Born in 2007 it spent the first several hundred episodes with John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman at the helm. John and Andy had already proven themselves as a double act to half-filled rooms and underwhelmed radio commissioners so once John moved to New York this was the inevitable blockbuster outcome that the public needed.

Despite building a strong audience (around a million downloads a month, and over 200 million listens in total), The Bugle has managed to get dropped by The Times, Radiotopia and multiple producers, fortunately Chris, the least popular of all, has stuck around since 2010.

For the record, The Bugle was in no way dropped by The Times (owned then by News International) for comments made on the phone hacking scandal. It may also be false to assume we left Radiotopia because we were desperately unprofitable.

Since its 2016 relaunch it has been hosted by Andy Zaltzman with his private militia of co-hosts including Hari Kondabolu from the US, Anuvab Pal from India, Alice Fraser from Australia and, from the UK, Nish Kumar and Andy’s multi-podcast-award-winning sister Helen. We’ve also started doing live shows, including multiple international tours of the USA, Australia and Europe.

In recent years we decided there was not enough Bugle in the world. Regular co-host Alice Fraser has subsequently launched two spin off shows – The Last Post entered the world, casting an interdimensional look at topical news, and in 2021, The Gargle joined the family, with a weekly take on all the news, except the politics. We’ve also adopted Tiff Stevenson’s brilliant interview series Tiny Revolutions. In addition a popular YouTube channel, enhanced by the video calls that kept the show going during the global blip of 2020-21.