The Gargle - Grimes | Crypto hamster | Monkey revenge

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Andy Zaltzman and Felicity Ward join host Alice Fraser for episode 32 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast - with no politics!🖼 Blank canvas art📖 Grimes hooks up with Communist Manifesto🐶 Lindsay Lohan furry NFT🐹 Crypto hamster🐒 Monkey revengeThis is a show from The Bugle. Follow us on Twitter.This episode was produced by, Ross Ramsey Golding, 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. An age-old war, its origins lost in the mists of time. We wait in the shadows, patient, quiet, seeking our chance for vengeance. This is The Gargle, the sonic glossy magazine you'll find in the weekend edition of The Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. All of the satire, none of the politics, plus fashion, sexy tech, style and tips you won't be able to wait to forget. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition are Andy Zaltzman and Felicity Ward. Welcome.

Hello. Hello. Just a quick question, Alice. Yes. I didn't realise I was in the official role of guest editor. What editing do I have to do? Because this term editor has really loosened up over the years. It's a lot like celebrity fashion lines.

We send you the stuff that we've created and you look over it and give a judicious nod. So I don't have to actually cut stuff out. I'm going to cut out every alternate word I was planning to say and I'll fill up contributors from editing to it. Might come in under time as a recording. No! No! Might come in under time as a recording.

No. The front cover of the magazine this week is Grimes posing next to a shallow, unmarked grave while reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu. And the satirical cartoon this week is Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp going down with a middle-aged man sitting in front of his computer going, Oh no, how will comedians ever know that I understood their joke without my slightly worse version of it in the comments section. Other headlines this week, Facebook has announced that it will pause its plan to make Instagram for kids and continue its plan for turning all adults into overgrown teenagers with no impulse control. And Daniel Craig wore a controversial pink jacket to the premiere of No Time to Die, making him the only adult male at the premiere not cosplaying as James

Bond. Now let's get into our art section this week. Our art section is news of a very controversial piece of art. Felicity Ward, you're an art critic. Can you explore this story for us? There is an artist called Jens Hanning. I'm sure that I'm damaging his name as I say it out loud. And he was commissioned to recreate an artwork from a decade ago, which was a bunch of money in a frame, I think. I think that was, I'm sure it was a little bit more detailed than that, but it was money in a frame, something like that. And instead, what he's done is taken the money and thought, that took me a lot of time. And I don't think this is enough money. And so he just sent them to blank frames. And he's renamed the piece, Take the Money and Run. Now, I don't know if you know the name of the gallery, but it's Constance Museum. How did you think he was going to act? Constance

by name, Constance by nature. But he has till January 22nd to return the money and you just know it's going to be something made out of paper mache don't you? Oh it's such a beautiful story. I feel like it's the pinnacle of conceptual art because every quote from the gallery is them carefully saying how sure they are that he will return the money eventually. I also love the sentence, this CEO of the museum, this is from an article, laughed and said, the new work reminds us that we work for money. If he does need another reminder,

please send $84,000 to 10A Royal Green. I think in many ways this needs to be applauded really and I think everyone should do exactly the same in all their jobs because there's not enough art and beauty in the world and if people

if skiving work or not doing what you're contracted obliged to do becomes a work of art in this way, then it's just spreading more beauty and joy to all humanity. So I don't see any downside of this. I did like the fact that he said, it is a breach of contract,

and breach of contract is part of the artwork. I mean, that's really going in hard on the meaning of art and the purpose of art. But I mean, is it a valid work of art? I mean, it's all a matter of opinion, isn't it? I mean, it might be yes, it might be no. Is it a sensible way of getting

booked to do any art in the future? Almost certainly not. But you know, it's all about innovation. and to be fair to this gallery they don't actually need the money, I've actually been to that gallery and they've got what looks like some original Marcel Duchamps in the gents so I can just flog them off and they'll be

alright. Whack them on eBay This is the thing about art, art used to be about art reflecting life and now art is art reflecting on whether art is art or not And also you know he's given them, I think it's a great work of art, two empty canvases. It's putting arts back in the hands of the fans because for too long,

artists have told us what to look at by making the art themselves. You know, you think of Rembrandt doing his selfies. You think, oh, well, we've got to just take what this dead Dutch guy's told us to look at you know rodan oh well done that's a person i can see that but you know this revolutionary approach to art enables us all to take our own paints into the gallery and get stuck in so it's very democratizing you know what that paint's called andy it's called our imagination

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He was pretty much a lockdown pioneer. He was the original foie gras. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Brussels. Don't you deserve a holiday? Why not come to Brussels and enjoy everything we have to offer? Try the chocolate, try the beer, and make sure you stop by the famous Mannequin Piss bronze statue, which is Dutch for little pissing man.

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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. Now it's time for your celebrity section. Andy Zaltzman, you're a celebrity hound. I know you follow entertainment news with avid attention. Absolutely.

Obviously, you're deeply invested in the relationship of Elon Musk and Grimes. Can you tell us a little bit about what's going there? I'm very deeply invested in the relationship of Musk and Grimes because I think I get to play the winner in the next round. So it's quite exciting for me. But Grimes appears to have moved on from Musk to his near namesake Marx

and has been seen reading the Communist Manifesto written famously in 1848 by Karl Markey Marx and his buddy Freddie Engels. It's quite an interesting mix of celebs this because we've got Grimes

not her real name but her performance name. But Karl Marx himself was actually ironically pretty big on the London Grimes scene in the 1850s alongside a lot of the top celebs who were at the time painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti

performed under the moniker P. Raff novelist George Eliot. she went by the name The Dangerous M.A.E. Sadly, no recordings of their gigs. So there is a linguistic link between the two. But I mean, it's quite an... I don't know quite what you can read into it in terms of

a break-up turning to the works of Karl Marx when the person you've broken up with is very much the embodiment of the logical end of lunatic capitalism. So, I mean, I don't, I guess it's saying, you know, we're done for now, but, you know, I mean, I don't know. I mean, have you, either of you ever broken up with someone

and then turned to, you know, the seminal work of political philosophy? Yes. Certainly, I think Marx would applaud to see the means of production broken up with someone and then turned to, you know, a seminal work of political philosophy. Yeah. Certainly I think Marx would applaud to see the means of production of drama back in the hands of the worker. Felicity, how do you feel about this story? Were you rooting for this couple? Are they still a couple? I think neither of them has come out to explicitly say

they are not a couple and we know that they do that. That's something people do nowadays. They have a notes app tweet that they tend to put out simultaneously. Yeah, they're partly separated. They're semi-separated. Basically, they still love each other. But Elon is in Texas or something a lot of the time, no doubt improving the human race, worried about us as a global community

rather than himself and his money and his penis. But I know lots of people, when they go through a breakup, will turn to Adele, and I think it's really admirable that she's turned to communist philosophy. I think it's just another breakup album, really, isn't it? Well, I mean, I guess it was a classic breakup. It's a classic breakup. Well, I mean, I guess it was a classic breakup.

It's a classic breakup. The breakup of the history of feudalism and monarchic exploitation and humanity. Boy meets girl, girl becomes queen, queen kills boy. I think what I absolutely love about Grimes is how, you know, she's obviously, I think she's very, very intelligent. She's really cool. She's really smart. She was a producer for her own music and sort of made music by herself in a bedroom.

All of the lightsabers and the alien tattoos and the, you know, wearing leather cloaks like a wizard in the middle of an LA winter, which is, you know, 45 degrees. I still love that her real name is Claire. Can you imagine how upsetting that would be for her? That would be so upsetting. It's a real pre-emptive betrayal on the part of her parents. It really is.

I'm this enigma. You're Claire. Clean your room, please. And that is 100% why they've given their child that name. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I even said his name. I think it's shortened to X because it was a longer name

and then the people at D Polar, whoever it is, went, nah. You're going to have to give him a name that people can say and that he can say. Like, I get it, but no. It was more a mathematical equation than a name, wasn't it? Yeah. Initially. My name is Algebra. That's quite a good name, wasn't it? Yeah. Initially. My name is Algebra.

That's quite a good name, isn't it? Algebra? Yeah, short for Algebrazea, generally. That's the female, though, isn't it? That's the feminine version of the name. Yeah, yeah, my mistake. But, I mean, look at the words of Grimes and Marx, which, when you put Grimes and Marx, which,

when you put Grimes and Marx, there's something wrong about those two names together. She wrote, you gave up being good when you declared a state of war, which is, you know, I think something that Karl Marx could easily have written. He wrote, all that is solid melts into air,

all that is holy is profaned, which I'm pretty sure if you play backwards, you'll find hidden in Grimes' hit song, Kill versus Mame. So, you know, who knows? I think there's a lot of crossover. Well, pretty sure if you play backwards you'll find hidden in grimes's hit song kill versus maim so you know who knows i think there's a lot of crossover well she even she did say it in one of her interviews she said there's a lot of good ideas there but she also said the philosophy i'm most inspired by hasn't been created yet i'm like cool yeah take that ancient greece i mean just wear a beret and get over with

like you know what i mean like we get it you're exhausting that sounds so much like a bitcoin billionaire's excuse for why they haven't solved the problem of excessive pollution in the creation of bitcoin oh she says it's something to do with cryptocurrency you are way on the money there alice is it money though That's the real question. I looked up that Karl Marx had seven children, which I didn't know. Eleanor, Henry, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Gamon. I know that that joke has probably been done 18,000 times, but I've thought it for a decade and I've never put it in anything.

I'm so proud of you. Thank you so much. in other celebrity news lindsey lohan has infuriated the community of furries online and he's ultimately you're deeply embedded in the online furry community uh can you speak on behalf of them well um i meanohan has for many decades, centuries even, been a touchstone and inspiration for the furry community. It's been a tough few thousand years for the furries as humanity has become gradually less furry through evolution and indeed fashion. So it's, you know, these are tough times.

Lohan has tweeted, I'm going to just say this paragraph straight through and then we'll have a look at it in more detail. Lindsay Lohan tweeted an image of herself as an anthropomorphic dog or, her quotes, fursona. This was to promote an auction for the Canine Cartel, which is an online community that offers non-fungible tokens of special dog avatars. Now, so if we just go through this bit by bit and just kind of analyse what it says about the current state of our once great species.

Lindsay Lohan, the film actor, and does she do other stuff? I don't know. Volleyball, maybe? She danced in a video clip once, in like a clip of her at Ibiza. She's played fast and loose with religious identity. Yeah, but most deities have done that, to be fair. They keep switching aspects of their identity and rulebook. She tweeted an image of herself as an anthropomorphic dog.

Now, for a start, tweeting an image of yourself, I mean, that's just symptomatic of the vanity of the modern world. I don't blame Lohan for this. I don't even blame modern humanity. I blame Rembrandtohan for this. I don't even blame modern humanity. I blame Rembrandt. He started it. He's another bloody picture of me. As an anthropomorphic dog, I mean, surely artistically, we talked about art earlier on.

If there's one strand of art that has been fully explored to its greatest extent, it must be the anthropomorphic dog. There's been enough pictures the anthropomorphic dog. I mean, there's been enough pictures of anthropomorphic dogs. We don't need... There's been classic cartoons. Your dog Tanyan and the Muscahounds,

for example, around the world with Willy Fogg. A cartoon featuring a dog, Scooby. Enough f***ing cartoon dogs. We don't need anthropomorphic dogs. Anyway, Lohan tweeted this image. Her fursona. Look, I'm not going to criticise

anyone for making a pun, but you do not need a fursona. A fursona is not something you can create like that. You can't just make a picture of it and say that's my fursona. To get a fursona, you need to acquire a dog, you need to spend years training and indoctrinating it you need to let it let it take over your life to the detriment of your relationship with your human family members

you need to let your dog become the truest expression of your inner self you need to put years of effort in and lohan is just you know this is symptomatic of the throwaway world that we live in that people aren't prepared to take over another living creature and project their personality onto anymore they just put up a tweet and i think that's sad andy i i know you're being satirical but as a matter of fact lohan has received the criticism that she's received from the furry community is that that the depiction of her is insufficiently furry. It's diminishing furry traits in favor of Lohan-esque traits and that the art is of middling quality. A furry 3D artist called Cade said that he believes it's lower quality because many furry artists would receive backlash if they took an NFT commission because apparently the furry community is very pro-environmental.

For obvious reasons, given that they think that they're animals. I mean, she was missing ears. That's pretty basic bitch stuff. When it comes to an animal, you've got to put ears on it. Well, particularly a dog. It's really one of the defining features of the dog. Yeah, and a tail. No tail, no ears. What's the point? Yeah, I mean you see dogs with docked tails, I guess, but you don't see many with docked ears.

No. Which is, I'm not justifying either at the moment of docking. I think, you know, sharks should be docked heads. But, you know, apart from that. I think you're going to get a lot of backlash from that, Andy. I think so, yeah. I mean, what's the shark based community The biteys? Right, the biteys

sorry biteys, I don't really mean it I mean still, what the f*** is a non-fungible token? I mean is it not one of the signs that presages the decline and fall of all human civilisation Alice? Yes it is indeed and Andy this is the thing I think as we determined earlier in this episode, all good art

all good modern art is just asking us the question of what art actually is. And in this case, a thing that is not very good, that you can only buy the idea of and have no real ownership over, is in itself a question about what art actually is. actually is. It was to promote an auction for the canine cartel and as if there aren't enough cartels doing damage in the world you suddenly bring dogs into the game as well. I'm not sure I'm

in favour of that. I always thought the canine cartel was just another word for the tooth fairy ring. Yes, so I mean the noose is closing on that international conspiracy, finally. But anyway, so basically you've got NFTs of dog avatars. The fact that these things have any financial at all makes you think,

we are f***ing done here on this planet. There is no point waiting all that time and money trying to belatedly fix the environment. Our species has run its race, and when i say it's run its race it's ended that race in a ditch staring at itself in a mirror saying am i beautiful i am am i that's the end that's that's us done yeah having said that i thought that about goggle box when goggle box when i heard about the concept of goggle box i'm like this is we're going to watch people watching TV. That's what we're going to do. And I was like, that's the end of television.

That's the end of art. That's the end of civilisation. And then I watched it and I'm like, it's actually about family and about how we connect with each other. And that actually brings up a lot of memories. They're really strong. That's how I bonded when I was younger. Have you had the same emotional reaction to Lindsay Lohan's tweet of herself as an anthropomorphic dog? There was an awakening.

Right okay that's good. There was a sniff of an idea. Well that's all the time we have for our celebrity section because now it's time for your reviews. As you know every week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. Felicity Ward what have you brought in for us this week? Well, over the past 10 days, I've been testing out my own case of laryngitis. And although I've had it in the past, I wanted to revisit the virus to see if I'd missed anything all these years later. Now, to give myself a new perspective, I made sure my toddler had it as well. And really, what started out as a great opportunity to cuddle with an otherwise hug

avoidant two-year-old slowly developed into an energy depleting labor intensive care position while also needing my own support coupled with endless repeats of cbb shows that may or may not have been used in quantonomo torture experiments my son mostly has excellent taste in children's programming like our agreed familial disdain for Waffle the Wonder Dog Please take that off air That starts Lindsay Lohan doesn't it? It does yeah yeah Just her fursona not her as a person

But every now and again he loves an absolute stinker And he really hammered those over the last week and a half Physical symptoms of laryngitis include A hoarse or croaky voice An irritating cough that does not go away, having to sleep on the couch because of the lack of sleep it causes your partner, a sore throat and wishing that the end was near. Laryngitis can be quite painful but it's greatly helped by resting your voice. Unfortunately having a two-year-old at home for 10 days and not

going to nursery and having to entertain him when he's feeling better but not well enough to be looked after by strangers means that I was, as the French say, shit out of luck. To add insult to injury, last night I fell asleep with a menthol strepsil in my mouth and I burnt my tongue. All in all, I actually would recommend laryngitis for single people or childless couples. A great way to disconnect from people and really hone that phone addiction you've been toying with over the past couple of years. For them, it's a real four out of five. However, for parents of young children and people who live with a talking parrot, this is a minus two out of five for me. Minus two out of five.

That's the first time we've breached the zero barrier. That's a bold move. I'm the Elon Musk of reviews. Yeah, that's a bold move. I'm the Elon Musk of reviews. Incidentally, Waffle the Wonder Dog is the secret service code for Boris Johnson. And he's also, what have you brought into review? I've brought reviews into review.

It is art looking back at itself in a mirror. I thought it was appropriate. Reviews are, when all is taken into account, a questionable means of reviewing things. Whilst a well-researched and objectively-minded reviewer may provide insight and expertise, it remains necessarily a subjective exercise that can be coloured by various forms of prejudice and assumption. In the wrong hands, a review can be actively

and sometimes willfully misleading in its portrayal of its subject and of no use to the reader or consumer. The uncontrolled expansion of reviewing from a few published writers to the entirety of the population of the world has of no use to the reader or consumer. The uncontrolled expansion of reviewing from a few published writers to the entirety of the population of the world has brought greater democracy to reviewing, but also, as is so often the case, at the cost of any

meaning and reliability. This is not to suggest that people should ignore all reviews, but it remains incumbent on the review consumer to take reviews in context, and with the knowledge that in this age where everything is reviewed, including reviews, they might be absolutely full of cranky brain shit. Whether they are reviews of a new Hollywood movie,

a retrospective of an acknowledged great artist, a medium-grade hotel, or a box of f***ing paperclips. Three stars. Three stars indeed, Andy. I have a friend who says that it's important to do things that not everyone will like, and yet, any time you ask if he wants to go to see a movie with you, he'll say, what are the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes? So he's a hypocrite.

He is a hypocrite. Four out of five stars. Hypocrisy's great. I mean, it just opens so many avenues to do stuff that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do. I'd give hypocrisy five stars. Good for you. Well done.

That's all the time we have for your review section, because now it's time for the modern world section, beginning with the most exciting news in the modern world, that babies are full of microplastics. Andy Zaltzman. Yes. How do you feel about these new plastic babies? Not guilty in the slightest.

They have to adapt. I see it as progress. And, you know, I think also we talk about the environment, and really it's going to come down to the next generations to deal with our mess. And you want your children to understand what the natural world has gone through, so you fill your babies with microplastics,

they're going to have a bit more respect for the oceans. They're going to feel at one with the world in a way that maybe we as a generation kind of divorced and insulated from the realities of nature have not had that opportunity. So I would say this is a rare good news story to come out of the devastation of the world. Well, it's a delightful story,

if only because the article I read on euronews.com began with a picture that is subtitled An Innocent Baby Unaware of All the Microplastics in Her. Also, I mean, you know, this is, you know, there's always flip sides to this. I mean, babies are now full of plastic. But also actually a lot of plastic dolls have human flesh in

as well. So it does go both ways. It's like an exchange program. Exactly. Felicity, you have a baby. Is he full of microplastics? Look, you can only hope, you know. One can only hope. he's definitely full of shit sometimes but um i wonder if it will help you know with lots of people get plastic surgery

and help them look younger i wonder if this will help maintain people because plastic does not degrade for a very very long time maybe it's actually the key to immortality awesome and kids love Lego. I mean, that's just a fact. They just love it. And then the closer they become, the happier they are. It's natural evolution. It is. And also, it does highlight the danger of saying, eat your greens to your kids if you're

just feeding them little green microplastics. It's like a bowerbird. Do you know what a bower bird is, Andy? It sounds made up. No, I don't, no. It's a native Australian bird, and they decorate their nests with blue things. Right, very trendy.

I mean, yeah, it's pretty cool. And looking on the Dulux paint scheme, they all match up. But, yeah, they will, like, collect little milk tops and they'll collect blue ribbons. And I just thought about all the plastic I saw in a bowerbird's nest when I was a kid. It's absolutely irrelevant to this story, but wasn't it charming? It was very charming.

There's a butcher bird outside my house at the moment that attacks anyone who tries to leave. So it's good to know that they're recruiting birds in the policing of the lockdown. Well, they've got to up the numbers, you know, they need volunteers. That's all the time we have for that section because now it's time for our animal section. Hamster crypto traders now. We've all suspected long and hard that most cryptocurrency transactions are perpetrated by either whales or hamsters in this instance. It's true. Felicity Ward, are you a fan of Mr. Gox, the cryptocurrency hamster?

Absolutely love Mr. Gox. I mean, there's a lot of people out there who love animals, but do not understand cryptocurrency. And I feel like Mr. Gox bridges that gap. Basically, there's two guys in Germany and they said that it's the idea that even a hamster probably has a better chance of trading cryptocurrency better than humans do. So they've created Mr. Gox. Well, I mean, they didn't create him. That's, I mean, impossible, I believe, to human men to give birth to a hamster. But you know, who knows what the next 20 years will bring.

But what they've done is they have a hamster, they have a hamster wheel, his name is Mr. Gox, and they have two tunnels, and they stop it. And if he goes down one tunnel, they'll trade in one thing. And if he goes down the other tunnel, they'll trade in one thing. And if he goes down the other tunnel, they'll trade in the other thing. And so, yeah, Mr. Gox got off the hamster wheel of life and got behind the hamster desk of destiny. And he's doing well. He's up 19.41% on his initial investment, which is good for anyone, beating not only major stock market returns like the Dow Jones, but also many human investors as well. He's come out slightly ahead of Bitcoin, which is...

Yeah. I think he's been trading blockchain software, XLM, and leafy greens was what I heard last. I mean, Andy, do you think this is a good way to make fake money? Absolutely. I mean, it's no great surprise that hamsters are better than humans at dealing with the crypto markets because humans are economically f***ing idiots

and hamsters may achieve that with experience, but at the moment their naive good sense gives them the edge. And, you know, we're used to other species being better than us at things we think we're good at. I mean, bees are much better at making sweet spreads for toast for your breakfast. Termites, at least as good at colonising places, probably better. They make less money from it, but they also leave fewer trails of destruction and iniquity spanning centuries after their departure.

Giraffes, better at banging their heads on doorways, maybe better at netball, although we don't know. And sharks, more efficient sushi eaters. So we're used to the animal kingdom being better at you know i mean the strength of humanity is all-round skills rather than specific things like stealing crypto well unfortunately it looks like this might have backfired as mr gox the hamster's owner has said that uh since his hamster took on this business a lot of people around have become interested in cryptocurrency normally people who would run away if they'd heard the word blockchain being intimidated by the prospect

are looking at this hamster being very successful and thinking well if he can do it i can do it he's an inspiration exactly inspiration to all of us i mean i want to know if if you know other rodents are as good or if it's specifically hamsters. I mean, gerbils, mice, rats. I mean, imagine rats probably wouldn't be so good at – they're a very kind of negative, destructive species. They're survivors, but they don't have future plans in head. They're just about getting by.

Hamsters, they're big thinkers. They're playing the long game. They've got a vision. It's not the only animal this week that's getting into human stuff. There's a monkey currently seeking revenge 22 kilometres away from its original revenge spot. Felicity Ward, have you been following this story? Oh, big fan.

Big fan of this. I think, was it in India? Yes, it was. Oh, lovely stuff. So as we all know, monkeys steal stuff, very specifically in Asia. It's a very common thing that you see. Monkeys have been around tourists.

They steal cameras. They steal bits and bobs. Anyway, they tried, I think there was a group of school kids and they went, okay, this is getting a little bit scary. Let's just like, we'll trap him and then we'll take him away to a forest that he can enjoy himself in. Anyway, it took three hours. He bit a guy, he chased a guy, and then he kept chasing this one guy. And then they took him 22 kilometers away the guy was a little bit rattled understandably like it was a very deep bite but like a couple of days later he calmed down and then the monkey got on a truck and came back and sought revenge now listen i have

a lot of time for monkeys but everyone knows you do not f**k with a macaque this was a macaque they're old world monkeys they've seen some stuff and they're angry that's why their butts are so red they look infected don't they i don't know whether to throw them peanuts or like an anti-inflammatory now the story itself is very tricky it's quite ambivalent because like the idea of being bitten and and and followed, like that's a really scary idea. But the problem is the word monkey is so funny. You can't visualize the idea of being chased by a monkey without laughing at the person who's being chased by a monkey because it's a monkey. You know what I mean?

I know exactly what you mean, Felicity Wood, although I have always been afraid of monkeys since my childhood in Burma. Oh, God. It's scary. And they gang. They do gang things, which should be the preserve of the destructive species that's on the top of the food pyramid, a.k.a. people. Well, Andy, have you ever caused a monkey to seek you in revenge? Also, I feel weird about this being called revenge

because the monkey won the first time. It's just come back to rub it in. He's a bully. Oh, well, it depends the timescale you're looking at because this is a long term. This isn't just one monkey. This is on behalf of all monkeys. For a start, I'm not going to criticise monkeys in general in Asia

for stealing stuff because i'm not going to criticize monkeys in general in asia for for stealing stuff because i'm british um so i just wouldn't be right i mean i feel sorry for the the rickshaw driver in question a chap called jagadish as in the indian state of karnataka and if you are a rickshaw driver in karnataka you're probably not really expecting to be cast as the representative of team human in a live real action morality tale about humanity's destruction exploitation of the natural world you probably just don't want to be a one-man living metaphor for the state of the planet i imagine and life is hard enough already as a rickshaw driver having had the term rick rolling taken from you brutally by the memes

look i don't think we need to indulge the monkeys, these evolutionary layabouts, but they do suffer from seething interspeciesial jealousy towards humans. Imagine if you're a monkey and you see a species you used to be pretty much on a level with back in the day. Suddenly, over just a few hundred thousand years, it becomes a big global superstar species, like the humans have, and you hang around doing not that much, frankly, just kind of cruising along unambitiously, content with your lot. Then at times you're going to feel a pang of resentment and regret and you're going to take it out on humans, as this monkey in India has done.

Another story in September told of a monkey that kidnapped a puppy in Malaysia. And all I would say is we ignore this trend in monkey rebellion at our f***ing peril. I agree. Do you know what? I think that Jens Hanning actually made an artwork called Take the Monkey and Run about this.

And that is all the time we have for today's episode of the podcast. We're going to flip through the classified ads at the back. This episode is brought to you by Fun Sizes. Whoever invented fun-sized chocolate doesn't know how big fun is, but we do. Come to us for a fun measurement today. And then there's a very long phone number. Andy Zaltzman, have you got anything to plug?

Lunch. Excellent meal. It's one of the top three or four meals of the day. I'd really encourage anyone who's never tried it to give it a go. Excellent. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Foreign Languages. It's like your language but from somewhere else. Felicity, have you got anything to plug?

I did a show called Wakefield in Australia. It was a drama series and I think it's coming out on Showtime this month in America if you have any American listeners. Apart from that, you can visit my website, which I haven't updated, so it won't have all of my gigs in it or where I'm going to be. Well, a big thank you to our guest editors and to our roving reporters, Jay Lionel and Froggy Villius, who've both sent us the story about the blank canvas. Katra Esk on Twitter, who sent us the story about Lindsay Lohan and James, who sent us the story about the crypto hamster. And that is all the time we have.

I'm your host, Alice Fraser. Find me online at atalituva on Twitter and Instagram. That's A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E. Or you can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash alicefraser. It's a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts, blogs, and my weekly Tea with Alice salons where we all just have a nice chat. This is a Bugle Podcast, an Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter.

Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. And 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.