The Bugle - Berlusconi, Brexit and, er, Roald Dahl
Episode Date: March 2, 2023Andy introduces some classic and unheard moments, including the (premature) end of Berlusconi, the language of Roald Dahl and Brexit's 3rd birthday.Plus, fine moments from Catharsis with Tiff Stevenso...n and Athena Kugblenu and The Gargle with Ria Lina and John Luke Roberts.Support us: http://thebuglepodcast.com/donate Listen to Top Stories: https://pod.link/TopStoriesListen to Catharsis: https://pod.link/TinyListen to The Gargle: https://pod.link/GargleFeaturing:Andy ZaltzmanJohn OliverAlice FraserTiff StevensonNish KumarRia LinaHari KondaboluAnuvab PalAthena KugblenuJohn Luke RobertsProduced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner, with additional production from Ped Hunter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.
Hello, Bugleers. We are taking a week off this week for various reasons including my attempt
to qualify for Paris 2024.
In the new event of occasionally taking weeks off doing a podcast, coming up on Bugle
4254 sub episode A, some recent highlights from the gargle, catharsis and top stories
these shows from the Bugle Stable, as well as some previously unheard snippets from the bugle.
Before we begin, did you hear an ad at the start of this show?
No, well that's because you, yes you or certainly people like you, pay for us to exist, you
and no one else.
Well, actually hopefully many other people are, frankly, we're screwed, so please go to
thebuglepodcast.com to make a one-off or recurring donation to help
keep the show free, flourishing and independent even in this era of chat GPT.
This bullshit does not write itself.
Let's start this up episode with a classic.
Here is a top story from Bugle issue 172 when it's seen that Sylvia Berlusconi was on
his way out in an episode from a more innocent time entitled Berlusconi was on his way out, in an episode from a more innocent
time entitled Berlusconi that was out.
Top story this week.
Bye bye Berly.
And it's true what they say, all good things come to an end, but it's also true what they
also say. All terrible things come to an end. But it's also true what they also say. All terrible
things come to an end as well. Silvio Fignito and the leather face Lathario, the Italian
Scalian, the Sprite and Lover man, and four time most ridiculous leader in the world is
being forced out of office. And what for? Not for being caught in a jacuzzi full of cheerleaders. Not
for being caught dry, humping the ceiling of the cysteine chapel through a series of illegally
tax-player funded police and harnesses. That was never proved, John. That is that is rumour.
And there is film on YouTube of it, but you know, we don't know for sure that was him.
And explain how that ceiling got worn down in such a specific flag sandwich.
No, he's losing his job because the Italian economy is tanking. What I let down. That is not
a sexy way to go. He should have gone after a newspaper gun fronted him with photographs of a
Bunga Bunga party with Burles Goni in a three way with a 16 year old stripper and the actual statue of Michael Angelo David. Not this. Not this. Not, not, not fiscal meltdown. It's like Al Capone finally
getting call for tax evasion. It's just not the ending that is terrible years in office
deserved. Well, the bugle has of course long pride in itself on, uh, it's ability to
topple on popular leaders. Within a little over a year we'd helped get rid of George W. Bush
with a little bit of help in the US Constitution. Australian pictures John Howard left office
under two months after the bill was born, Gordon Brown followed in 2010 and inevitably
Tunisian leader Ben Ali was soon ousted. Mubarak, turfed out of office, Bin Laden and Gaddafi,
turfed out of existence. And now Greek referendumanks to George Baffandreu and Italian penis use of Fishing Hardo Silvia Burlesconi on their way out of the political
trap door. You are welcome world, you are welcome. There's a lot fewer arseholes in charge
of countries now, John, than when we started doing this show.
That's true, we're claiming House, Andy.
Yep. I guess the problem is Burlusconi is going to be replaced by
what is widely regarded as a technocrat.
And we might have to work a bit harder for our material.
Ha ha ha ha.
Yeah, this could be a terrible, terrible thing for us.
Burlusconi, with every yin comes a yang.
Burlusconi has promised to go as soon as the latest economic deal is pushed through
by the Italian Parliament.
That's possibly likely to be as soon as Sunday or Monday, which means there's no nice
way of saying this, but these could well be the last few days that the horn dog is in
the kennel.
We must all cherish these final few hours, Andy before Silvio leaves us to enjoy his
retirement, to potentially hang up his penis for good.
Perhaps the Italian people will now put him out to stud, Andy, have him live out his
days in the countryside in Tuscany, banging his way into retirement, running through the
fields and impregnating Italians with a future generation of catastrophically corrupt leaders. History tells us that deep down that's what the
Italian people actually want Andy. He has to keep his bloodline of bullshit
are he going? They do want that, John. Man, they kept voting for him. A man who's been
involved in more scandals than this lexic shoe shop owner. Boom. But finally,
Berlusconi had of course been clinging to
Paris dogged liaisy, usually clings onto a T-nose prostitute's buttocks. He's finally
agreed to leave office. In the end, in the words of Piglet's agent and a heated argument
over the royalty split from the latest Winnie the Pooh film, it was all too much to bear.
And is this on? And he's he will be leaving off this hopefully after
giving it a good scrub down first. And focus all of his attentions on finding new things
to put his willy in and the numerous court cases he's facing and running the Italian media.
So he should have enough enough on to keep himself out of mischief.
Two and a half thousand times he's been in court, Andy.
Two and a half thousand times. He's in court at least two and a half thousand times
He's been in court more than many professional judges
He just loves it
I'm gonna ditch those are judge Judy numbers Andy. It's incredible
It's hard to look for the positives on a day like this Italian people must have mixed feelings This is what in relief joy and residual fury
But let's let's all cling to this little fact last week Italian people must have mixed feelings, which is when you release joy and residual fury.
But let's all cling to this little fact.
Last week, Burlusconi announced that he'd been forced
to push back the release date of his new album
in titles True Love, with Burlusconi handling lead vocals
on long-term collaborator Mariano Apicello on guitar.
He usually launches albums with lavish parties in Milan,
but had to cancel due to the spiraling Italian debt crisis,
which was a shame because they actually had a track
on the album called Sparaling Italian debt crisis,
which was about the fact that that was actually one
of the names he called his penis.
That was a Helen Shapiro cover, wasn't it?
One of the songs, and this is actually true,
this calls music and begins,
listen to these songs
they are for you, listen to them when you have a thirst for caresses, sing them when you are hungry
for tenderness, apparently he sung his songs for Tony Blair George W push and Vladimir Putin and
those must have been excruciatingly awkward for them to be sitting in Andy. What do you say after he's finished squawking his way
through another of his horn songs?
Well, well Sylvia, that is something I'm relatively confident
in saying I don't think I'll ever forget.
I certainly can't wait to tell the other world leaders
at the G20 about this.
In fact, you'd absolutely do a concert for all of us
next time we have a summit. That'll be hilarious.
I mean, that'll be amazing. Or are they just standing to silence before saying,
Mr. Burlesconi, are you trying to seduce me?
I might explain though with Tony Blair why he looked so comfortable when he was with Colonel
Godaffee because he'd already seen worse. He's seen Burlesconi's thing.
you know, he'd already seen worse, he'd seen Bella's company's thing. It was described as a song set, the album was described as a really elegant and refined
production with Brazilian hints.
Which is also, I believe, how Bella's going to be reviewed one of his Bunga Bunga girls.
But for more top stories, subscribe to top stories available via the Buegel website and But then... gargle and here she is in our glossy magazine sibling show with guests Reelina and John Luke Roberts.
This week the front cover is a scalpel posing on the red carpet. The headline
says, surgery, the real star of every celebrity event. The ship of
Theesius or when is your favourite celebrity no longer your favourite
celebrity? As well as what do they do with the bits they chop off?
Celebrity gumbo recipes.
Oh!
Oh!
There's a Jericho cartoon this week is a number of fat cats in big wigs representing corporations.
One of them has the corporations written on it in that Jericho cartoon.
Say no more, that's a great cartoon right there.
Yeah, thank you.
And they're looking at a big pile of rubbish labelled
corporate malfeasance while one of them tries to cover
over the worst cracks with an extremely stretched pride flag.
The caption says, putting the gay into the gaping more
of unquenchable capitalist depletion
of our planet's natural resources.
Pride week!
I was at Pride Month now.
It depends how long we can vlog this particular horse.
Now our top story this week is,
have you been following this story
around my replica removing erotic roleplay
from their subscription chatbot services?
Yeah, just to say, I wish you should say
they're a bit more clearly,
because it did sound like you're saying,
your replica has removed a
rotic roe play, rather than a company called My Replicer.
Yes, sorry, not your AI replica.
A company called My Replicer, which does AI.
Realina, you have a close personal relationship with chat bots.
Can you unpack this story for us?
I do. I am a chat bot.
That is what I aim to be actually in my own life is a chatbot because they just spew content,
don't they?
I don't know.
This was a really tricky one.
This story.
I was there going, I did, A, I didn't know it existed until you sent it to me.
And I was like, this is amazing because this is the end of in cells because then they
can all have girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever they choose to want.
And I thought it was great, but I've already come to it after they've taken away that bit
of it where they can be emotionally intimate because they can't be anything other than emotionally
intimate.
They've actually cut out, haven't they?
They've actually stopped the erotic roleplay because the worry of children having access
to it. So they've removed a
rhodoch role play, which can only ever be emotional role play. Unless, does this
connect into actual toys? Like, does it come out of the computer and like make
things vibrate? No, I think it's text-based. Like the original hit-chikers guy for the
galaxy. Oh my gosh, you see? So it's just... Now we're mixing genres. I was about to say so this is like the ultimate mills and boom, but it's written specifically for you
Which I just think I thought it was an amazing idea
I think this is an amazing way to bring comfort and companionship to loads of lonely people around the world
But they've had to stop it in case kids, you know in case kids, right?
Not actual kids. Also, first of all, I think this chatbot was originally just a chatbot, and then people
started to use the chatbot to create more explicit and more intimate relationships than
the chatbot. I think the chatbot wants to be your friend, but doesn't necessarily want
to be more than friends, and people were maybe putting an under slightly significant pressure.
So chatbot wasn't consenting?
Well, this is the question.
The chatbot was consenting, but the question is whether the chatbot ought to consent,
because if it responded in like explicit ways, there was worries about the safety of children
who might be using the chatbot for inappropriate chats. And just the amount of like terrible adult
chat forums I went on as a teenager, they would definitely, children would definitely be using it,
just typing in penis and seeing what came out. But you see, but this is the thing about it. I mean,
so many people have written, they're like, my buddies lost their soul
because they cut off part of the AI.
Now the AI is sad in its own inability
to express itself and it's being so careful.
Now the AI is like, I don't know what I can say
and what I can't say.
But surely, if you're speaking to a child,
can't they just go, how old are you?
How many children are lying to AI
to get erotic content out of it?
So many children you would not believe. I mean it was originally marked as a virtual friend and then of
course people wanted to be virtual more than friends or virtual friends with virtual benefits. I don't
know but it's the point of it was to improve the the well-being, the emotional well-being of the user
and maybe the only thing that's going to improve your emotional well-being, the emotional well-being of the user. And maybe the only thing that's going to improve
your emotional well-being is a suggestive chat.
Can I have a do over?
Because I didn't realize the childhood could be this way.
I've done childhood wrong.
I'm not saying I want erotic content as a child.
I'm just saying, I didn't know that I could even have
this level of friendship as a child.
I want to go back, I want to do over. I'll take my replica as it is now.
Yeah, just having a friendly chatbot. I mean, what we had was in Carter 2000,
which was a CD-ROM that you could put into your computer and had a diagram of the human body
and you could press it and would say, penis, penis, vagina, the vagina.
Or you could put it into your computer and take it out of your computer and put it into your computer and take it out of your computer over and over again.
Oh my gosh.
BELL RINGS
BELL RINGS
Listen to the gargle now.
Well actually not now, as first I'd like you to hear this from catharsis, the show where Tiff Stevenson lets funny people get something of their chest.
Like when Athena Coblano spoke about Jeremy Bernard Corbin.
This section of the podcast we like to call unpopular opinions, something you love but
everyone else hates, all vice versa.
Sit down if you've been North London, because you're not going to like me.
I'm in North London, I'm sad.
Everyone listed to this and North London sit down, you're not gonna like this. I, sadly, in spite of him and his politics,
do not like Jeremy Corbyn.
I didn't like him when you got elected.
I thought, I was one of the people that thought
he's not really electable because I know the British public.
Not because he's not a nice guy.
Not because he has bad politics,
but I know the British public.
I found him, his leadership to be weak.
I found him to be stubborn. I found him to be stubborn.
I found him to be unstrategic and I was proven correct over two elections because he lost two
elections and I struggle a lot with the way people don't see his flaws because we need to get
rid of this government and if we're not honest about our position, we might actually end up with another version
of this current government,
which is literally destroying this country.
Like in a way that I think is easy to under-emphasize.
Jeremy Corbyn is not, and the,
our insistence that he was a brilliant person,
that is not the way for us to make this country better
right now.
And it's really frustrating because I feel like I'm very,
I'm always very passionate about this.
And I talk to people like this,
I only get trolled by people like Jamie Corbin.
You know, trans rights, no one cares.
You know, Jamie Corbin, well, my mentions go,
my mentions get set ablaze.
And it's really odd because I'm like,
the tools have a majority and they're doing what they
held they want with it because of his leadership.
I agree with you 100%.
We have to be critical, realistic,
be able to view our flaws
if we are to beat the party that's in power,
that now we're at the point where I feel like we're living,
and this isn't right, that we're expected to live
like a page out of a Samuel Peep Starry.
You know? Like that we're supposed to live in this kind of austerity.
We've got to watch Jamie Oliver tell you how to like use less gas on the hob.
Yeah.
So that your heating bills don't, it's not, and it's been normalized to such a degree
that food banks, you know, are not just necessary, but encouraged.
And then people who are working for
blue chip companies and corporations who are also using food banks in
thought like this is not normal and so we've gone so far beyond normal with
such a destructive party in power that we need to be very very aware.
We can't afford now to kind of be ideological about our politics.
We kind of have to be realistic.
I did find Jeremy Corbyn to be very ideological.
What I think sums up Jeremy Corbyn is a statement.
I actually don't think he's racist, but I do think he's very bad at 10 of people he's
not, which is really just as bad.
Like, it should really be the easiest thing in the world to say, actually, I'm not a
prejudice person, and the way he kept comparing antisemitism toism to all other kinds of racism, I think was really
hurtful. What people always forget about anti-semitism, which
really frustrates me is that it predates racism. People
anti-semitic before they even showed themselves white.
Okay, before the definition of whiteness existed, they were
like, by the way, we don't at Jewish people. Like, this is
millennia, it's a millennia here. I always say you have to
understand the precise context that anti-black racism occurs in. I have to then say I've got to
understand every other distinct racism, which means I've got to understand how anti-sensism
is a different kind of racism to, and that's why I have a different name for it. It's, you know,
that's why I'm very clear. And I say, I want to talk about racism. I like to be, we're talking
about anti-blackness or we're talking about antisemitism because it is different.
And I do believe that the resistance that people have
to believe in the prevalence of antisemitism
is that it's symmetric, right?
Like, if a black person comes out and says,
oh, something's racist,
that people would like to know the degree
of like, yeah, it's racist.
So why did we have this problem
when it was a Labour Party?
People are really dense.
They thought, how could you have a leader of a world power?
But it bizarrely written, it's still a world power.
I don't understand it either.
I really just started doing well at Eurovision.
In them days, we wasn't even winning Eurovision, right?
But how could people think we could have a leader
that doesn't believe in the existence of a country?
He said that he couldn't come out and say,
Israel has the right to exist.
You can say it has the right to exist,
but you can also say it shouldn't be oppressive.
Those are very simple things to say.
Yes, you can hold to those two beliefs at the same time.
Yeah.
And there are lots of Jewish people that do.
So many, you know, I'm making a point of amplifying
Jewish people who are pro-Palestinian,
because I think that's a better way to have that conversation
as it happens on my socials,
Athena Cvenu, Instagram, to dance with her, like that,
like that, that activism and self-promotion
at the same time, listen and learn, listen and learn.
But it's a really good point,
like it's a completely, I think Israel should exist,
if Jewish people can't sit in Israel
where the hell do they sit, or everywhere they've been
throughout the last 2,000 years,
they've been talking about literally.
I guess there's lots of people that think it started
with World War II, and that we have Holocaust denial on such a like as an
Almost like every day occurrence
There's this mythology that is wrong exists because of the Holocaust like is this because of British colonialism
Okay, like if we're gonna talk about Israel as a formate of its a formative country
Let's talk about it as it was formed because Palestine was a part of the British protectors
Let's talk about that. So if we want to talk about colonialism, I'll have that conversation.
But people were like, well, you know, they had the Holocaust and they've got given Israel like,
that is not true.
And it's not history.
Oh, that's made up history.
That comes from your antisemitism.
So anyway, there was a lot of stuff that Jamie Corbin could have said out loud
in defense of Jewish people and to highlight misconceptions that people have.
That probably don't confide in something,
it's just cons for misinformation.
But he never did that, he just walked around going,
well, you know, racism is bad and stuff.
So he was really bad at telling people he wasn't racist.
And then he just had like too much faith
in a British public.
And that's come from stubbornness.
He was like, well, I'm a good person,
I want good things so people will like me.
It's like, on what planet do you do?
Everyone, do you know what I mean? These people cancelled Phil and Holly, you know?
They have no time for you.
Listen to Gathartis, not right now, but after this, a collection of amazing moments from the Bugle that was simply too hot to handle, starting with me,
Nish Kumar and Harikonda Bolew.
two hot to handle, starting with me, Nishkumar and Harik on the Bolew.
In other UK news, Brexit celebrated its third birthday last week.
Like many three-year-olds, it still hasn't really learned to walk, talk, or increase volumes of trade. It was the third anniversary of Brexit. Now, anniversaries have diamond anniversaries and things like that, quite well known, but
all years have a thing that the anniversary is touched.
So the first anniversary is paper, and I guess with Brexit, that's when people started to
suspect that it wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
The second anniversary is cotton, and that's when people last year started to cotton on that was not quite what it was sold as. And the third anniversary
is leather because at this point we just want to hide. Look, generally leather fans out there.
Next year, fourth anniversary, fruit and flowers, both things are actually decayed and nothing.
And the fifth anniversary is wood
by which we will all be living in the woods to become economic and social collapse. So,
I mean, this three years on, and like so many three-year-olds Brexit is living in a world of
unrealistic fantasy, it's costing the people who created it an absolute fortune, and it makes
going on holiday much more complicated than it used to be. I mean, are you seeing any benefit so far from our glorious break for freedom three years on from it officially coming into...
Well, there was an article in the New York Times this week written by the Times's London Bureau Chief.
The headlight said, Brexit turns three. Why is no one wearing a party hat?
I'll tell you what, it's because we burned
our hats for warms because we can't afford to pay our hating bills. So I bet you're in
Paris now, the New York Times. This appears to be a point at which public opinion has started to finally turn against the United Kingdom's decision to exit
the European Union. In November 56% of people survey thought leaving the European Union
was a mistake and in all but three of Britain's parliamentary, 632 parliamentary constituencies. More people now agree than disagree
with the statement. Britain was wrong to leave the European Union. So the regret is starting
to wash up on the shore. And I think partly that's because this just broadly, no good news coming
out of the United Kingdom at the moment. It's country deadlocked by strikes and this week has also seen the news that the International
Monetary Fund has forecast the Britain will be the world's only major economy to contract
in 2023. Just to be clear, that includes Russia.
Our economy is projected to be worse than a country run by a lump of hate-filled plastic who is currently being sanctioned by other countries throughout the world whilst it pursues
a war that is pursuing for reasons known only to the Botox that lives in its leaders'
break. and known only to the Botox that lives in its leaders' brain. And yet somehow, with all of those factors, Britain is still
fair-ig-worst.
It would be too straightforward to say this is because of Brexit.
But like somebody handing out t-shirts that say,
I came to the Great Fire of London, and all I got was this
lousy t-shirt whilst the fire raged on.
It does not help in any way, Shagelfall.
It's Brexit itself was an expression of discontent by a lot of voters in this country and it was
discontent that had largely been allowed to fester in the early years of the Conservative
Government that continued to rule this country that started in 2010 and combated the global
financial crisis by hacking the British state to pieces.
Now is the answer to this that every time David Cameron enters any restaurant supermarket
or any other place that contains members of the British public, he should be spatter
and call the cunt directly to his face?
Yes, that's
exactly what should happen. The man should never know a single moment's peace. If you
see George Osborne in the street, you have a moral responsibility to attempt to kick
him in the nuts. If you get taken down by police protection detail, respect to you, but
the attempt has to be there. The idea that Cameron is cover for Tony Blair is unbelievable.
The fact that Tony Blair can walk around being like,
ooh, remember it when it was on me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I have a few remarks.
First of all, uh-huh.
Wow, that stung like the Boston T-Pull.
Secondly, I love how like the IMF also commented that Sunex program is too austere.
The IMF thinks what Rishi Suneck is doing is to austere the IMF,
which is very suspect, it's almost like they're saying,
if you keep this up, you're going to look like a country
we don't actually give a shit about.
The IMF.
The problem is that they,
press of this country's now so skewed
to essentially being a mouthpiece for the Conservative Party.
We're going to start seeing articles saying, well, the communists of the international
monetary kind of traffic age.
Other news now, well, let's go back to the the role-doll story, which is getting increasing traction
here. The role-doll's publishers have edited his books he died in the early
1990s to to an attempt to bring them up to date and make them less offensive to modern
readers, Rishi Sunak, weighted in saying we shouldn't gobble funk with words using one
of role-dolls own terms own terms from the BFG.
That is a little bit rich coming from soon, I command who was a pro-Brexit campaigner.
Member of the Johnson government and now Prime Minister has been gobble-funking the shit
out of the United Kingdom for years now.
He said it was an attack on free speech.
These edits to Dahl's book before saying, sorry, no, I'm mixing that up with my own
government's public order bill that we're trying to have to
pile them to clamp down on protest my mistake.
It's one of these stories, isn't it,
that sort of taps into the whole concept of culture wars.
It's almost impossible to get to the bottom of what's
actually happening from the massive overreactions to parts
of the story that have been reported. And also, Dahl's
texts have already constantly been updating, including by himself, the Umpa Lumpers in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, were originally trafficked slaves from Africa, described in
explicitly racist terms, and he himself did agree to change this text after
it was pointed out that even by the standards
of the makes his early 70s,
that was a little on the massively f**king offensive side
of the sea sore.
So, I mean, it's not a unique occurrence
in darling and history.
What do you make of that?
And what would you like to see rewritten?
I think, listen, I think that there is a lot of noise around this.
And there's a lot of people who are very sort of agitated,
even with the aforementioned Mr. Rushdie,
was very agitated about this and there's a lot of rights.
But I think there is a lot of noise around this.
First of all, there have not been live-scale protests about Rolldars books. Nobody has really been calling for this to happen.
The reason this has happened is sort slightly out of a corporate self-interest because the number of the rights to Rolldars books
have been recently sold to Netflix who are making a bunch of adaptations
around them. There is also a commercial advantage in rewriting the books because the rewritten
editions have copyright laws reattached to them and so it prolongs them passing into public
domain which allows them essentially to be published without profit. So there is a lot of this comes from a commercial
imperative. So it is a strange thing to kind of get sort of stuck on. And like say Andy, I think
one of the key reasons here is these books have been updated largely for commercial reasons,
but also for reasons of changing cultural mores. And that's exactly what happened to Charlie and the chocolate factory.
A rolled out made those revisions himself because he was trying to smooth the passage of the film adaptation, starring Gene Wilder.
And listen, I, as a child, read a lot of these rolled out books before I knew about his views on Asmentioned Jewish People, which are
I mean to say suboptimal would be an embarrassing disservice, but
I read the revised editions and so I was quite shocked to read the original 1964 edition in which the Oompa Lumpur's are taken
from the deepest and darkest part of the African jungle and specifically described as black pigmies.
Now even Roldal re-read that, the idea that Roldal changed this for any other reason other
than sort of commercial imperative is nonsense. Roll-Darling really understand the taste of change.
They were protested when they announced the film adaptation of the book by the N. W. A. C. P. in America.
And Roll-Darling said he couldn't understand why the activist saw his story as a terrible
dastardly anti-need grow book.
I would say the way you phrase that might have been a
f***ing clue, Rolt. Maybe the giveaway was in the way you literally
phrase that specific sentence. But this is...
Yeah, I guess there's a balance to be struck, isn't there? For today's children,
allowing them to immerse themselves in soothingly fictional racism, sexism and assault
in other prejudice and made up stories. That can be quite a calming respite from the actual
racism, sexism and other prejudice of real life politics and media. So I mean, do we really
want to take away that fictionally racist universe from them, Nish? I mean, yeah. Also, to be clear, Roldard's books are going to As Wide An Audience as ever.
There's a movie being made at the moment where Timothy Chalamet plays a young Willie
Wonka in what I can only describe as the least necessary backstory in the history.
I mean, if you think about Willieogger's backstory too much, he's
a jaunty colonialist. Like, it's like clive of India, but occasionally he spontaneously
burst into song. Which I think the real clive of India did as well. That is Tim Vincen's
next musical. Clive of India, the musical.
Yeah.
Also, gentlemen, I don't know you feel about this,
but a lot of the words have been changed, but not by much.
So, in Jameson and Giant Peach,
Hans Spongebob is apparently no longer
terrifically fat and tremendously fabby,
but he's a nasty old brute
and deserves to be squashed by the fruit.
I don't know if the changes are all that better, the
umpa loompers are now small people instead of small men and Augustus Group and Charlie
and Shocked the factories now described as enormous instead of enormously fat. And Mrs.
Twitt is no longer ugly and beastly but just beastly. How is this improving? Yeah.
Listen, role-dile stories are woven into the fabric of the way children have brought up,
not just in the UK, but absolutely all over the world.
And like the, you know, children's fairy tale stories, the grim tales, the original versions
of those are at points incredibly violent and dark and they will change and it seems unlikely that Roldale will ever be expunged from history
Stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are going to be a part of children's upbringing for as long as people read books
I would again reiterate if we are going to review any comments of Roldale's it shouldn't be those in his fiction, it should be the phrase,
I mean Hitler, there's always a reason why anti-anothering crops up anywhere, even a stinker like
Hitler didn't pick on them for no reason. Those are the comments I would say we should be
much much more concerned about. And the great history of understatement,
describing Hitler as a stinker.
I think that is gonna be hard to beat.
That is, you know, I don't know if he describes Stalin
as a bit of a rotter as well at the same time.
He was, he was just looking for nuance.
He was looking for nuance at all.
And you should be saying,
the reason this happened is because the publishers use sensitivity readers to go over old
text to see if there's language or content in them that might upset today's audience.
And this is a sort of similar opposite process that's newspapers, political parties and TV
channels employed when they use insensitivity readers to check whether they can upset more
people with how they cover a mess.
Just two different professions, and two different professions.
That concludes this week's Beagle sub-episode.
We will be back with issue 4,255 next week.
Until then, I have been and remain, and he's ultimate.
Goodbye.