The Gargle - Vesuvius selfie | Indoor fireworks | Bisexual goose

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

Nato Green and debutant Lynn Ferguson join host Alice Fraser for episode 71 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast - with no politics.  Vesuvius selfie Indoor fireworks war movie Man found in cave reading books Bisexual goose obit Hot tips for keeping cool ReviewsProduced 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. It was a dark and stormy night and the captain said to his men, Men, I'll tell you a story. Gathered round and the men gathered round and the captain said, It was a dark and stormy night. And this is The Gargle, the sonic glossy magazine to The Bugle, audio newspaper of the visual world.

I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Lynn Ferguson and Nato Green. Welcome. Hello. Hello. It was a dark and stormy night. When was that? I mean, when I was writing that particular introduction to the thing. It's actually just a, it was just a trick.

It's just a trick story that we used to tell each other as children. thing. It's actually just a trick. It's just a trick story that we used to tell each other as children. I usually do references that I think people will recognise, but did no one ever play that it was a dark and stormy night trick one night? No, not really. Because I grew up in Scotland. It was always a dark and stormy night.

But I liked it. I think you might have been a pirate in a past life. Right? Because that sounded quite piratey. Don't you think, Nato, that sounded a bit piratey? I think it sounded a bit piratey? It sounded a bit piratey. Alice, since you don't drink, I'm obliged to tell you that Dark and Stormy is also a nice cocktail. Oh, excellent.

It's rum and ginger beer with lime juice. It's just the sort of slightly more literary version of This is the Song That Never Ends. It sort of goes round and round. Captain said to his men, men, it's a dark and stormy night. And it's going to start at the beginning again. It's just a recursive loop of what passes for a joke when you're nine years old. Well, I liked it, so maybe I'm nine years old.

How about that? Well, before we sit down and start braiding our hair in the sleepover party that is this week's stories let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine the front cover this week is elon musk shirtless on a yacht uh but we're better than body shaming so we're not going to describe him if even the literal richest man in the world isn't powerful enough to achieve escape velocity from normative beauty standards, what chance do the rest of us have? How do you feel about this most recent thing? I don't care about what he looks like, but I have to say I do think he's a whiny bitch.

I don't know that I can say that, but I am saying every time he opens his mouth, it's like blah, blah, whiny, whine. Oh, it's really bad for me oh I'm the richest guy in the world oh but I'm having a bad time like I wish he would just shut up do you know I'm not saying he should go to the gym to fix his body I'm saying he should go to the gym just so he could shut up for five minutes just get on a treadmill shut up stop moaning let us get on with our lives that's what i'm saying yeah i think what's bad about elon musk is not his placid dad bod like i think the problem with him is that he's like batman but instead of being traumatized by bats and dressing up as one he was traumatized by juvenile edgelords cosplaying the villainous lord of a ruthless

space mining dynasty in a science fiction movie and now he's decided to pretend to be one do you know what i want to climb inside your brain alice you have the bestest words we've got the dark and stormy night we've got the space lord i'm like oh i suddenly feel very inadequate wordage wise no it's just a sign of a really really really misspent youth in the library i misspent my like i used to skip out of class and go and read sci-fi novels in the library like that's the worst kind of nerd but look how you've benefited now right that's true uh look you know as the bearer of a dad bod myself uh it takes some work to hit that sweet spot of not fat, but also not making any effort at all.

Just the physicality of just having thrown in the towel entirely, but not in a way that raises alarms for anyone. but not in a way that raises alarms for anyone. It takes some concentration and focus to maintain that physique. Well, you want that reassuring shape that says, I could rescue you from a fire, but I'd put my back out and then you'd have to look after me for two weeks. That's the front cover for this week. Now it's time for our satirical cartoon.

The satirical cartoon this week is a Venn diagram of the Tory leadership race. One circle is the top candidates for leadership of the Tory party. And the other circle is people who did PPE at Oxford University. And the Venn diagram is a circle. And then you look again, and the circle is a monocle being worn by a wanker. And that wanker did PPE at Oxford University. Top story this week, Vesuvius selfie news. A US tourist was injured falling into Vesuvius. It's okay, he's fine, but he did fall into a volcano taking a selfie, which, I mean, you'd think you'd have at least enough survival instinct not to fall into a literal volcano.

Lynne, your hot stuff today. Can you unpack this story a little bit? Well, what I feel about it is I think he got a lucky break. I think it was very lucky for him because for most of us, right, like I have to look back at photographs of the 80s to know when I've been an ass, right, because I've got the big hair and all that. And I go, my, I thought that hair was great. I look like an ass.

Whereas if you're wondering whether you're an ass or not, the answer is very simple in, did I fall into a volcano or not? Because if the answer is I did fall into a volcano, then you have the answer to your question. Yes, you can improve. So I think it was a lucky break for him. I don't, you know know i feel sometimes that you know

that darwin thing where it's uh the the what's the the darwin awards where they give it to people who've managed to kill themselves or die before procreating and i think he's maybe just seeing if he's a candidate so i think it's a lucky break for them. I mean, it is next level. Some people hit rock bottom. This guy nearly hit magma bottom. NATO? The reporter for The Guardian that wrote up the story did not attempt to maintain journalistic objectivity because the article said, the American bypassed the turnstile

and went on the out-of-bounds path, ignoring the signs not to go there. The group, which reportedly ventured to the volcano without tickets took a path that was clearly signposted as being forbidden due to being extremely dangerous like the reporter really wants you to know how dumb he was this isn't like area man falls in volcano this is idiot didn't read the clearly posted signs and faced a consequence. I'm glad that the reporter

didn't both sides it for once and didn't like go for a reaction quote from the president of the shitheads taking selfies in places they shouldn't society. Where I think the journalist has been very careful is not mentioning.

So it's he was there on the volcano with his family and they've named some relatives who were with him a couple of other relatives but they haven't named which the relatives were because you know it would absolutely provide food for deep criticism depending on if he's 23 and already married can we all just you know feel really sad about the state of the world and secondly if he's there with his parents, what were they doing? Why were they not looking after him? Why were they allowing him to take a selfie in a volcano? Well, maybe

they were trying to help him out, which is that thing where you go, everybody's saying this guy's an idiot. We all know he's an idiot, but even though he's an idiot, he doesn't know he's an idiot. So what we'll do, right, is we'll go to a volcano and we'll get him to stand at the edge of it and say, hey, take a selfie.

And if he does it, he might fall in and then he'll know he's an idiot. Like I say, I feel it's a productive experience for him. He's very American about it, too. I mean, he went where he wasn't supposed to go to make a dramatic, symbolic gesture and ended up forcing the taxpayers of a country not his own to clean up his mess how how american is that if we can't blithely f**k up the entire world and act like it was a goofy accident why did we even defeat hitler for you you know what i'm saying so he said he wanted a dramatic selfie and he didn't get the shot and i went on instagram and i searched up other vesuvius selfies and they're all shit they're all shit because because of the angle every single vesuvius

selfie just looks like a person standing in front of a giant pile of brown dirt you need a longer lens further away to really capture the dramatic shot yeah i imagine you're not allowed to fly drones around vesuvius because it might make the uh god of the volcano angry i mean it's been a long time since they sacrificed a virgin to a volcano maybe maybe we should try it a little maybe he was a virgin maybe he was the virgin maybe that's why his family took him there they were like well volcano needs a virgin he's 23 he's married but he still lives with his mom he could be the world's palace take let's try it come on we gotta try something i suspect he wasn't the first person to fall into the volcano taking a selfie uh through the ages i believe back in 80 70 someone also fell into the

volcano taking a selfie that they were trying to paint on the side of a clay vase. Also, during the Renaissance, painter Caravaggio fell into the Vesuvio while taking a selfie that he was painting in oil on a three square meter canvas. It's tough because when the volcano starts erupting, all you want to do is take a selfie. But if you have to chisel that into a marble block. By the time you finished it, the marble started melting, is all I'm saying. Your ad's action now because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Living Overseas.

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And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by actual food security. We can talk about that politically, but this is not a political podcast. Real food security is that thing where you're a baby and you're holding some food in one hand and then you decide what you really need is some other food in the other hand just in case food security that's weird it feels like a bit of an incomplete ad section um somehow never mind let's move on to our next section uh here's here's the next page um here are some tips for handling the heat brought to you by our sponsor, Half a Glass of Water.

First of all, try misting yourself like a delicate succulent regularly throughout the day. Secondly, make ice. Put it in your bum crack. Give it to a limp stranger. Dip your bits in it. Use it to inflate one of those scrunched up novelty sponge toys. Saturate a cloth and place it in front of a fan to blow wet air through the room. Use it to sabotage the computers of the largest oil companies in the world. Dress as a waiter, put poison in it and give it to someone at the beginning of a murder mystery. Fire it into space

so one day an indented servant working on Elon Musk's Mars mining satellite will have enough to trade for his freedom. Half a glass of water and heat. Does anyone else have any tips for the heat, handling the heat? Put your feet in a bucket. Feet in a bucket, I'm telling you. Feet in a bucket, that's what I do over here because like Scottish person living in Los Angeles, you've got to have your feet in a bucket at least once a day. With ice, not just an empty bucket.

You don't just put your feet in an empty bucket, that would be crazy. You put some ice and some water in a bucket, and then that will cool you down. That's my tip. Oh, yeah. And also, it's like a pedicure, isn't it? I assume. Yeah.

Although, I have to say, Alice, again, I come back to the weirdness of your mind. I do like the idea of an ice cube down the bum crack. I never had thought of it before, but I might be thinking about it. I mean, try it. What's to lose? Worst that can happen is it looks like

you've got a sweaty bum crack. Yeah, right? And you do have a sweaty bum crack. I do. If you consider putting ice down your bum crack, you already have a sweaty bum crack. Absolutely. The only thing I've got to lose would be my dignity,

and I lost that some time ago. Nato? I've been trying sobbing uncontrollably as a way of cooling down. Also, there's a long way around to producing yourself half a glass of water. That's right. I can also recommend stripping naked

and lying on the concrete floor in the basement. Yes. Very cooling. That is very cooling. A bit silence with alarms, though, isn't it? Isn't that a bit Silence of the Lambs? Or is that just... I mean, Alice, with your weird head,

you must find that Silence of the Lambs. That's Silence of the Lambs though. If you are lying naked on the concrete floor of your basement, if you happen to have a basement, the only potential risk that I can see is somebody who you don't expect coming and seeing you, at which point you then have to commit to a weekend at bernie's style life of pretending you're dead because it would be too embarrassing to admit that you're just lying naked in your

basement on the concrete floor and look lynn well you know there's a lot to be said about silence of the lambs but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe you can get some lying in the basement, curled up in a ball naked, and not get the serial killing part of it. You know what I mean? Buffalo Bill has some things to teach us still. 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 our fireworks news now. This is the story of a man in York who set his own house on fire

by lighting fireworks in his bedroom trying to film an amateur war movie. Nato Green, you're a filmmaker. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah, a 22-year-old man in York ended up in jail and hospital for setting off fireworks in his house while trying to make a video about the Ukraine war. He had been alone in his room for three days on an alcohol and cocaine bender before blowing himself up. A white guy alone in a room in York doing alcohol and coke for three days, blowing himself up. Sounds like Boris Johnson's bachelor party. Am I right, everybody? No, Katty would be blowing him up.

Ring the bell, Pat. Ring the bell. He wanted to travel to the Ukraine to help in the war and was filming the video. It sounded like he was making an audition tape to go to the war. Like, dear President Zelensky, please consider me for your mighty Ukrainian armed forces. As you can see, I'm calm under pressure. It can take a shelling in the face. The neighbors said it looked like November 5th, which is, I guess, Guy Fox day. Is that what that is?

Yeah. Uh, not what he was aiming for. He was aiming for kind of an urban warfare look and ended up doing train spotting. Uh, it's like when I try to do an accent and no matter what accent I'm trying to do, it ends up sounding like your racist uncle doing a Jamaican accent. Like I'll try to do an Irish accent and it'll just sound like Jar Jar Binks yes all my references are from the 90s I mean it is Guy Fawkes day to a certain degree in that it's Guy F**ks up day

it's very nice York actually it's nice for a little day trip apart from if some crazy guy on drugs is setting off fireworks. You know, I have to say I think this whole situation could have been solved if people had more hoses. Garden hoses, that's what you need. Still tell you this Alice, in case you ever find yourself in this situation

right, which is here in the Los Angeles, they get very into the fireworks on the 4th of July, very into it. And it's illegal to set them off here on your own. And also, it's really dangerous because we live in a big drought. But we get the kids driving by the house,

setting their cars outside, setting off their big fireworks. And we discovered that if you use a high-press pressure water hose on the fireworks that the kids are setting off they leave the fireworks don't work and they leave so i feel although this guy was a little you know out there the neighbors could have helped this situation with their garden hosage the other thing that i think is concerning is, and I quote, I'm not a big reader, but I read this and I was like, I can't believe this, right? So the guy set fireworks off in his house, right?

In this little terraced house in York. It says, Sheard, who's the guy, who inherited the house from his father, may have been suffering from drug-induced psychosis at the time of the incident, but a doctor's report concluded that there was no evidence of this. What do you mean there's no evidence? What evidence are you talking about? Oh, no, it's not. He was taking drugs, but we don't think there's a psychosis because he thinks he's going to audition for a war

and set off some fireworks. I think doctors of York, up your game or change your profession because that's not satisfactory. I mean, I just like the idea that you can audition for a war. That there's a casting call for a war. I mean, if there were

a casting call for a war, what would it be, Nater? It would just be like, you know, being able to march well and like, you know, press your pleaded war slacks. War slacks. I don't really know how war works. Like just bringing back the war aesthetic in a good way. Do you have a sassy look?

Yeah, would it be a self-tape? I mean, it has to be a self-tape., would it be a self-tape? I mean, it has to be a self-tape, right? It has to be a self-tape. And then you have to, like, deliver some lines effectively, like, over the top, man, or something like that. Yeah, if I'm auditioning for a war, I'm going to be auditioning for the one who, like, cracks halfway through the third day and tries to escape.

Yeah, I would be auditioning for the guy who gets blown up, like, in the first 10 minutes. I mean, that's a great person to be in a war film, at least. Yeah, the guy who's like, oh no, there, and then is gone. Yeah, yeah. I'll be that guy. I'd be the one who gets slapped in the face and called a lily-livered coward.

That's my MO. I have to say I've auditioned for worse. Like, I auditioned for Ur-Willy the musical. I don't know if you know who Ur-Willy is, but he's a Scottish character that sits in a bucket. And I auditioned. You? You've been keeping your feet in a bucket to prepare for this role.

If only I had thought of that at the time, Alice. Where were you when I needed you? I was in those crisis years of Urwili the musical, The Tour. So I do think in life I have auditioned for worse and got worse. But, you know, the other thing that I thought about this is, evidently, you know, he wasn't on the right side of sober. And, you know, I've done some crazy, I'm sure we've all done some crazy things when we're not on the right side of sober and and i you know i've done some crazy i'm sure we've all done some crazy

things when we're not on the right side of sober you know um like i used to tell people that i worked in the posh frock department of a very expensive store in london called dickens and jones and uh and the more drunk i was the more I was. And so people would start to ask me, me, which you can't see at the moment, but me, fashion advice about what they should wear to their daughter's wedding and stuff like that. So I think it is a time to do mischief, but I don't necessarily think that you should use explosives at that point. That's what I'm saying.

I don't know. I mean, I have gotten drunk and uh i but i've never been let light off explosive i mean like if i if i get properly on the as you said lynn on the wrong side of sober the worst thing that i'm going to do is eat too many tacos in the middle of the night i mean most of the craziness of history makes more sense if you think most of them were drunk most of the time because the water wasn't safe to drink. And probably, therefore, they also had diarrhea. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Drunk and shitting themselves all the time. Just imagine. That's all the time we have for Home Fireworks News because now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. Lynne, what have you brought in for us this week? Tuesdays.

Tuesdays. That's right, Tuesdays. Don't look at me like you don't know what I'm talking about. Tuesdays, the day that comes after Monday. Tuesdays. I've met them. Yeah, I don't like them. I give them two stars.

Spoiler alert, I do. One, because it's a day, and two, because it makes a week seven days the reason I don't like Tuesdays is because if ever if you think back right and this is not a conspiracy theory once you like connect into it you'll realize that if you think back in your life the most difficult days or if shit's going to happen happens on a Tuesday like it literally happens on a Tuesday. And I know this so much that even in my family now,

like my little kid, well, he's not little, my youngest is 15. And when he comes home from school, I'll say, how is it? And he'll be like, well, it was Tuesday today. What do you expect?

But like the things that happened on a... Elvis. So you're proliferating this anti-Tuesday mythology through your family. It's a fact, Alice. It's a fact. Now that you know it, right?

Now, like, I do a podcast thing with Chesney Hawks, who's a... Do you know Chesney Hawks? He does a song, One and Only, right? Oh, he's lovely, right? Lovely, very sensitive singer, guitar, all that. Nice. And he now has noticed the Tuesday thinguesday thing like he doesn't like to travel

on a tuesday i'm like yes don't travel on a tuesday in fact if you had asked me to come and do your show on a tuesday i'd have been like no not doing it so anyway elvis what day did elvis die on take a guess yes a tuesday uh and the day, Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, that whole crash, plane crash, day the music died, right? Tuesday. It was a Tuesday. I mean, what are the chances, one in seven? Absolutely. But that's, do you know the other thing that's kind of weird

and it really makes me hate Tuesdays even more is that for some reason Christmas Day is more likely to be on a Tuesday as if Christmas Day isn't difficult enough dealing with family members you didn't want to hang out with the disappointment of not getting what you thought you were going to get the understanding that Christmas Day is not going to come for another 364 days but this is the reason i give tuesdays two stars instead of one right is that the planet uranus was discovered on a tuesday think that was the whole world of comedy would have been destroyed if the planet uranus had been discovered. There would be less laughing in the world. Comedians would not be able to do their training jokes.

There would be no way to... If Uranus had not been discovered at all, we would be living in a very bleak world, people. And so for that reason, Tuesday does get a second star, but it only gets two stars out of five. And you'll notice this now. You may sneer at me, Alice, you and your big words and your braininess,

but I am telling you, the next time something weird happens to you, you'll be like, what day is it? And then you'll be like, oh, it's a Tuesday. Well, I'll tell you how you discover Uranus is that you get a piece of ice and put it down your butt crack. That is the best callback.

Nato, what have you brought in for us to review? Bringing back your mom, Alice. The phrase, your mom. Look, it's easy to take the classics for granted, but my kids are 14. The twins are 14. They just turned 14. And they just discovered your mom

as a joke structure, and it's slaying me. So, like, and it's one of those things, if you're a dude who's a teenager who wants to learn to play rock guitar, you start out at Stairway to Heaven. You've got to learn the building blocks.

You've got to learn the basic structures before you can do anything interesting. Your mom is like the ur-joke structure. They'll say it without looking up. You know what? Put the ur in joke structure? Yeah. Uranus. Exactly. Thank you um i'll say to my kids like why didn't you clean up your room like you agreed to do an hour ago

and they'll be like your mom where did you put your house keys your mom what did you make for dinner your mom so your mom four out of five, because the classics are classics for a reason. Now it's time for your failed hermit news. This is the sad story of a man, not the sad story of a man who renounced the world, but the sad story of a man who renounced the world and then went viral for renouncing the world. Nato Green, you've tried to renounce the world, especially since your twins have turned 14. Can you unpack this story uh yeah a man in china in early july was hiking in the sichuan province and cape was hiking and came into some

caves and they found a middle-aged man sitting in one of the caves uh in his he was in his 40s he was reading a book and taking notes um uh, uh, and they said that he, uh, would seem to be living in the cave for a long time. They didn't bother him and they left him alone. And then it, he went viral. Now as a dad,

I can relate. Um, uh, like, like I read, he had quilts, buckets, pots,

bowls, books, and cigarettes. What else do you need in this life like if it had been me i would have swapped out the cigarettes for coffee but like that's uh that you know i i like this is why my family complains that i take too long taking a shit is that i just it's i wander off into a. I want a break from my responsibilities. I start reading a book.

I get lost. Next thing you know, decades have gone by and a hiker finds me. That's the experience of being a dad. If I don't have line of sight, visual contact with a member of my nuclear family dependent on my survival for their ability to live, I would be that guy in two days.

Just completely feral, reading a book in a cave, chain smoking, and sleeping on the floor. I mean, apparently some people have commented on the videos claiming that the man resembles a runaway family member of theirs. One person said,

I want to see his face because he reminds me of my uncle who ran away from home years ago and also enjoys reading. I know, I saw that. I was like, take the hint. He wants you to leave him alone. He ran away.

He ran away. He doesn't want to see you. Would you run away to a cave? No, I would make other people run away to a cave. I'm much more a kind of I'll talk at you until you have to leave person than I am a person who would leave. So I would just carry on talking

until I get my own space. That's what I would do. The thing I think about this guy is somebody said in the article, the man was reading and he did not wish to be disturbed. I'm like, could he not have just gone to a library? I mean, isn't that kind of the point of libraries? And if you don't want to be disturbed,

there's a whole load of people just whose whole job is saying, shh, don't disturb people, right? That would be a better thing for it. You know, but I also think it's something about society today. Hey, politics kids, which is that a guy is... Ring the bell. Right, that somebody's weird, seems weird for, like,

sitting quietly on their own, reading a book. I'm like, I don't know that that's really... Like, that doesn't seem to me that weird to be... Maybe it's just quiet. You know, in a world where somebody falls into a volcano

because they're taking a selfie, and then a guy blows up his own house because he's auditioning for the Ukraine. Really? Just wanting to read a book blows up his own house because he's auditioning for the Ukraine really just wanting to read a book quietly on your own seems it seems perfectly reasonable to me I mean I can totally see this happening to me I'm somewhere in the middle of civilization I sit down to read the book the book is better than I expect and then like an ice age happens and I don't notice I am so people find me in a cave yeah totally i am with you alice we are

sisters from another mister i don't know now it's time for our obituaries section sad news uh that the most beloved goose thomas a blind bisexual polyamorous goose who had up until uh recently been involved in a love triangle has died oh very sad oh i'm very sad he was he had a he had a he had a swan lover for many years and then his swan lover found a wife and they remained together he helped raise the children until his swan lover died and then he he retired after that but he's he's now passed away and is to be buried next to his swan lover oh uh lynn ferguson um you've you've had a swan lover and several this story for us yes they can be very picky just kept hoping one of them was zeus yeah

yeah you don't want a swan lover they're veryy and they keep looking at themselves and going look at me i'm a swan you know what i will say to you is i keep chickens and in the bird world chickens can be a bit more fluid than than in the human world like it just seems to be a thing and so like we hatched our chickens oh well there's a chicken phenomenon i don't know if you know that is but sometimes if if your flock doesn't have a rooster then one of the female chickens will just start crowing like a rooster even though it's not a rooster but when you hatch chickens you can't tell whether they are male or female because they're just chickens right so we hatch chickens and our we had this lovely chick that we called Margaret because in any group of Scottish women, there will always be one of them called Margaret. And it turned out that Margaret was a guy.

So we had to change her name. So Margaret is now a rooster and she is a he and called Genghis. And it has made me think that a lot of Scottish women called Margaret could also be called Genghis. And it has made me think that a lot of Scottish women called Margaret could also be called Genghis. I think we can learn a lot from the bird world. This is what I'm saying, Alice. I feel that we as humans, when the world is in the state that it is, can learn a lot from the bird world about how to be more open to things, how to be more caring, how to get more eggs. That's what I think think i think that's a very wise approach nato so swans mate for life and gay polyamorous swans process for life uh

a lot of processing these are these are u-haul swans uh does that does that phrase translate? Yeah, sure. Where I live, we talk about U-Haul lesbians. We're like, they have one date and then they move in forever. So Thomas lived to the age of 40, which is very old in geese years. Scientists believe that the polyamorous bisexual relationship contributed to his longevity because of all the processing. It wasn't just a bisexual polyamorous relationship. It was also a goose-swan-swan poly triad. That's also an interspecies relationship,

which is even more challenging than a cross-class relationship. It's harder than a plumber dating the heiress to an apothecary fortune i mean speaking of the ugly duckling story this is a rewriting of the hot goose story talk about punching above your weight totally getting two swans pounding above your weight if you will um there are a bunch of other challenges a polyswan geese family have to consider like nest design they have to build a nest big enough for all three of them or they have to rotate taking turns sleeping on the couch um thomas was the was the goose and uh and the thomas and henry had 18 happy gay years together before the third person showed up they had 18 happy gay years together and like a lot of couples trying to keep it interesting decided to try on a threesome uh and the tour

guide in the in the bird sanctuary said that uh as lib was saying it's very hard to establish the gender of mature black swans and i just wrote pronoun joke. Pronoun joke to come. Henry was the glue. When Henry died, Henrietta left because Henrietta never loved Thomas as much as he loved her or their shared family. Henrietta had to go, quote, work on herself and not get stuck in a rut and pursue her own dreams and make signets with someone else. So, Henrietta, boo. Boo, Henrietta. That woman who wrote,

you know the woman who wrote the romantic vampire novels about vampires and werewolves and stuff like that and how they could fall in love and fall out of love and then be like a love triangle with a vampire and a werewolf and all that? Do you think that maybe she could... I don't know that lady. Right, do you know that maybe she could right do

you know the woman i mean i don't know her name i just know that she's like a little creepy in that way but i am wondering that maybe this could be the new book series for her like there was a couple of swads and they were like doing their thing and then a goose come along and then like oh i don't know who i love is it the werewolf is it the vampire oh no i don't know who i love is it the swan is it the goose that could work i think in my head it works in your head i mean i think you need to write this uh this is the new groundbreaking 50 shades of grey twilight series we are there the hot goose swan triad yeah well thomas has lived a life a very long life a satisfying life and i think we can all agree that he's the goose that laid the golden swans. That's all the time we have for this week's stories.

I'm going to flip through the ads at the back of the magazine. Lynn, have you got anything to plug? Edinburgh, I'm doing shows in Edinburgh. I'm doing a show called Storyland, which is part story, part stand-up. Part story, part land. Oh, I wish I'd thought of that. Where were you when I was writing the copy? I'm going to get your number.

In fact, I'm going to keep a wee copy of you in my handbag. So when I'm looking for good words, I'll be like, Alice, come here, tell me your pirate things. So I'm doing that, and I do a podcast as well called Ferguson Harrington Hawks, and we're doing it live at the National Museum of Scotland for a couple of days as well. Oh, lovely. That sounds delightful. I will come along and have a look.

Nato, have you got anything to plug? I have a couple of comedy albums out, the Nato Green Party and the Whiteness album. The best way to support comedy directly is on bandcamp because spotify is fighting with comedy labels right now and a lot of our stuff got pulled that's fun if you're in san francisco you can see me live at the setup on the 29th go to the setup comedy dot com or whatever it's called and if you enjoyed this week's episode but think that you could send us better stories become a roving reporter tweet us at hello gar's episode but think that you could send us better stories, become a roving reporter.

Tweet us at HelloGogglers with stories that you think would be suitable for this podcast. Big thanks to Ben F. Meyer for the Vesuvius story this week, Dr. Nerdware for the Home Fireworks story, and Disco Shake for the Failed Hermit story. Again, at HelloGogglers if you would like to become one of our roving reporters. I'm Alice Fraser. Find me online at alliterative, A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E on Twitter and Instagram or patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts and blogs, as well as my weekly Tea with Alice salons.

I will be in Edinburgh. Look it up. This is an Alice Fraser and Bugle podcast production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. your editor is Ped Hunter, your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from The Bugle, including The Bugle, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.