The Gargle - Tech cities | Pig video games | Roman penis carving

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Alice Fraser welcomes Alison Spittle and Tom Ballard to the first ever episode of The Gargle - the new weekly topical comedy show from The Bugle. Featuring:🐂 The Year of the Ox so far🍗 KFC-...run corporate towns🐷 Pigs playing video games🐓 Chicken sex dolls😇 Captain Tom merch🍆 Roman penis carvingThis is a show from The Bugle. Follow us on Twitter.This episode was produced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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
Starting point is 00:00:22 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.
Starting point is 00:00:49 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.
Starting point is 00:01:20 Acast.com. ACAST.com be aroused. We're the glossy magazine to the bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. We're news without the politics, without the pundits and without the personalities. That sounds less fun than it is. Welcome to the gargle. Your guests today are all the way from the land of Ireland, full of that lyrical pep for which that semi-mythical people are so well known. It is Alison Spittel. Welcome to the show. Hello, Alice. Very, very delighted to be here on the Gargles maiden voyage. May she gargle lots. And from the romantic small coastal village of Warrnambool, it is the fabled Tom Ballard.
Starting point is 00:02:16 Fabled. Hello, Alice. Hello, Alison. Coming to you live from quarantine in Aotearoa. Kia ora to you all. Hello Tom, hello Alison, hello garglers and happy Lunar New Year. Do you have any Lunar New Year's resolutions? Year of the Ox. The Year of the Ox, I'm very excited. I'm hitting a Lunar vibe this year. I'm watching
Starting point is 00:02:38 the whole Twilight series which has been devastating for my soul. Absolutely devastating. I've never done it. Is it worth it? Is it at all worth it? No.
Starting point is 00:02:50 Well, yeah, I think I've never watched a film where I've just been rooting for the sweet release of death for all characters. I'm really rooting for the sea. I'm rooting for the cliffs. I'm rooting for everything apart from those humans. So, yeah, it's been an enlightening new year i'm not looking forward to the year alice i must say i'm a year of the snake kind of guy i take that very seriously i've only had good years when it is the year of the snake my last good one was in 2013 i'm not
Starting point is 00:03:17 due for another one until 2025 and the ox can suck my little snake dick all right that's my attitude other than that i'll probably cut, all right? That's my attitude. Other than that, I'll probably cut out bread or something. Those are my plans. Well, we're flipping open the magazine. Our flashy front cover graphics for this week include a heavily photoshopped Naomi Osaka looking at the sky with the quote-marked headline, The Sky's the Limit, after beating Serena.
Starting point is 00:03:42 But good luck to her if she can really hit a tennis ball that far also frozen texas fashion forward feature showing top-notch tips to multitask that blizzard look hot while freezing to death and denying climate change as well as how to deep fake your way slim reboot your sex life open brackets opening up a robot sex doll marriage close brackets and so much more in all caps and our satirical cartoon for the week is a misogynistically over-muscled caricature of Gina Carano being fired out of a cannon by a cartoon of a cartoon mouse with a boner that says VICTIM CARD. What do we think of Gina? I thought what she said kind of sucked, but isn't it weird that Disney Plus
Starting point is 00:04:17 is like firing people now for their beliefs? Or do we care about Gina? Given, Dean, I mean, the theme of the brand, Walt Disney himself, was a terrible anti-Semite. So I'm not sure if he has the standing, as we say in the legal industry, to be wiggling his little... You should hear what Goofy has to say. I mean, there's a reason why the last time we've seen him
Starting point is 00:04:41 was a Goofy movie in 1993. Goofy, you are cancelled. Yes. And our feature section in our weekend magazine is Tech Cities News and sea steading is the biggest story coming out of tech cities right now. Tom Ballard, you're all afloat. Tell us what's happening in the world of floating tech cities. Well, this has been going on for ages,
Starting point is 00:05:09 but it seems that in the world of 2020 and COVID, it's apparently just given a real boost to the seasteading movement. And if you don't know, seasteading is about setting up artificial man-created islands out on the ocean where people can live free from the shackles of government, democracy, having to pay your taxes. And I assume everybody f***s each other's brains out. Yes, been kicking around for a while. Peter Thiel, the PayPal psycho who uses blood boys, literally sucks the blood of young healthy men in Silicon Valley in order to give him eternal life.
Starting point is 00:05:42 He hates the government, is a big libertarian and funded funded the Seasteading Institute to try and research this and start setting up these institutions off the island that can live in no man's land, free from international law, and everyone can have a great time, which is just great because living on land is very pre-2020. We need to innovate. We should all be living on floating cities that are on the ocean surface, which is kind of like the land of the sea.
Starting point is 00:06:08 And whenever I read about this, I just feel sorry for the sea. Haven't we done enough to the sea? We've poisoned it. We've cooked it. We sent James Cameron down there. Just leave the sea alone and let's stick to land, yeah? Yeah, I feel like the sea, you know, not to be offensive to crazy people, but I feel like the sea attracts crazy people.
Starting point is 00:06:29 Pirates, notoriously, mentally unwell, you know, never got the support they deserved and went a little crazy out there. The whole lot of them, it feels like an Avengers assemble of tech bastards. Like, there's no one involved in this story. And I'm like, what a decent person. And this is going to end well. I've seen the film Waterworld. I feel that's what we're going for. And I imagine Waterworld, but with Peter Thiel.
Starting point is 00:06:54 That would be terrible. Instead of Kevin Costner drinking his own piss, it's Peter Thiel drinking the blood of young men. Exactly. And piss. And piss. He wouldn't let that resource go either. If God didn't want us to suck the blood of young men exactly and piss and piss like he wouldn't let that resource go either if god didn't want us to suck the blood of young men he wouldn't have given us these vampire fangs they say they don't want to build like a city of libertarians i've lived with a libertarian
Starting point is 00:07:17 and he never put out the bins so i just see this as a big trash island you know who will put out the bins in a libertarian city? You know, none of them. I'm desperately resisting the urge to slide into an alternate universe here, Alison. So we'll move on to the next tech city story, which is Nevada. There's a bill being tabled in Nevada, which will allow tech companies to create governments. It's a horrifying, dystopian short story that I've definitely read somewhere. The idea of a corporation running its own government brings to mind these old school company towns that railway moguls and mining villains used to run in the old black and white times of the Wild West, as described in Hollywood documentaries of the same era.
Starting point is 00:07:55 On that note, by the way, swinging doors in the Wild West. Why would you have a kind of door, the opening of which immediately shuts down all of the business in your bar? That seems bad for the flow at best. Just leave the door open. Does that piano player even know the second half of any song? I never learned it. I'm always getting interrupted.
Starting point is 00:08:19 Back to the point, who trusts a corporation to run a government? I mean, they do already run the government in a sort of indirect way and occasionally get very affordable fines to remind them not to use children as biofuel or pour toxic radiation waste directly into old people the point of the government though is to stop corporations running society corporations are sociopaths who put money above literally every other consideration like if you were a person with none of the normal five senses but all you could taste or smell or hear or see was money you would be weird and you would make some weird decisions.
Starting point is 00:08:47 Corporations are like that. If you were going to be in a corporation's town, which corporation would you choose, Alison? Oh, I would choose Etsy. I feel, I just like, not only will you be looked after by an, I'm sure Etsy is evil in some way, but, you know, crafting. I feel that you can be evil,
Starting point is 00:09:11 but also have a great crafting industry, and it covers up a lot. So that's what I would go for. Etsy to make up a beautiful town. We'd have lots of cardigans, quite a lot of energy, and I mean that in a way that, like, you know, people who make stuff on Etsysy they have a certain energy and uh i think i've basically what i'm saying alice is that i feel i could
Starting point is 00:09:33 overpower them and rule them all so that's why i would go for some for etsy to make myself a city i think it'd be great uh tom ballard if you were to live in a corporation town, which corporation town would it be? KFC. Good choice. Why? Any other questions? Okay, right, why? Because they're delicious and those chips are insane and they're actually vegan, which is what I tell everybody whenever I get KFC as a former vegetarian.
Starting point is 00:09:58 You know, these chips, they're actually vegan. So it relieves the guilt. I like the, I mean, as as you say corporations already run governments i think this is a love this is a more honest system where we just assign various towns and states to all the different to shell and bp and every let them take over you know they're ruthlessly efficient and even though they're assholes and they are evil they're much more honest that they're entirely driven by profit as opposed to these assholes who are trying to tell us that they believe in good things for working people.
Starting point is 00:10:28 You know, f*** all that off and just let your town be run by Monsanto. And I can imagine so many wars over your secret recipe as well, like it's the Bayeux Tapestry or something, like to have that little piece of paper with the herbs and spices. It feels like something worth dying for and you want that in a city i would be very patriotic yes i'd have a lot of municipal pride if i if i was living in
Starting point is 00:10:53 kfc's ville with kfc bucks we'd pay each other in kfc that's the shit I'm talking about. Beautiful. Pigs can play video games with their snouts, as scientists have discovered. Tom Ballard, you're our pig snout expert. Tell us more about this. Just the snout, to be clear. I know nothing about the rest of the animal. My expertise is focused squarely at the front of these beautiful, beautiful creatures.
Starting point is 00:11:24 I don't think I've heard a more horrifying phrase than just a snout, like it says. Use protection even if it's just the snout. Exactly. This is a news story for the BBC, a very important news story. Science, I mean, obviously, what else would science be working on at the moment? There's not much else going on in the news. So scientists have been finding out whether or not pigs can play video games. It turns out they fully can.
Starting point is 00:11:50 They've been using their little snouts to operate the joysticks. And it turns out they're actually quite good. And even if you're not rewarding them with food, they're able to play the games and have a great time. So there you go. If you ask me, all gamers are pigs pigs stupid little piggies who are virgins living in their parents basement pathetically trapped in their adolescence so i wasn't that surprised that worked out this way but i did enjoy reading the article because i felt like
Starting point is 00:12:14 this is our first episode tom ballard and our audience is squarely nerds don't and virgins virgin piggies but um i just like this piece in the article that we read about it. Kate Daniels from Willow Farm in Worcestershire told BBC Radio 4's Today program that while the scientists might have been impressed, I don't think this will come as a surprise to anyone that works with pigs. She said, they're not playing Minecraft,
Starting point is 00:12:41 but that they can manipulate a situation to get a reward is no surprise at all. There's such a story there. Like a pig hurt Kate at some point. She has been burnt and manipulated and twisted around by some bitch of a pig and she's not giving us the full thing but I have to know more about Kate Daniels
Starting point is 00:12:58 from Willow Farm. I think she's watched Babe Pig in the City a few too many times. She's like, they can talk, they can communicate, they can make me cry. There's a lot going on there. But with this pig thing, I felt it was really bad news because I eat meat. And every time there's a new story about how intelligent pigs are, I really kind of think about how tasty they are versus it and they really have to they
Starting point is 00:13:26 really have to write poetry or they have to have to be able to bring out music for me to stop eating them that is their tastiness like computer games i'm still like no i'm gonna eat you but uh you know if babe didn't make me stop eating pigs uh this ain't gonna stop me either and uh that says more about my humanity than the pigs i feel very bad also i like how the article finished uh with this phrase still pigs are no match for humans when playing games or even less intelligent primates the same kind of experiment has been tried with chimpanzees and monkeys who have the advantage of opposable thumbs but were able to meet much higher requirements from the researchers. It's like, yeah, okay, they're pigs.
Starting point is 00:14:05 Why do you need to hang shit on these little piggy efforts? It's quite impressive for pigs to do this. Why does the BBC have such high expectations of pigs? Let's just celebrate the win and move on. Well, I mean, Musk's got a bet both ways. He's got chips in pigs and monkeys. That sounds like an accusation, Alice. These millionaires put chips in monkeys. That sounds like an accusation, Alice. These millionaires
Starting point is 00:14:28 put chips in monkeys and chips in pigs. This is the Neuralink program. He's got monkeys learning to play video games with their minds and he's just put microchips in pigs as well and presumably it's good for Parkinson's as I found out when I made a joke about it and all of his fanboys came after me to say actually there's some medical prospects in the in the works and actually he's very clever and i'm very disappointed in you for not uh valuing elon musk as he ought to be valued you stupid woman you stupid idiot did they find out what kind of games the monkeys were playing was it like
Starting point is 00:15:03 donkey kong so far it's just pong so they're still stuck in the 80s. Stupid 80s monkeys with their dumb semi-opposable thumbs and their stupid mullets. I was thinking of different types of games that pigs and monkeys could play, computer games. I was thinking of Cyber Pig 2077 would be really good. Also Hogger, which is old school, which used to be Frogger. Damn it!
Starting point is 00:15:29 I was trying to think of video games that I could squeeze a pig-based pun in there and I could get nothing at all. Hogger's great! Our review in our glossy magazine today is review of the Year of the Ox so far. What has the Year of the Ox promised and what has the year of the ox delivered apparently oxen oxes people born in the year of the ox are strong and robust they can enjoy a fairly healthy and long life and little illness so i feel perhaps we've already been left down on that front hard working and horny oxen are a kind of animal native to the sort of fields area of the i should have googled
Starting point is 00:16:05 this is it culturally insensitive to be as skeptical of southeast asian astrology as you are of all other astrology yes ask me the caucasian australian and an irish person yeah we we said it's okay therefore it is you asked two white people and they've given the thumbs up. I think it's fair enough. It would be more patronizing to say, oh, the Asian bullshit is good bullshit. You know, don't worry about that.
Starting point is 00:16:38 So the year of the ox has got plenty of beef with Kanye West. Kanye West has not had a good year this year. His wife has started to divorce him, apparently according to rumor, but there's something provable. His choir that he's hired for the past two years are suing him for bad work practices, right? So not only has she taken half of everything,
Starting point is 00:17:03 she's also turned the choir against him, right, which is terrible. And I think they shouldn't sue Kanye West because if you're working for religion, like the work conditions have never been great. I've read the Bible. You know, Noah's Ark, that was not a safe working environment. There's a lot of nepotism as well that goes on within Christianity. And it comes from the top i mean you know uh god uh made his decided his son would be the savior i'm sure there are other people that were more qualified but he was like no i'm not going to interview for this position i'm going to impregnate a 14-year-old. That was God's plan. So, yes, that's my view of the year through Kanye West.
Starting point is 00:17:48 That's excellent. Tom Ballard? I would give this year a C+. We've had the attack on the Capitol, COVID passed 100 million deaths, there was the coup d'etat in Myanmar, Rush Limbaugh died, that was pretty good, and RuPaul's Drag Race Season 13 has been a bit shit. So those are the main things, the big events uh i've put on weight
Starting point is 00:18:07 quite a bit this year as well i must say but it's fine i've just been telling everyone that i had covid and that was one of the symptoms because covid has a million symptoms dry mouth and you can't taste stuff or what like who gives a f**k no one's gonna know so covid belly is a new symptom and that's what i've been telling everybody hi i'm I'm Alice Fraser, and now it's time for a word from our sponsors to come out of my mouth. As you know, I'm a willing shill for any number of consumer goods, regularly eroding my own moral and ethical judgment in the name of money. This week, two men enter, two men leave. It's just a revolving door.
Starting point is 00:18:41 What a time for technology. But where's the gender representation? Revolving door. What a time for technology. But where's the gender representation? Revolving door for men. Good sun time, everyone, and what a time to be aligned. Please relax all of your various sphincters and prepare your open hips to receive our product of the week, second-hand vitamin tabules. Second-hand vitamin tabules are made from all of the vitamins
Starting point is 00:19:03 extracted from the urine of people who've just pissed out the vitamins they've taken because they don't actually need them. Secondhand vitamin tabules. Choke them down. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. 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.
Starting point is 00:19:36 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.
Starting point is 00:20:04 Everywhere. Acast.com. That's your ad section for today. Our next section is relationships news. Tom Ballard, you are a relationships expert. What's happening in the world of relationships right now? Well, yes, but I'm not focused on pig snouts it's mainly on relationships um i mean this this story kind of exhausts me but um a bodybuilder with a sex doll a sex doll wife wants to start seeing other robots and he also wants to f**k a big, I guess we could do some more details.
Starting point is 00:20:46 Yuri is his name. He's from Kazakhstan, and he flew to Moscow in a bid to meet another sex doll. He had a sex doll called Margo. Margo broke, and so he wanted to fly to Moscow to meet his new sex doll wife, who he'd been talking to online, only to be told that he couldn't leave the airport because of the pandemic.
Starting point is 00:21:06 So it's hurting everyone. After a breakup too. I know, and a breakdown and a breakup. Yeah. The article comes with a range of very disturbing photos of this man who I kind of found attractive, I have to say. I went through a lot of confusing feelings about Yuri, except for the hairy back I can do without that.
Starting point is 00:21:24 But he also wants to spread out into toy chickens as well. And the Daily Mirror thought that this was a crucial story for us to discuss as human beings in the year 2021, in the year of the ox. Well, Kazakhstan has done so much to rehabilitate its reputation after Borat that the people who leave kazakhstan aren't sort of sex maniacs with weird paraphilias but there you go and i mean look he's not hurting anyone is he well for me it feels like the most horrific version of the terminal i've ever heard of in my life i'd love
Starting point is 00:21:59 to see tom hanks with a cold chicken directed by steven spielberg he's not hurting anyone but you know it is squeezing me out and i don't like to be squeezed out and how did this become a new story who's who's who's he contacting who's his source who's his deep throat on this he's got a pr agent allison he's got a pr agent, Alison. He's got a PR agent. Yeah. What, for big chicken? He's making his own blend of herbs and spices and chicken. Yes, he would not be welcome in my KFC bill. Yuri shared a photo of himself stroking and tearing flesh off a chicken
Starting point is 00:22:42 to achieve autonomous sensory meridian response, a tingling sensation that can produce sexual pleasure. He added, after my sex with chicken meat, I really wanted to have such a toy and take care of it, which is kind of sweet. And he's considering calling the chicken Lola and plans to shoot X-rated content with it. So that's something to look forward to, everybody.
Starting point is 00:23:03 Finally, some more content on the internet. I mean, this is the beautiful thing about the Tadakken that is internet pornography. For every fetish, there's a fetish for that fetish. For every niche, there's a niche for that niche. And I'm sure he will find an audience of people who like watching him like what he's doing. I'm sure soon he'll f*** a Tadakken.
Starting point is 00:23:23 Yes, I'm sure he'll move on to that. That's the only way. I feel so sorry for him though. In a way that like he's spent, I'm sure thousands and thousands of pounds on this state-of-the-art sex doll. And to find out, no, it's chicken meat that he likes to f***.
Starting point is 00:23:39 It's like when a kid gets a very expensive toy at Christmas and they just play with the box. And you're just like... He's a man of simple taste. I wonder if he played with the box that she came in too as well. In the postmodern world, it's very hard to, you know, claim that there's any authority in the artist and, you know, death of the artist and all of that stuff.
Starting point is 00:24:03 But the person making the robot chicken can't have imagined this fate yeah maybe he's like one of the you know he's like a yeah a playwriter like i write the piece it goes out into the world people receive it however they want you know like who am i to dictate how people feel about my work but surely you could say please don't f*** the chicken that I made is that the new slogan for Bisto like please don't f*** the chicken I've made you're ruining dinner Christmas is ruined
Starting point is 00:24:34 there was talk about like sex doll sales spiking during the pandemic and lockdowns can I be rude and ask either of you ladies how whether you've found love and touching in your life during these wild, wild times. With a sex doll. Not with a sex doll necessarily, with a human being or a chicken as well. Whatever floats your boat, you know, no judgment.
Starting point is 00:24:57 Well, I have had a pigeon infestation. I yield my time. No further questions. Thank you. Times are hard. There's a little verbal exercise pull out here. She short sells seashells with a stacked deck on the stock floor and the deck that she stacks is shorted for sure.
Starting point is 00:25:24 Let's all stop GameStop stock stacking up on the game stop shop bobby bitcoin back to stock of pickled crypto how many stocks of pickled crypto did bobby bitcoin back that's our little little box there back to relationship news now tom ballard what's happening in the world of polyamory oh boy well i look you know absolutely no judgment good luck to happening in the world of polyamory? Oh, boy. Well, look, absolutely no judgment. Good luck to you if you can make polyamory work. It seems like an administrative nightmare to me. So much admin. A lot of admin.
Starting point is 00:25:53 Keeping in touch with all your various partners. But one article was sort of laying out the complications that the pandemic and lockdowns have hit the poly community, particularly if you're living living, you know, with one of your partners and you're trying to connect with the other one, or maybe you're just, you know, with one partner, you want to reach out, you want to start dating other people as well. This academic talked to an anonymous person that she was studying called Bald Guy, who was a 50 year old married poly man.
Starting point is 00:26:23 And he reported that his newest relationship seemed to be fizzling. I've met with her outside at a social distance of about 10 feet three times since the lockdown. We've only done video chat once. Messages are dwindling. She's partnered up monogamously with one of her partners too, which just seemed really sad for Baldguy, and I hope that he gets out there and finds some poly love.
Starting point is 00:26:44 There have been two divorces in my family over the past year. I feel like lockdown was the final straw for them, and they kind of snapped. Yeah, I feel like it's the tension test, isn't it? People are either snapping together and deciding to have a baby or they're... Yes, and my brother's going to have a baby, so that's a COVID baby. And then I fell in love. I met someone a week before lockdown happened,
Starting point is 00:27:07 and then we fell in love because we had nothing else to do. That seems to be where we've landed. I got infected with a virus of love. And finally, someone is eating from my wet market. Someone's going into bat for you. Someone's pangolin all your holland. I don't know. I'm just.
Starting point is 00:27:33 I'll take it. It's not bad. You're right, Tom Ballard. It's too much admin. It's hard enough maintaining a relationship with myself. I have to have a counselor for that to help me negotiate my relationship with myself. And because I'm such a people pleaser, I find myself just lying to her about how well she's doing so that she feels like she's doing a good job. Hey, Alice, you can do better than you.
Starting point is 00:27:54 All right. Don't count yourself out. Put yourself out there. Plenty more me in the sea. The birth, deaths and obituaries section now. Of course, we have a birth and a pending birth in the royal family with Princess Eugenie giving birth and ex-princess, not quite princess, semi-princess Meghan Markle
Starting point is 00:28:17 trying to cruelly overshadow Princess Eugenie's special moment by announcing her own baby pregnancy like a slut. But in terms of real British royalty, it is the death section, unfortunately. The passing of Captain Tom in the UK has led to an upsurge of grief, mourning, and completely deranged tributes to the British hero, including a picture created from leftover dog hair, a 37-year-old woman using body paint and makeup to transform herself into a 100-year-old man, someone making a sponge cake of Captain Tom's head and someone making a bong in his image
Starting point is 00:28:55 and trying to put that up for sale. Tom, what's your tribute to Captain Tom? That's one of the commandments, isn't it? Do not make a bong in my image. Thou shalt not. Look, this is posted on, I guess, Amazon. Yeah, Amazon Prime, right. It's made in China, and it is a Hero of War COVID ceramic bong,
Starting point is 00:29:18 bong pipe water bong for smoking bong bowl. And it is the head and face of Captain Tom. The bong's going right at the top of his head there. The work on his face is actually quite impressive. I quite like it. There's something very special about Amazon for sale syntax. It's very, it's unique. I think they really want to drive home this is a bong.
Starting point is 00:29:42 The description of it almost sounds like a Eurovision lyric for England or something like that. You know, Captain Tongue bong. It's a bong. But there's a little badge that says made in China with the Union Jack on it, which makes no sense whatsoever. And a photo of the real Captain Tongue with his little finger up, which is adorable.
Starting point is 00:30:00 I think it's great. I think, like, he's amazing. And he's 100 years old. Like, how old does someone have to live before you sort of say, we don't need to grieve this person, we just need to say, hey, it was awesome this guy was around, wasn't he? Let's, you know, crack out a bong in his honour and celebrate all things Captain Tom.
Starting point is 00:30:19 I think that's fine. Do you feel honoured to share your name with Captain Tom or are there so many Toms that it loses its sparkle? No, I think he and I were very close. If someone made a bong out of my head when I die, I would be so, I would be truly honoured. That's better than a knighthood to me. That means that you're speaking to real people, you know.
Starting point is 00:30:38 You're connecting with the working class. That's good shit. I'd like my actual head to be used as a bong. Like, I'd want my actual head to be used as a bomb. I'd want to be that important. Like this colonialist English person that just has the head of an Irish woman as a bomb.
Starting point is 00:30:59 Like a bingeman. Alison Spittel, I promise to personally run the campaign to reclaim your bong head and have it returned to its native land. Yeah, exactly. Just me and the British Museum. Swap you for Oliver Cromwell's head. Oh, any time, mate. Any time.
Starting point is 00:31:24 And all new news news now. this is the section of our magazine where we touch on recent discoveries of very old things so the stories are less uh cool new discovery and more we missed this for ages egypt has announced dozens of ancient discoveries in the past couple of years as part of a sweeping new tourist recruitment effort in which it attempts to draw attention away from recent civic and religious unrest and back to its usp of hey look at this old stuff mostafa waziri the secretary general of the supreme council of antiquities announced that american and egyptian archaeologists had unearthed what could be the oldest known beer factory one of the most prominent archaeological sites in ancient egypt they found evidence showing
Starting point is 00:32:02 the use of beer in sacrificial rites, apparently in ancient Egypt, royal sacrificial rites. And I don't know how I feel about it. As a Buddhist and someone who doesn't love the taste of off-bread, I don't drink beer, but if I were to be planning a royal ritual sacrifice, it seems only kind and straightforward to include some sort of anaesthetic. Yeah, I don't know how I feel about alcohol at a sacrifice. It might get a bit leery, you know, and you I feel about alcohol at a sacrifice. It might get a bit leery, you know, and you don't want that at a sacrifice.
Starting point is 00:32:29 You know when people kind of do football songs or anything like, they're not singing, they're not singing, they're not singing anymore. It's their sacrifice. So I feel like beer at a sacrifice is just a step too far for me. Fun fact, Captain Tom went to this beer factory on his gap year. Not a lot of people know that. That's where he used to get absolutely slashed, mate.
Starting point is 00:32:53 Loved it. Yeah, he's not even in the army. His nickname is Captain for an incident that happened. All right, Captain! Alright! I like the way we're doing revisionist history already on Captain Tom. Exposed.
Starting point is 00:33:15 Got a bit toasty. Captain Tom fanfic. The kind of fanfic you write when you've taken a hit from a Captain Tom bomb. I want Danny Dyer to play Captain Tom in like a biopic. NHS is getting a bit tasty. Talking about old things, did you see that there's a discovery found in Cambridgeshire of a rare Roman penis carving? I did not see this.
Starting point is 00:33:43 Tell me about it. So what I love is that they describe this penis carving as highly significant, which, you know, I don't think any penis is truly highly significant. It's definitely been said to me before someone sent a dick pic before. Would you like to see something highly significant?
Starting point is 00:34:04 And it's a rare carved Roman phallus that's been discovered by archaeologists working on finds that they unearthed during a major road upgrade in Cambridgeshire. And they say it's a sign of virility and also that they used it to advertise flour and baking. And I think the Romans had it all wrong. I mean, there's no food that i want advertised with a mascot a penis like that just seems i'd rather tony the tiger i don't want
Starting point is 00:34:33 i don't want a penis i don't want a penis with a face on it going it's okay do you know what i mean like just a penis jizzing dry flour in a puff of dust. Yeah. That's how I imagine it. Like a zombie coughing in a cartoon. What I love is like, I was thinking about like dick, like it basically is a dick carving, right? And a dick carving sounds both like a children's offer and a body modification.
Starting point is 00:35:04 Like that's what I want. Adapted from the charming Dick Carving novel. Yes! The pig that could play computer games. By Dick Carving. I didn't realise that. It is like a dick pic being sent through time, isn't it? Just history.
Starting point is 00:35:31 It really is. Sending a dick pic to us here today. It's beautiful. Can you imagine that? As a... What are they called? Those things that you had to do in school where you got a shoebox and you buried it full of like pogs.
Starting point is 00:35:47 Time capsules. And other artifacts. Yeah, just a dick pic for that future lady. Erect penises like hope spring eternal. Speaking of old wood, French experts are combing the country's forests for centuries old oaks to rebuild the Notre Dame spire that was destroyed in a fire. Because why let one ancient monument fall
Starting point is 00:36:09 when you can rebuild it with the corpse of another ancient monument? Tom Ballard, you're our old wood expert. F*** you. Yeah, they're basically just looking... They specifically need trees that are, like, between 150 and 200 years old to replicate the spire in the Notre Dame Cathedral that burnt down exactly the same. It needs to be exactly the same, according to the French.
Starting point is 00:36:34 That's very important to Macron. That's so French. It's so French. I just... Yeah, I just feel like... I don't know. Is anyone going to notice the difference in the wood, really? And shouldn't we leave every possible tree that's alive
Starting point is 00:36:47 standing at this stage, what with the planet being on f***ing fire? Maybe they could, you know, use some different old things. Maybe they could use Captain Tom. You know, maybe it could be memorialised forever in that little spire.
Starting point is 00:37:05 They could use him. What is the Notre Dame Cathedral spire but a penis carving, really? Very true. Very true. We're Captain Tom on there. Whack the penis carving on there. Bob's your uncle. You've got a very interesting spire that will never, ever burn down.
Starting point is 00:37:23 And also, like, it would scare people into believing in god as well you'd be like there must be a god like this monstrosity is made you know this is a god that i fear it's definitely satan yes satan is definitely real as i look at this well that's all the time we have for the show today. That is the end of the episode one of The Gargle. Thank you so much, Tom Ballard, Alison Spittel. Have you got anything to plug? Get it? Like the show? Yep.
Starting point is 00:37:58 Sorry, Alison, you go. So my Twitter name is Alison Spittel. I run a film party every three days on Twitter called Call Video Party. I have a coffee account and Instagram is at Alison Spittel. No gigs. No gigs. I'm in the Northern Hemisphere. I'm in the Northern Hemisphere.
Starting point is 00:38:18 I can't wait to hear your plugs, guys. I can't wait to sink into despair as I hear what you're doing. Tom Bellard, what are you plugging i've got a few orgies coming up i'm gonna be licking a bunch of door handles um uh my show is called we are all in this it's coming to the adelaide fringe festival and the melbourne comedy festival it's about all the issues that occurred last year. I'm very sorry Alison, but they will be happening. And my Twitter is at TomCBallard and I have a podcast
Starting point is 00:38:52 called Like I'm a Six-Year-Old, which people can listen to if they so wish. Oh yeah, I have a podcast too. Too late. Too late. You had your chance and it's all over. Wheel of Misfortune with Ferb Brady. Now you go. Sorry. I will be doing the Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Starting point is 00:39:08 with my show Kronos. If you're in Australia, if you're not in Australia, you can join my Patreon for that to be streamed. I will be streaming it during the festival. Patreon.com slash Alice Fraser for a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts and comedy. The Last Post is still happening monthly. and if you want to download that, you just stay subscribed to The Last Post feed, which I assume you're already subscribed to.
Starting point is 00:39:32 Thank you for listening to The Gargle today. We'll be back next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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