine together, but before we open the magazine, let's have a look at the front cover. The cover model is Elon Musk's pong-playing monkey posing in a stylish summer suit while glamorously spilling a bottle of water and laughing into the camera. The quote is,

Other headers on the front page include Pre-post-pandemic workout trends. Tone up as you bone up on what the World Health Organisation Other headers on the front page include... Sub-headline... Sub-headline... And actors... Inside the magazine... Cruz says yes, but he would. Inside the magazine, top yacht holidays for gun nuts when you can't escape the consequences of your actions on land. The satirical cartoon this week is a picture of a vaccine with a condom on it looking saucy saying stay safe. And the less controversial

satirical cartoon is a priest, a rabbi and a feminist walking into a bar. And the priest's speech bubble says, I'm not sure that focusing on identitarian differences at the cost of social unity is a good strategy for the long-term health of society. And the rabbi says, but it's important to accept and acknowledge social imbalances and the ways in which they disproportionately impact vulnerable groups. So we need to strike a balance between giving valence to our underlying capacity to understand one another while honoring our differences in a way that cultivates strength and community rather than weaponised victimhood. And the feminist is saying,

why did you assume I was a woman? Now it's time for our first segment, our at-home section. This is a house raffle. Benjamin Partridge, have you been following this story? I have. So this is a couple who, instead of selling their home in the conventional way, have decided to go down the

route of the only gambling you can do at church, a raffle. Love a raffle. It's the only raffle prize that comes with a binding and ongoing council tax bill. The couple have lived there for 13 years. They've got two children, Morgan, 15, and Tyler, 13, who will be one as part of a tombola they'll be setting up outside the property. What I liked about the news coverage of this, it was quite hysterical. What it didn't cover was what the third, fourth, second, and fifth prizes are. I did a bit of research. Second place is a working post office. Third is a selection of chutneys Second place is a working post office. Third is a selection of chutneys. Fourth is a lovely meat hamper from a local butcher. And fifth is a fully operational

Chinese aircraft carrier. So it's all it's all to play for. It's only £10. The house is worth £190,000. And they stand to make £400,000. So everyone's a winner. Yes, they're only selling the house if they get 40,000 tickets sold and the winner gets the house. Otherwise, the winner gets 75% of the proceeds of the raffle. So everyone's a winner, except for everyone who paid £10 and got f***ing nothing but the satisfaction that they

kick-started someone else's new home. But that's how raffles work, right? Also how taxes work, except in the tax raffle, the winner is never schools and hospitals, which is weird. Bad luck again, schools and hospitals, which is weird. Bad luck again, schools and hospitals. Is this political? We're not meant to do politics on this show,

but I guess it depends on whether you think schools and hospitals are political. And I'd argue that politicising resources for children and sick people would be a f***ing insane position to take. So it can't be politics. Richard, have you been following this story? I did see this. It's happened a few times. I've noticed this a few times.

People have done this for varying properties and varying prices. £10 is a pretty sweet deal. I mean, you're not necessarily... It's terrible that the only way onto the property ladder for most normal people is to risk £10 in the hope that you win a house. Is it in Bolton?

It's not... It's not the most attractive prospect. No offence to the people of Bolton, but it's weird to have to win a house in is it in bolton it's not it's not the most attractive it's not i mean there's no offense to people at bolton but you know it's it's weird to have to win a house in a specific place unless you live there obviously you could sell it i would suggest they're probably having difficulty selling it i had difficulty selling my house in london uh and this did cross my mind the idea of doing some kind of raffle but i think that the i think that there's a lot of legal stuff you have to go through and there's a lot of problems with and i know some people who've done it have ended up falling into trouble because you know obviously it's sort of gambling i don't want

to interrupt you or correct you but it is stoke so that changes the whole stoke it's even worse i i would like to apologize to people at bolton for thinking they were as bad as Stoke-on-Trent, which is literally one of the worst places in the world. I say that as a tourist. It's not as bad as Middlesbrough, where my family are from, though. So I think I'm allowed to take the piss out of terrible British towns. I mean, comedically speaking, what you're doing there is situating yourself at the bottom of the heap,

so everywhere else is punching up, right? I'm punching up from my lovely Hertfordshire home that I actually live in. Yeah, I mean, it's it's obviously everyone can't do it. It works if a few people do it. And a few charities do do this as well. I've seen charity things online, but also some, you know, it's I don't see a problem with them making money. I mean, that's the nice thing about it. You could, if it goes well, and especially with a property that's that cheap,

that's the nice thing about the north of England compared to the south, is that properties are pretty cheap. It's not a terrible house. £190,000. It's got a built-in fish tank. That's not so bad, is it? I did see Jimmy Carr's house in a Hello magazine thing

because I was looking for my own topical show. I don't usually read Hello magazine and his house is worth £8.5 million and it's up by London Zoo, that sort of Regent's Park area. It's very nice, but I don't think he'll have to raffle to sell it. I think he'll manage to sell it if he needs to. Well, I feel like as meta-commentary on the housing market, a raffle to buy a house is quite a good way to do it

because it draws attention to the incredible amount of luck that plays into most people's entry into the property ladder. Yeah, but I think for £10, that's fine. It's whether you can get 40 is it 40 000 people need to do it to make that work is that yeah because you said they want to make 400 000 pounds so that's quite a lot of people i would have said hey maybe go for a bit more money and a bit fewer tickets but um uh for for the chance to do it but uh good luck i'd say good luck to them but if everyone starts doing it then everyone's just paying for houses and not getting a house

in other at home news soapy porn news this is my favorite kind of story it's in the metro which means you know it's impeccable journalism covering a story so subtle and nuanced it doesn't exist this is the story of a man who isn't an actor on a soap I don't watch and who isn't going to do pornography. Ex-Emma Dale actor Mike Parr has joked that he's thinking about accepting an invitation to do pornography, but he probably won't do it. Benjamin Partridge, have you got skin in the game on this? Well, I'm not a porn actor, but I have been.

Not yet. Not yet, exactly. I think this is a dare to dream this is a pandemic story really because this story tells us why britain needs pantomimes pantomimes didn't happen this year and that's usually the kind of safe you know uh ramp off the soap you know the former soap actor goes into the pantomime world and manages to get by. Once those pantomimes are shut, you know, it's all bets are off. I'm sure if we scratch the surface, look to what other soap actors or former soap actors have been doing this year, we'd be finding, you know, porn, professional wrestling, illegal boxing, snuff movies, you know, it's all

without that safety net of pantomimes, the lot of the former soap actor is a grim world. Well, I watch mainstream pornography like I watch panto. He's behind you! I'm so sorry. I think mainstream pornography is only very good for people who are very aroused by very bad acting. She doesn't look like she's enjoying herself at all, but she says she is.

It's said in the coverage that uh his character left coronation street after what is described as an acid attack and a traumatic hostage storyline um and i just hope that the porn film doesn't pick up where that storyline left off i kind of hope it does uh you know that's what the beautiful thing about pornography there's something for everyone out there. However weird you thought you were, the internet will prove. Of all the jobs you could choose to do during a pandemic, I think porn actor is probably the wrong direction to move into, isn't it? I'll go from being an actor to one who's completely intimate

and exchanging fluids and generally not. It's terrible. They generally don't wear condoms. And I find that reprehensible. Is that right, Richard? It puts me off. I just think, well, how that lady could get pregnant and think of the diseases.

I can't enjoy this. I'm too worried about their future lives. So, yeah, that's it. I mean, but I think, like, lockdown has led, I mean, I've had so many emails from those companies that do, it's sort of like pornography, where they ask, you know, faded celebrities to do birthday messages for people. And it's sort of and you have to think, well, well, is am I am I that desperate for money that I will spend my day doing little video messages for people?

And so far, I've said no, but I have been asked a lot. So I understand the temptations to move into slightly degrading what would make you feel dirtier a full pornographic sex film or saying happy birthday to someone's mum well you say i'm happy to say happy birthday i shouldn't say this because i always if someone emails me and says will you do a video to say happy birthday to someone i I go, yeah, of course I will. And I usually ask for a little charity donation. But yeah, to do it, it just sort of feels... I mean, you know, maybe it'll happen. I'm not going to discount it.

I think... I mean, being in a porn industry would be interesting. I don't think I would be... You know, you don't have to be attractive as a man. That's the good thing. But what you have to be is as a man that's the good thing but what you have to be is capable at any moment and ready

to go and I'm 53 years old and I need a little bit of written warning from my wife sends me a note a couple of days before and I'm spending a couple of days just working things up to the boil and then I'm ready so I think I'm not sure porn is the best avenue for me,

but occasionally they have old blokes on there, don't they? So I'll give it a, I'm open to offers. I'm open to offers both for the birthday thing and, you know, spunking on people for money. What if someone wanted you to crack a boner for their birthday? Well, but that's what, isn't that basically what the the only fans think is that what it is i don't i tried to say i tried to say i do a ventriloquist dummy act now and as a i've got a female 129 year old ventriloquist dummy and as a joke i tried to set up a an only fans account for

her uh and that i was gonna let her show her ankle to people and stuff uh and uh they wouldn't accept me uh they said they wouldn't allow me. They wouldn't allow it. I don't know whether it's because the picture of the doll didn't match my driving licence, but I feel that that was quite a judgment. So I think you can do that on OnlyFans if you wish. Again, I think the number of offers I would, I would, you know, it's the Groucho Marx thing, isn't it?

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Richard Herring, you look deeply into the small things in the world. What's this news story all about? Oh yeah, ask me to explain this one. Thanks, Alice. I could have done the one about the emmerdale guy who doesn't want to be a porn actor well there's a new thing called a muon that uh might be a fifth subatomic there's five element four elements at the moment that make up the subatomic world don't ask me what they are one of them's a lazy atomic one one's a strong one one's uh uh humors no i don't know what they are but there's a there's potentially a fifth that physics is all wrong basically einstein f***ed it up he missed a very important very tiny thing called a muon

which possibly affects they've been in this big lab that looks it's called the fermi national accelerator lab and it looks like the lair from a james bond villain or quite like i don't know if you watch the teen titans i do because my kids like it it looks like quite like the team titans headquarters which is the shape of a big t it's the most sinister looking place they've got some big collider there uh and they've discovered that possibly the muon does not obey the rules of physics. Though I sort of think, you know, I'm not an expert on maths and physics, but I sort of feel the fact that infinity, that we as human beings, we can't get our heads around infinity because how can something go on forever?

But how can something stop? We can't picture it. And that's such a big part of maths. There must be an answer. It either goes on forever or it doesn't. And we can't picture it and that's such a big part of maths there must be an answer it either goes on forever or it doesn't and we can't picture that and all our maths is based on that so i think just for that reason maths is all wrong which means physics is all wrong so i think we should all start again i'm not an expert well until i started reporting on this story i thought muon was one of the pokemons so uh it's very confronting to me that there are the physicists working in the thermi national accelerator lab which is now i guess it is abbreviates to fnal which is not a good if you can't figure out a good acronym then you shouldn't you shouldn't be allowed atoms

that's their job is it the atomic national accelerator lab that would be it then it would be anal that's all they need to do yeah way better. But there they are doing the Pokemon of particle physics, trying to collect them all. And it's quite intimidating to me. Benjamin, do you understand this? I'm not sure. It's about muons, as you say. They were described as fat electrons,

which I thought, great. Now even subatomic particles are being body shamed. It's being described as a potential new force of nature, which will sit alongside the existing forces of nature gravity friction sunshine bird song and the sheer vocal power of share what i read was that it's more dramatic i think they knew about muons but they didn't know they were affected by an invisible force right they're quite sensitive the muon an artistic temperament on the subatomic level well they've been called fat electrons which won't help but um it's about dark matter isn't it which is something like a quarter of the universe

is made up of dark matter and no one quite knows what that is i think what it is is you know when you when you leave a room shut for a few days maybe go away for the weekend you go away for a whole day and you come back and then you open the door and the room smells a bit kind of fusty and nasty and you have to open the window i think that's dark matter previously we thought that was insect farts um but it turns out that that's what this is yeah i don't understand it all i know is that it's further it's further devaluing my physics gcse which i did in the year 2000 it's now even further even more useless than it was before that's the thing about science isn't it it's that thing of everyone thinks they know it

and then something will come along which will teach us that we know nothing at all. And it's just, it's God, isn't it? It's God's little way of, he's stringing us along. He's going, oh, you've worked it out, have you? You've worked it out. Oh, here you go. Here's a new thing.

And that's the next hundred years now. So he's going to keep doing that. Bastard. Well, my favourite piece from this article is that most physicists believe a rich trove of new physics waits to be found if only they could see further and deeper, which sounds sort of very ambitious and inspiring but in fact means that if we could learn more we would know more yeah apparently it's more dramatic than

the discovery of the Higgs boson which was in 2012 but since then the world has just got steadily worse so I'm not sure that finding it was for For me, it's one of the worst bosons. I'm going there. But this is also the thing about particle physics. They say it's more exciting than the discovery of the Higgs boson. But because lay people know nothing about particle physics, things are only exciting as you tell us they are. They're not actually in any way exciting

because we don't know how to frame them up. Well, they tried to quantify it didn't they because they tried to say this is our landing on the moon or this is our landing on mars to try and give it an equivalent of something that we would be excited by but you can't just tell us it's that we get excited about things landing on the moon because we can see it happening and it's the moon which we can see and we understand what if we're all just part of a electron no and like the the solar system's uh part of a cell and then we're all just part of an electron, though, and the solar system's part of a cell, and then we're all part of something else? Have you thought about that science? No. Come back when you've thought of that.

So I've got a lot of scientific theories. And also, I think we probably will never understand. We're trying to understand the mechanics of something, but we don't know why it's here. If you kind of put an ant on a hand of a clock it might eventually work out the mechanics of what was going on but it would not be able to understand what a clock was for would it? The idea of time

makes no sense to an ant even if it could understand everything. So we can understand why everything works but maybe we'll never understand what it's there for or who put it here and why it's putting us through all this crap. Why couldn't it have made it nicer for us if it's all been designed by someone?

Well, in other science news, US universities have called for clearer rules on science espionage amid a crackdown on China that's making people worried both about spying and about racism. Richard Herring, you've been to a university once. Tell us more. I went there and I mainly did comedy.

Well, it's sort of, yeah, I mean, it's sort of this weird thing where espionage meets political correctness gone mad, isn't it? Because you're saying we can't be prejudiced against other races and countries, but, like, if they're trying to steal our stuff you have to you have to espionage can't be like oh well we're going to treat everyone equal no matter where they're from uh we're not going to look and try and look into their secrets if they're trying to look into ours we're not going to do anything about it so yeah it's it seems like uh a bit of an odd one really i don't uh i don't quite get what's going on here, but they can't really, they can't be political. They can't be non, isn't it Espionage's job to be racist?

Isn't that basically what it is? So that we only need a few racists to keep things running. A lot of profiling in Espionage. There is. I think it's, I mean, it is, being a spy is kind of ultra patriotism, isn't it? Maybe all those guys who go down to Trafalgar Square with Union Jacks, maybe we should get them into spying because they really love their country above all else.

But I think they have to favour themselves, don't they? I think they have to stop people stealing scientific secrets for our safety. Benjamin Partridge, you've done a physics PhD. How do you protect your research from Chinese people? Yes. So this story, I don't fully understand it's basically that in the US they're now if you sort of look a bit Chinese they won't let you near a university in case you steal some research is that what it is so more or less that that I mean this is obviously concern for Australia because we are in the backyard of the Chinese superpower and we have a huge proportion of international students, obviously not now during the pandemic, but we have a huge proportion of international students in our universities who pay for most of our universities. So it's an incredibly necessary thing to have Chinese students in our universities.

sensitive research, then we would have to confront the fact that if there's a hostile superpower trying to steal our stuff and they're also paying for all our stuff, that becomes an issue. Yeah. And we solve it in Australia by being racist. Racism is always the answer. That's what I've learned from this story. Racism, racism, racism. I am now a racist.

This is great. I'll get back on TV. I can run from this story. Racism, racism, racism. I am now a racist. This is great. I'll get back on TV. I can run for London mayor. I've made a very important decision. It's one of these areas of policy that are super niche until they become political. And obviously at the moment,

there's a wave of anti-Asian violence and awareness of that violence sweeping through the US. So all of a sudden, it's become a very sensitive topic, which I assume the Chinese spies will take full advantage of. The way it was presented in the newspaper article that I read was saying that this was a Trump-era measure,

so it had kind of been cooked up by the Trump administration, but it was only now coming into force. And it's kind of terrifying that even though Trump is gone, there might be all these other measures that have still yet to come in that is still in the pipeline. Like we're currently in that kind of eye of the storm period where you farted, but you haven't yet been hit by the wave of smell. It's that kind of that little second just before it all hits. So it's kind of it's horrifying to think that all this stuff that Trump might have put in place is still going to come to fruition just because it hasn't done so yet.

Well, it seems like that seems like they're doing a lot of just leaving what he's done. It's like, oh, did he do that? Oh, well, we'll leave that in there. So it seems like they're quite happy that he did quite a few of these things because they're basically just picking up the baton and running with most of them.

And occasionally, oh, no, that was bad when people stormed the Capitol. We're getting a bit political. Not political, not political. Now it's time for reviews. Our review section every week, our guests bring in a number of things that they have reviewed. Benjamin Partridge, what is good or bad?

And out of five, how much is it good or bad? This week, I'm going to be reviewing towels. It's little known that the towel was invented in China in the 6th century, at the same time as fireworks and TikTok. But inventions have traditionally taken time to reach the West, and towels didn't become popular in Europe until the mid-1920s, before which everyone was slightly damp nearly all of the time. Before this period, British people would try to dry themselves off with clumps of moss,

often just making themselves more damp. In fact, the average Briton supported a thriving ecosystem of newts, tadpoles and microtodes which lived in the damp folds of our skin. This meant that the average person going about their lives would be attacked by a heron on an almost daily basis. The introduction of the towel destroyed this important national habitat and soon we became hopelessly addicted to being dry and unbothered by the pincer-like beaks of herons. The resulting towel craze led to World War II which began when Hitler found out that a large shipment of heavy weft Egyptian cotton luxury bath sheets had arrived

in the port of Gdansk whereas he was still using a scratchy old one that Eva Braun had washed with his brown shirts by mistake. In the modern era there are two main towel acquisition routes. Towels can be bought or of of course, stolen from hotels. In fact, the global economy is calibrated in such a way that it balances finely on a delicate equilibrium that is determined by the number of hotel towels in circulation at any one time. If too many towels are stolen or if too many towels go unstolen, the dollar, euro, yuan and pound would all crash. The effect of this would be that towels would become entirely unaffordable. This is an economic scenario known as the heron's revenge.

And with the dollar, yuan and pound all pegged to the number of towels in circulation, it's an important part of the world economy. So using a towel today connects you to the tumultuous history of the 20th century and also promotes international economic harmony. So why not use a towel today? Three out of five. Reads like a four. Richard Herring, what have you been reviewing?

Well, I've been reviewing not drinking alcohol. This is my 99th consecutive day without drinking alcohol. I started the year, that's January the 1st onwards. I've done dry January, dry February, dry March, and a bit of dry April. I think I might stop for good, though I have to say at the beginning of the year i had two testicles and now i don't so i i've only got one and i think that might be connected i thought it would be a healthy thing but i stopped drinking and then the doctor said i had to have a testicle taken off and they may not be connected so that's my slight worry about that it's not probably

not so bad for women that particular side effect but they might add what i don't know if the i've still got more than the average number of testicles so i'm not i'm not i don't want to look like i'm complaining okay there's my it's on average there's slightly one one less than one testicle per person and i've got one so i i don't want to look greedy. But, yeah, I think not drinking has been quite good. I've lost no weight. I thought I'd lose weight. I don't feel any healthier.

But I am probably getting slightly more done in my life. So, on balance, given that my genitals are a third smaller, I will give it three out of five. Very moderate opinions in this week's review section. Now we're on to section three. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang news. This is the news out of the US that after school shootings, a number of times Wayne LaPierre, who is the head of the NRA,

tends to retreat to his yacht for safety because consequences can't follow you onto water. Benjamin, how do you feel about this yacht situation? What no one's picked up on is the reason he goes to this yacht is so they can sail out into international waters where he's then allowed to wield the Megakill 5000, which is nine AR-15s welded together, connected to a rocket launcher.

So he's safe out in international waters, able to do this. I mean, i mean they do say don't they that the only way to stop a bad person without a gun is a good person with 105 foot maggot so i feel i feel for the man yeah it's um it's ironic you know he feels his life is in threat from the anti-gun lobby which you know i don't know how he imagines they're going to kill him but yeah it's pretty pathetic he's every time there's a big shooting he's worried that because of the kind of uh opprobium that comes his way that his life is in danger and uh it's it's ridiculous he's almost got it hasn't he that's the thing i'm scared but the answer is more guns the answer give them more more guns and it'll be fine there should be

a national yacht association that's trying to get everyone if they can get an amendment in the constitution the right to own a yacht and then all these guys will be buying up yachts every time they're shooting everyone goes in a yacht it'll be fine we just you know flood america it'll be fine not to wealth shame the uh runner of a now bankrupt organisation, but he borrows the yacht. This is, I think, my favourite part of the whole story, is it's not even his yacht. He flees to someone else's yacht

and, I guess, hides quiveringly from the entirely foreseeable outcome of the thing that he's spent years and years lobbying for. It's not just a yacht, though. It comes with a chef. So who is actually Steven Seagal? What if the chef's got a gun? That's it. He goes down there. Or just put some poison in his food. You know, there are other ways to die if you want to get people or throws them overboard. You can just fall off a yacht. I mean, a yacht is a fairly risky place to spend your time, isn't it? It is. I think so. Not as risky as in front of someone shooting the gun though so that's true you know he's not stupid he's not an idiot yeah i've seen jaws as alice said i think

we're only finding this out because the nra is going bankrupt so all of their kind of affairs are now in the public realm which is always fun and um part of the bankruptcy sort of trial thing they found out that the nra had spent loads of money. He'd claimed loads of money for mosquito control treatments at his home, which he described as a security issue. I assume after finding out that trying to stop mosquitoes with an AR-15 assault rifle is counterproductive.

Well, that's all the time we have for our bang, bang, bang, bang, bang section, because now it's time for our tech section. Our tech section is things are heating up for a red hot startup summer, according to the entrepreneurs who like saying that kind of shit because they don't know what's cool,

but they think they do. Richard Herring, you're on the cutting edge of technology. Yeah, that's true. How hot do you think this startup summer is going to be? Well, it's interesting that, you know, this article talks about uh the survival of the fittest of course isn't about who's the strongest or the best it's who's the most adaptable and there's the companies that have done well in lockdown are the ones that have

adapted to the situation and managed to turn it to their advantage so that i think there is you know and i think you know you and i as podcasters have found that we've adapted well to the situation better than a lot of comedians would have done so it is this sort of odd situation where for some people a terrible event and usually for comedians a terrible event is a good thing it's been quite bad for most comedians as most of them have been up to work um but uh yeah it sort of just feels that again it's a little bit like the house thing isn't it there's a nasty taste in your mouth when you think, oh, some people are, well, look, we're looking at the benefits of this. We're going to come out of this with what we've learned and create a new world. But that's I suppose that's just how the world works, isn't it?

The fire burns down the forest and then the new shoots grow up. So it's just the inevitable progress of greed and money-making will create these new startups, some of which will work. It would be nice, I think, if all the people who had a good year in 2020-21 had to pay a bit of extra tax to pay for all the people who didn't. But no-one seems to be suggesting that for some reason. It's sort of weird if people have... I'd be happy to do it. Sorry, Richard. I thought that Mao had started speaking then.

I think I probably had a better year last year than I would have done if it hadn't been for the coronavirus. So hooray for the virus. Let's look at it this way. It was worth the death and illness that I got maybe a few... I probably got 2,000 or 3,000 more listeners to my podcast. That translates into tens of pounds. I could buy a house in Stoke for that.

Benjamin Partridge, what are your bets for the red hot startups for this summer? Well, it's based on pent up demand, apparently, isn't it? The idea that, you know, I've not eaten a Pret sandwich since early 2020. So as soon as the pandemic's over, I'm going to eat 250 cheese and hamburgers in one go. I'm not sure how true that will be. You know, it's all about pivoting, isn't it?

So, you know, if you're a company that makes fountain pens that connect to the Internet or whatever nonsense that startups are doing, you have to find something that will be good now. So maybe a kind of rubber bust of Matt Hancock that you can just scream at and kick maybe that's that's a political answer i know political um okay well let's change it from matt hancock to um john travolta big rubbery john travolta you can take out all of your frustrations on that's my startup if you're a venture capitalist listening i only need 100 million pounds if deborah meaden's listening richard herring you're going to use your extra tens of pounds to invest in a startup for the red hot startup summer what would it be oh um that's a very good question i think

um i think some kind of condom based business because uh i'm hoping i mean i'm going to be watching from the sidelines very much as i would be with the emmerdale guy um i'm hoping 2021 is going to be a fest uh of everyone getting out and having sex with each other so i think there's going to be a lot of more desire for condoms than are currently available maybe there's some kind of digital condom we can create that you can just press a button on your phone and there's an electronic barrier. Maybe using muon particles of some kind. I don't know if sperm can't get past muon particles. They're tiny.

There's no holes in those things. I sort of want to have children in my lifetime, but I realize that that's a very bad thing for the environment because of overpopulation. environment because of overpopulation so uh my goal is to discourage as many people from breeding as possible okay by spreading stories about how bad it is to have children saying real boner killer things running up to teenagers who look like they're in love and saying he's not worth it that kind of thing you know that's my project for the summer and i think that's my startup well we're in direct competition we're in direct competition with each other, Alison. Our business is going to be a war. We are in very much direct competition. But that's the thing.

If we both go under the same operating umbrella, then it'll be like how Coca-Cola sells Coca-Cola and Mount Franklin water. It sells the alternative to its own product. That's true. Yes, please. Actually, if my digital condoms work, it will help you. So maybe that.

But I have a feeling they won't work. I have a feeling I'll make a lot of money very quickly and then have to slope off when people go, hold on, this condom pressing a button on the phone did not work. I have children, so I'll have to escape with my billions of pounds I'll have made. I mean, it doesn't always need to be attack ads. It doesn't all need to be like, don't have sex. It could just be like upselling fingering, you know.

it could just be like upselling fingering, you know. In more tech news, a tech bro has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, not for being a cockhead, but for trying to buy a chemical weapon to poison his ex. Classic tech bro behaviour. Benjamin, have you been following this story? I have. This is more classic snowflake behaviour, yet again from the woke USA. You can't even attempt to buy a chemical weapon that could kill 300 people without the woke police,

well, actually the real police, arresting you and sending you to jail for 12 years. Yeah, this is a guy who tried to buy a chemical weapon that can kill 300 people. He paid the equivalent of $150. So that's 50 cents a murder so i mean apart from doing it with your bare hands that's a very cost-effective method i'm not saying it's a good idea i'm just saying that's cheap bang for your buck bang for your buck wise that's a great way of going about it well they say every year the amount of intelligence you need to destroy the whole world goes down by one iq point so that's good. I think about that sometimes late at night. He bought it with Bitcoins.

And I think this is part of the problem, really, which is that Bitcoin is a very big and successful currency, as we know. But you can't actually really spend it on anything apart from chemical weapons or like a rocket launcher on the dark web. So the sooner that you can pay for things in Tesco with Bitcoin,

the fewer chemical weapons attacks there will be, I think. Yes, at the moment it is the currency for terrible people who want to do terrible things. Absolutely. Well, also, you know, the people who invested in Bitcoin early took a chance on that as yet untested technology and still as yet in many ways unproven technology and now have millions and millions and millions of dollars

in cryptocurrency that they're waiting to spend. I feel like there was no more evidence for Bitcoin than there was for any other f***ing crazy thing. And all of these people have won the lottery, but they are still idiots. But now they're just idiots with a lot of money. And I'm not sure how that's going to affect the economy other than the creation of NFTs.

Richard Herring, are you going to use your absent testicle as a non-fungible token? Coin it on the web? I could try. I don't really understand why any of this stuff is. I remember listening to about this stuff on the radio about seven or eight years ago and it felt like it was, you know, it hit a peak.

And I wish I'd just bought loads then because it's gone way up, hasn't it? I think what's interesting about this guy, he was buying this to kill one person, which was just his ex partner. Just his ex. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a horrible story of revenge. It's also a compliment to her, really. I mean, I feel like i'm the only person in this room who can say this but women aren't that hard to kill so he's gone in with the big

guns yeah so i mean the revenge i found people who are driven like a lot of comedians are driven by revenge not many of them kill people although i'm not guaranteeing none of them have it's a good job if you want to be a serial killer because you move from place to place no one's going to suspect you. But people who are driven by revenge, and lots of comedians become comedians because they want to show people at school, you know, look at me now, that kind of thing.

But they never think they've done anything wrong personally. They never remember any of the bad things that have happened that they've done, and they never remember any of the good things that the people they're taking revenge on have done to them either. So it's a very focused-in thing, which is sort of i suppose all of these these horrible uh men usually who behave in this manner prove this but it's this horrible kind of looking at the world from just your own perspective and then and he had all these plans that he had of awful ways he was going to kill a woman who just didn't fancy him anymore i mean it makes pi Piers Morgan look almost charming in his campaign against Meghan Markle.

At least he hasn't tried to poison her or he was going to put her underwater with an oxygen tank and just wait for the oxygen to run out. That was one of his ideas, which I hate to give that idea to Piers Morgan because I think Piers Morgan might use that one. That's more expensive, though.

This is a real tragedy of a mind lost to the writing staff of a James Bond movie. This is the kind of thinking that would have made great entertainment television, but also a great jail sentence. Yeah, well, luckily, hopefully most of these guys are so stupid that they easily get caught. I mean, that is the hope, but it doesn't always work out that way. But yeah, I mean, it's absolutely terrifying, isn't it? $150 to buy something that killed 300 people.

What do terrorists do? Waste their time with these pots. I don't want to give terrorists ideas, but... Too late. Come on. I mean, all he needed to do to get away with it was not write bad poetry about it, and he failed. And leave it around his house. In other crypto news now,

there is now a Bitcoin hybrid with social media. It's called BitClout and it's where imaginary money meets imaginary influence. Two things that have failed to properly enter the actual economy are now joining with one another so that you as an influencer can pretend that you have value in society. Benjamin, you're an online viral sensation. How do you feel about monetizing your clout? I fully don't understand this story. I just don't get it.

It's kind of money. You get more money, the more popular you are. Is that the idea? Yes. I mean, that's exactly it it sounds bad but you don't get money for anything other than that god i mean it's a tale as old as time that's that's always the way it's been it's just now it's done through social media the more popular the more money you get that's that's just the way life is the problematic thing about the bit clout website is that it has uh given people BitClout non-consensually. So it's given fake people pretend money without their permission,

which is a new level, I think, of tech bro bullshit. But if you think about it, all money is imaginary. Money is not a real thing. Money is a concept that we all buy into. If tomorrow we all just went, no, not going to accept that anymore, then it it's worth it so you could actually wipe out every billionaire in the world just we're going nope that's not that's not a thing we're not taking it so money is absolutely imaginary absolutely it's just the thing that's there that we it's a it's a dream that we've all

bought into and we could stop it tomorrow i, if we're talking about wiping out every billionaire on earth, there's not that many of them. About $150 in cryptocurrency. That's why they're getting all the money, so we can't afford to do it. We'll have to raffle it off. In more fake money for fake art news, Sotheby's and Philips have announced that they will be doing high concept art auctions

for non-fungible tokens for digital art, which is to say the idea of owning a thing that you can't really own. You can now buy from Sotheby's, which lends it some legitimacy. Richard Herring, what art would you sell at Sotheby's? Oh, that's a good question. I do a lot of art. My art is all sort of performance art,

but I think I could still possibly sell it. I move stones around in a field to create... I'm trying to build a wall that's visible from space, but I feel I could sell people the concept of owning part of the wall, I guess that would be... And then the own part...

It's a work of art about the meaningless of human existence, how we're striving to do something and striving to be remembered, but ultimately it's futile. I'm trying to clear a billion stones off a massive field. I won't have time to do it. You could own a part of that experience, I suppose you do, by listening to the podcast.

You're participating in the artwork by listening to a man doing that. That's probably the greatest work of art there is so i don't know if i can make money out of that i would i would hope so i have to tell you this story is the first time i felt like an old man in that i read this story and i could not understand what is this shit that people are talking about now it doesn't make sense and i suddenly thought oh god i'm old i really i don't i don't know what a non-fungible token is i don't know i don't understand how any of this works so this is the wonderful thing about non-fungible tokens is a lot of people uh when confronted with the concept feel like they're

too stupid to fully understand it but in fact what they're doing is they're looking at the idea and thinking well my impression of this is too stupid to possibly be the real explanation but in fact it really is sotheby's has partnered with an anonymous artist known as pack on a collection of self-referential works so non-fungible tokens which we all hadn't heard about a month ago we now have self-referential meta commentary art going for millions of dollars this in this instance it's called the fungible and fungible open editions invites collectors to buy any number of digital illustrations of the same cube spinning on a black background a single cube costs 500 and they are interchangeable like actual money but

importantly they're not actual money well you know but that's what that's what most are again most art in the real world is that. It's, oh, look, there's some paint, there's some paint daubed on a bit of wood or a canvas. That's worth six billion pounds for some reason. You know, so it's all nonsense. But, yeah. And, you know, it's just the next stage of that.

Yeah, I mean, people have always been sceptical about modern art, which, you know, and I don't want to sound like one of those people that's kind of is like, it's all nonsense. Just give me a fine painting of a lovely muscular horse but at least kind of um yeah damien hirst's had to like saw a sheep in half like at least they had to like get their jeans dirty to to get the money you know whereas this all just feels very kind of internet world and not real to me so i feel like the distinction that's worth making here

is that digital art is real art, legitimate art, some of it is beautiful. Sure. You can still actually buy that from the artist. Right. Like a real purchase. What they have now monetised is an association on a blockchain with the original artwork in a way that is sort of the equivalent

of maybe putting a tag of your name on the bottom corner of a Monet. And then using it to buy chemical weapons, I think. And paying a million dollars for the privilege. Good luck to them all. Good luck to all. Fungible or non-fungible. Good luck to you both.

And that brings us to the end of our show. We're flipping through the classified ads at the back. For sale, a number of broken down donkeys and services which I cannot name on this child-friendly show. We're coming up towards the end. Benjamin Partridge, have you got any ads to stick in the end of the magazine? Yes, I have got my own podcast. It's called the Beef and Dairy Network Podcast.

It's an imagined industry podcast for the beef and dairy industries. Please listen. It's good fun. Very good. Thank you. Please send your story suggestions to at HelloGogglers on Twitter. Richard Herring, have you got any ads to stick in? I guess I have. My podcast, HelloStela Stapa is still going

and excitingly we hopefully are going to be doing some live ones with an actual audience as well as a virtual audience at the Clapham Grand in May, June and July

so go to richardherring.com slash gigs and you can find out about those and I'm aiming for some big guests and we'll be back

in a theatre and there'll be people there it's going to be amazing something will go wrong but no it doesn't matter it won't go wrong

it's going to be great thank you so much wrong. But no, it doesn't matter. It won't go wrong. It's going to be great. Thank you so much. Sunday the 25th of April there will be a last post live show available on the internet. Go look at the Bugle Podcast website for that. I'm currently at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival performing my show every night at 6pm. It is called Kronos.

I will be streaming it live for my patrons next Friday the 16th of April. So if you're interested in seeing it but are not in Melbourne, you can sign up to my Patreon at patreon.com slash alisfraser. You've been listening to The Gargle. It is a Bugle podcast, an Alice Fraser production. Your editor is the magnificent Ped Hunter.

Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week.