For a brief span of time Andy Zaltzman cashed in his connections with the Jewish world-wide news organization known as "the media" to get a column in the Times of London for The Bugle. And for a few weeks, the Bugle Column appeared in The Times, until said media took a look at the history of Andy’s Judaism, listened to the anti-Bugle lobby and canned it.
Reviews[]
Awards[]
During its brief life, the Bugle Column received such rave reviews as:
- The Zaltzman Award for Best Column Ever Written
- The Bugler's Cross for Humorical Journalism
- Awesomeness Award from the Barely Decipherable Academy of Words (Alpaca, Ontario Chapter)
- The "No I've never heard of it... now get out of my way" Award from some random Londoner
The American's Thoughts[]
Though the American has never officially weighed in on the Bugle Column, his thoughts would probably go something like the following, if he did:
"To be honest, I'm not a fan. I mean, The Times of London? Let's get one thing straight; there's only one kind of "Times" and it's from New York, you got that? We invented words."
The Bugle Columns and their Hidden Sleeper-Cell Messages[]
Unbeknown to The Times, Andy took the opportunity to insert coded messages to the sleeper cells across the globe. It’s unclear exactly how the messages were smuggled into the column, but it is clear that they were, and that they prompted action of some sort by the effected.
| Number | Title | Date Appeared | Code Word(s) | Sleeper-Cell Instructions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rearanging the balloons on the Titanic | 27 September | Marsupial | Rise up against the knobby elbowed. |
| 2 | O Zeus help us with this bailout, we pray. | 04 October | Embroidery | Unleash the Platypuses! |
| 3 | It all comes down to mud, glorious mud. | 11 October | Daffodil | Change your socks. |
| 4 | A sporting chance to be great again. | 18 October | Pine Tree | Go buy exactly 21.6 mm of electrical wire from an Estonian street vendor. |
| 5 | Hey, moving house is always stressful. | 25 October | Boogaloo | [Activate Anti-Impala Combat Conditioning] |
| 6 | The man who holds the keys to the White House - and to a very fast car. | 01 November | Insomnia | Ignore all red and orange coloured traffic signs |
| 7 | Hurrah! No more diving behind the sofa. | 08 November | Chlorine | Petition (force) someone to legally change his or her name to Albert Pajols. |
| 8 | Don't pay teachers. That’ll learn 'em. | 22 November | Rotary Telephone | Ingest a pinapple whole. |
The Power of Gigantor[]
Andy seems to have realized the column was doomed to failure at some point, and so set out to make the best of the situation by not only using it as a vehicle for activating secret sleeper-cells to do his bidding, but also to imbibe the reader with the power of Gigantor, the mythical octopus creator of the island of Hawaii.
Andy set out to painstakingly craft the wording of each column so that when it was read out loud simultaneously by the first nine actors to portray The Doctor from Doctor Who (naturally skipping Doctor #7 Colin Baker), it would give the listener said supernatural powers. Knowing that three of the actors had passed, Andy made sure to only use words from the scripts from episodes staring the late actors, so that they could be cut-and-pasted together from archived tapes.
Unfortunately for Andy, in June of 1979, Zeus lost to St. Andrew in a game of darts. In his anger, Zeus randomly threw a few bolts of lightning to the Earth, one of which destroyed a warehouse where the BBC had been storing the archived tapes. Though several copies of lost episodes have surfaced over the decades, none of them have the Doctor saying "elephantine." And so, sadly, Mr. Zaltzman's dream of gifting his newly born child with the powers of Gigantor seems unlikely ever to come to fruition.
Fuck you Chris