How can a satirist keep up these days?

The Bugle Live Leicester Square Theatre, London ★★★★★

What a time to be a satirist! Or is it? When the Government is the one getting all the laughs, it can leave comedians with nowhere to go. Have I Got News For You’s Boris special was a pale imitation of the real thing. The Liz Truss regime saw off Mock The Week. Spitting Image RIP. Even Frankie Boyle is struggling to outperform the clowns of Westminster. Satire, it seems, is dead.

Enter The Bugle, the satirical podcast that has been marking its 15th year with a UK tour. Launched in 2007 (who knew podcasts were a thing back then?),

Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver co-hosted the political takedown for nine years, until the success of Oliver’s HBO show Last Week Tonight saw him leave Zaltzman (left) to his own devices.

Ever since, The Bugle has used a rolling cast of hosts, including the latest all-female line-up of Aussie Alice Fraser, Brit Tiff Stevenson and British-Filipina Ria Lina – as Zaltzman noted, a refreshing antidote to the male Oxbridge hierarchy so often associated with both comedy and politics.

The Bugle takes the form of an ‘audio newspaper for a visual world’, with sections such as Top Story, In The Bin and Sports News, effortlessly corralled by Zaltzman, who performs a similar role on Radio 4’s The News Quiz. The latest edition saw the team riff amusingly on the lettuce vs Liz Truss battle, with Stevenson suggesting a butternut squash could well outlast the next leader, while Zaltzman reminded us how much worse things might have been had Ed Miliband won the General Election in 2015.

More than ever, satire has to be consumed on the spot. So catch The Bugle on its day of release because, as we are all now painfully aware, 24 hours is an awful long time in politics.