No Such Thing As A Fish - 168: No Such Thing As Lord Cauldronhead

Episode Date: June 9, 2017

In a special episode covering the 2017 general election, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss policies regarding yetis, the underwater constituency, and (of course) the election in Kenya.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden, also coming to you from the morning after the 2017 British general election. My name is Dan Shriver, I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunter Murray, Andrew Hunter Murray, so I'm tired, Andrew Hunter. My name is Dan Shriver, I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunter Murray, and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last night, the evening of the election, and in no particular order, here we go.

Hey Dan, you sound a bit tired. I'm very tired. Try and spot which one of us stayed up the latest and the longest. Well, the problem was is that I didn't watch it on TV, I think all of us stayed watching it on TV. You made the mistake of watching it on Plus One, so you got even less sleep than the rest of us. I watched it on my iPhone in bed with the lights off.

My left eye, which did all the watching, because my right eye was in a pillow, is really twitching right now. But because it's on the left, it'll be very happy with the results. Okay, starting with fact number one, and that is Anna. Yeah, my fact is the really relevant to this result fact. All forfeited election deposits go straight to the Queen. And this is just the thing I found out. I was reading the Electoral Commission Guide for Returning Officers.

As you do. As you do. In an exciting time like this, you've got to do exciting things. And yeah, there was just a rule in it, it's like for returning officers, so for anyone internationally listening, returning officers are the people who are responsible in every constituency for organizing and announcing the election. And this is the long guide as to exactly how they go about doing that. What it says in the guide is, if a candidate does not poll more than 5% of the total number

of valid votes cast, that deposit will be forfeited, you must send any forfeited deposits to Her Majesty. So the deposits are £500 that people put up if they want to be an MP, again for international listeners. And then if you get under 5%, you fall for the deposit, but I didn't realize it went to Her Majesty. I can't find anything else about this online. It's amazing though.

So in 2010, UKIP alone lost £229,000 in deposits. No way! Whoa! And the Green Party lost £163,500. No wonder the Queen's so rich. Yeah, hello! In 2010, there was about a million pounds in lost deposits. That is a lot.

It is a lot. Wow! The idea of this deposit is to stop frivolous campaigns, isn't it? Yeah, but it does a very good job. I think the Montserrathing Looney party would agree. In 1983, they had a look at this, the Home Affairs Committee, to see if it was too much and if it was stopping poorer people from running. And they kind of thought, well, maybe it is, but actually it's worth it because for your

500 quid, even if you lose, you get free postage for your campaign address and you get free use of buildings for public meetings and you get a great deal of publicity, they said. So almost the 500 quid is worth it. And they actually recommended it should be up to £1,000, but it never was. I might just enter, and not even campaign, just for the sake of getting some publicity for myself and some free buildings. We were going to enter you, weren't we? Because you live in the same constituency as Jeremy Corbyn, but he did quite well in

this one, didn't he? Yeah, you could have swung it, had I? I could have! Aren't they saying that he did the best that any politician has ever done? Well, no, he didn't win the election, did he? But in his constituency. Yeah, he got the highest ever vote in Islington North. Wow!

Which is the smallest constituency, I didn't know, it's also mine, so I had a personal interest in that. Really? Yeah, it's the smallest by each country. It's just you and Jezza, isn't it? Yeah! Do you know what the largest one is? No, what?

It's Ross Sky and Locke Arbor in Scotland, which is 1,632 times larger than Islington North. Really? Yeah. So I worked that out and I worked out that if Jeremy Corbyn's allotment was increased by that amount, then it would be the size of the Vatican City. Wow! Maybe it will be now.

I'm just on the Queen very quickly, so overseas listeners might not know this, but the Queen's not allowed to vote in these elections. She is allowed to vote, but she just doesn't. Sorry, she chooses not to, and every one of... She just doesn't care. Apathy's a real problem in this country. It goes right up to the top. It's strange because she's old, you know, you think she would care more.

Yeah, of course, she doesn't want the votes to go higher because she wants this delicious money from the last deposit. So sorry, you've just got 4.999% of the vote in the constituency. See the Queen going, yes! Yank! But she spends most of her time in these periods, and for the referendum and so on, just denying that she has an opinion, which I love, every single royal member just seems to spend their whole period, any time they're mentioned in the press in these periods, denying that

what they've said is in some way alluding to an opinion about what way people should vote for... Well, they can have opinions on things like ketchup or mayonnaise, or, you know, dupe for a buzz cut or long hair. They're just not supposed to have political views. Yes, no, exactly. There's not any opinion. No, no.

Guys, obviously me... Have you heard of Prince Charles? He consistently writes to everyone who will... But they were leaked, weren't they? He hasn't openly done that. That reminds me of the Emperor of Japan, Akihito, who's not allowed to give any opinion on politics at all, not even just in elections, just never, ever, and it's in the Constitution that comes from the end of the Second World War.

And so he wasn't allowed to abdicate. He wasn't allowed to say, I want to abdicate. He had to kind of do an announcement alluding to the fact that he might want to, and then people had to kind of infer from what he said that he wanted to abdicate. So wink, wink, stuff like that stuff. Wow. I'm pretty tired of this. You didn't...

You may not have seen that in the news last night, but they passed that he is now allowed to abdicate. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah. Did you see the... Just on, like, process, weird election, electoral process, if it's a tie, it comes down to a

coin toss, which obviously never happens. But there was that guy in Anne's constituency, so one of our colleagues, Anne, used to live up North, and it's in Northeast Vife, and I think the person who won was an SMP candidate who won by two votes this morning, right? Yeah. Wow. Just quite two. Two votes.

Oh, my God. So that's just one person, isn't it? Yeah. Did you guys see the Green Party candidate from Ashefield? No. Okay, so his name's Aaron Rangy. He had to leave the count as it was going on because he had to get home to get some sleep because he has an A-level history exam at nine o'clock this morning.

So he's 18 years old. He's the Green Party candidate, and it just got too late for him, so he was like, I can't stay for the final count. Got my exam. They should let you off having a history exam if you're making history. Yes. As he definitely did in the Green Party. Yeah, I'd take it he won the seat, presumably, right?

I have no idea. No, I mean, he didn't win the seat. You know the deposit thing that we were starting off with? Did you know it used to be a lot harder? So until, I think, 1918, or definitely in 1918, it was £150 that you had to put up, but obviously that was a lot more money then. Yeah, it was about, I think they worked it out as being about £6,600. And you had to win 12.5% of the vote, otherwise you would forfeit your deposit.

Oh, really? So it was a much higher barrier. Another place you need to get 12.5% is in Japan, and do you know how much the Japanese deposit is that you have to pay? No. It's £3 million, which is the equivalent of £21,064, and you need 12.5%. But then they don't get all those hilarious fringe candidates that can entertain them during a tedious campaign, right?

I suppose not, unless they're extremely rich. Very wealthy ones, yeah. Just another thing on process, if you... I really think, I think process was the big winner in this election, don't you? It was certainly what I voted for. I just wrote it in my box. I love that I'm doing this, the way I'm doing it. So I didn't realise that actually, as long as you make your intention clear on the ballot

paper, then your vote counts. So I thought you had to do a cross or maybe a tick, but if you draw a penis, as long as it's within the lines of the candidate in whose box you've drawn a penis, it does count as a vote. And so there was, for instance, there was a Tory MP, Glyn Davis, in 2015, who held on to the Montgomeryshire constituency in Wales, and he personally thanked the person who voted for him by drawing a penis in his box. But it sort of depends how you feel about penises, doesn't it?

You're right. So do you think, when people call you a dick, Andy, do you look at them and think, yeah, but he probably liked penises. Actually on that spoiling votes thing, in the last British election, 2015, there were 97,870 spoiled votes, right? The last time the Gambia had an election, there were two. Really? Two spoiled ballots in the whole country.

In the whole country. What? Because the Gambian voting system is really cool. If you've got three candidates, you have three buckets next to each other, or no, you've got three barrels next to each other, and they've got a little shoot at the top, and you push, you get given a marble, and you push the marble through the little shoot at the top, and it dings a bell so everyone can hear if you've got to vote. So how do you spoil your vote, though?

Do you put your penis in there? To spoil your vote, you have to balance a marble on top of the barrel, and only two people did it in the whole country in the election. No. What? You're kidding. That's incredible. I've seen it since the 60s.

It really works for them. But can you imagine if you spoiled your ballot by putting your penis in the tube, and then the electoral guy comes along and goes, do you like penises now? The bell keeps going dingalingalingalingaling. That's actually more akin to the word ballot, isn't it? Because ballot comes from, I think, a word that means little ball, because it used to be that you actually put a ball into a box. Is that right?

I think so. We can start thinking about moving on. Yeah. Is anyone got more stuff to say? One process, Anna. So much process. I do like the first ballot box. She's got more than process.

I know you said it in jest, desperately hoping to move on. Look, this is a great fact, guys. It's not all about this election. The first ever secret ballot, when it was introduced in the UK, was in 1872, and the seal of the first ballot box was made with a licorice stamp. So there are famous licorices in the UK that are called Pontifract licorices, and they're like black sweets, and they have a stamp on them, which says Pontifract Licorice and has a picture of Pontifract Castle.

And when they had to close the first ballot box in 1872, they had to whip one over. It was in Pontifract, so they got one of those stamps over from Pontifract, and they stamped it with a licorice stamp. That's really cool. That's very cool. A licorice logo on it. It's a good process. Great process, guys.

Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that only one political party in this 2017 election offered to do anything about yetis. Did they get your vote? I didn't. I've only found out about it too late. Yeah. What's the party?

The party is, it goes by a number of names, actually. Yeah. It's sort of formally as its main headline name, known as Church of the Militant Elvis Party. It's also known as the Bus Pass Elvis Party. Oh, yeah. This year they ran under the title Elvis and the Yeti Himalayan Preservation Party. So there is a common theme that runs through their names, isn't there?

Yes, party. Yep. Yeah. So the guy who was running is a guy called David Bishop, aka Lord Byro, and he was promising this year that if they were voted in that he would do stuff about the potential threats from North Korea and launching missiles, because if they mislaunched a missile in the wrong direction, it might hit Tibet and harm Yetis. So that was his protection policy that he wants to get in on.

And he actually was stepping down. He said he was going to step down completely and then did his own personal U-turn on it because Theresa May called a general election when he thought, I'm not going to be in fit state in a few years to come. But then he said when he heard that Mick Jagger was going on tour again this autumn, he thought, OK, I can run too. And so actually this snap election has been bad news for these kind of slightly unusual candidates.

They've not been really able to organize things very quickly. There was a guy who had the rebooting democracy party. He's standing in Cambridge and he's got this idea that he wants to change democracy, make it more direct. He wanted to fight all 650 seats in the election, but due to the snap election he was only able to get into one. But his idea is to go into sortition, which is basically that everyone randomly gets chosen as an MP.

So rather than people becoming career MPs and deciding they want to work their way up into parliament, you basically, it's like jury duty, you get chosen. And they did that in ancient Greece. It's called a sortition. Right. It's quite an old type of democracy. So they put all our names in a hat and then they just pick it out. And they go, you're an MP.

Great. And did that go well for ancient Greece? Are they still doing that today? The reason is called ancient Greece. This guy Lord Byro, he actually 2014 in a by-election in Nottingham, he got 67 votes. Part of his campaign promises were that he was going to try and get OAPs, a 30% discount at brothels. He got more votes in that by-election than the Lib Dems.

Is it possible that they miss her and thought he was talking about Brussels? This brothel's bureaucracy is what we need to stand out. Well, here's the other thing you might have liked him actually, Andy, because one of his other policies was that he wanted to protect public toilets from being wiped out. So why does that be like public toilets? I just remember ages ago, we were talking about public toilets and you had a big thing about your theory of the high street public toilet being wiped out. Well, a lot of them have been cut and yeah, it is a substantial problem for people.

If you're trying to get around, you need to access to a public toilet, as loads of people do and you don't want to go into a restaurant or a cafe or something because often they're snippy about letting you use their lose and it's a massive problem. That is actually a problem. Exactly. And the fact that you have to pay for it a lot as well. Exactly. So in some American cities they have laws, I think now that you're not allowed to charge

for going to the toilet or at least they're trying to get them in. Yeah. So it is a big, big subject. It is. Lord Myro's on the case. Lord has been talking about it in this whole campaign. It's all been Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. Process, process, process.

Brothels, Brussels, Brothels. These weird candidates are fantastic. So Lord Buckethead has been a big character in the election. He's incredible. He or someone dressed like him has been standing on and off since 1987. No. Yeah. Yeah.

And he stood against that in 1987 with a promise to destroy Birmingham and replace it with a star base. And he stood in this election saying we should defer the decision on whether to destroy Birmingham and replace it with a star base until 2022, at least. So you were implying there, I think, that perhaps it's not the same Mr Buckethead. Is it like Doctor Who? He kind of regenerates. I think it might be.

Yeah. There's a chance, isn't there? They should have had more than one Darth Vader, you know, like send, you know, just like, you know, there was only ever one Darth Vader, but you could just put another guy in there for like minor battles. He's wearing a mask, isn't he? Yeah. I guess so.

Yeah. Why was there no like duplicate expendable Darth Vader? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. He's just like the stormtroopers. Yeah. Tweet from Lord Buckethead this morning, 249. A new Buckethead record.

Something to celebrate, eh? It's so funny watching him. I mean, it was already a horrible moment for Theresa May, I think, by that point, when she was standing there and he was directly behind her. Was it all he was? Oh no, actually, he was up quite on the edge. Yeah, he was. It wasn't as bad as Tim Farron, because he had Mr Fishfinger stood behind him.

Tim Farron did. That was it. Okay, let's explain this for overseas listeners who aren't known this. Okay. So like Dan says, we do have these very odd fringe candidates and some of them like to dress up. And Tim Farron, who's the head of the Liberal Democrats, who's the third biggest party in England, no, he's the head of like the fourth or fifth biggest party.

He was going up against... Which actually, you might need to explain to people in Britain as well, given the state of Tim Farron's campaign. He ran against a guy called Mr Fishfinger who dressed like a fishfinger. And there was a man called Mr Fishfinger running because wasn't there a... There was a Twitter poll. So there was a Twitter user called Skip Licker who just asked the question as just a normal guy.

His first name Skip, second name Licker, and he asked, we're all completely losing the poll. Do you think that's his real name? Of course it's his real name. Why would it be his Twitter name if it wasn't his real name? It would be a weird thing to make up, wouldn't it? Why would you? Anyway, he asked the question to Twitter, who would you trust more, MP Tim Farron or

Fishfinger? And the Fishfinger's got 95% of the vote, and so this guy ran on... Tim Farron almost lost his deposit in the fishfinger competition. But Mr Fishfinger is amazing, so if you go on his website, I wanted to count the puns on it for this, but it was going to take me too much time. But he ran on the pledge to Hake Britain Great Again. He had a manifesto in which there was a policky document. He talks about his own cod-stituency.

He has a list of endorsements, which is quite labor, but I guess Fish have a dorsal fin that's a big deal for them. I was just wondering, we've explained all about the election, but do we need to explain for foreign listeners what a Fishfinger is? Fishfinger is a piece of fish with breadcrumbs on it and deep-fried, and it's delicious. Oh, it's wonderful. It's better than Tim Farron. But yeah, and so the point is that he was standing behind Tim Farron as Tim Farron made

his speech, his acceptance speech. But Theresa May had also had to stand next to Buckethead, and someone dressed as Elmo. Yes. A massive Elmo. And I think only got three votes, although I might be wrong. I said Buckethead, wipe the floor with him then. Buckethead absolutely destroyed Elmo at the election. Well, with a bucket for a head, he can do a lot of wiping, I suppose.

He mopped the floor with him. So I think we did a fact before on this podcast about people who got no votes in a general election. It was before the rules were changed, and then you were allowed to vote for yourself. But I think someone has got just one vote, a guy called Rainbow George Weiss, who stood in 13 different constituencies at one election before they changed the rules and said, you can really only stand in one constituency. And he stands for the Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket Party.

And in 2005 in Cardiff North, he got one vote. And it wasn't from him either, because he wasn't registered in that constituency. Like Paul Nuttall. Paul Nuttall didn't vote for himself, because he's not registered in the constituency where he was standing. Really? Paul Nuttall, you mean ex-UKIP leader, because as we came in here, he resigned, didn't he? That's true.

He caretaker between Farage leader. Did you know, I think Winston Churchill couldn't vote for himself in the 1945 election. Really? Yeah, so there was it being... He lost that, didn't he? He sure did. Was it by one vote? It was not by one vote.

It was a bureaucratic cock up. So there was a lot of disorganisation, because it was the end of the war, people had bigger fish to fry, and they didn't have enough ballot papers. They're bigger fish fingers to fry. So you had to use your ration card as your ballot paper to prove who you were, and he just wasn't registered. And so he rocked up and didn't have a legal vote. That's pretty bad after you've defeated fascism.

So they're not a bit... But it's process, isn't it? It's all about process. You've got to respect it. Do you know that the joint leader of the Green Party, so the Green Party has dual leadership, and one of the leaders is this guy called Jonathan Bartley, and he's also a drummer for a blues band called The Mustangs, who've reached number five in the iTunes Blues chart. Wow.

And they were nominated in 2010 for Best Band of the British Blues Awards. And I've listened to them, and they're genuinely really good. Really? Yeah, really fun to listen to. So well done, Jonathan. So speaking of Green, but in the drug sense, Green, Mr. Byro, Lord Byro as well, he once wanted to nationalise marijuana, cannabis, and he wanted to call it British grass. Very good.

Just on process, Anna, if you are high on drugs or indeed drunk, they can't stop you from voting. Oh, yeah. Even if you're the queen. And also, if you're wearing a bucket on your head or something like that, they can't stop you from voting. You don't have to show your face. You're kidding.

No. Oh, wow. Well, otherwise you wouldn't be able to vote in a bucket. Yeah. I guess not. And we'd find out who Lord Buckethead is when he goes to vote. There was a party that lost all of their deposits, and they lost between 1992 and 2001. They contested 500 seats in that time.

They lost every single deposit. You'll probably remember them. The Natural Law Party. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Well, they're the levitating ones. Yes, they weren't. They were the ones who thought they could levitate.

They believed, so a lot of listeners might remember them, a lot of listeners might not. They believed you could do this thing called yogic flying, which is basically bouncing around with your legs crossed on your bottom with big hot water bottles underneath you. Oh, wow. And they believed that the first policy, right, if they had won in 1997, was that they would make a special air service from the armed forces of 7,000 yogic flyers to hover in and fix everything in the country. Wow.

I remember, I'm sure you told me this, Sandy, that the trick to yogic flying has three steps. Oh, this is mine that I remember researching for one of the series. You couldn't say it then. What was it? Because I can't remember. Oh, it was just the yogic flying. Yeah, the way you get there is a three-stage process. So I think stage one is standing on one foot, and stage two is being able to hop on one

foot. And stage three is full levitation. And I remember a proud statement by the yogic flying institute saying, we have successfully completed two of the three crucial steps. OK, it is time for fact number three, and that is James. OK, my fact this week is that Kenya have an election later this year, and they're running out of symbols for their candidates, which means that candidates are now using symbols such as a milk packet, a termite, and a robot.

OK. The Conservatives ran with the robots as their main thing this time round, didn't they? Did they? Yeah. What was the piece of satire? No, that was the joke about trees and... It doesn't matter. Guys, you two are tired, aren't you?

That was a very strong, very strong joke. OK. So, yeah, this actually happens in quite a lot of places in the world, and it's how important it is to have a symbol next to your name. So we know in Britain we have symbols for the Conservatives and Labour like the Rose and the Torch, and in America they would have the Elephant and the Donkey and whatever they have over there, but in lots of places in the world you have a lot of low literacy. And so if you can't read the name of your preferred candidate, you need to have the

symbol, and so they need a symbol which is really memorable and striking. And they thought a termite was just... They thought a termite would be there, yes. People want to vote for that. I might. I would. Would you? Ants are very industrious, and they're hard-working, and they get the job done, and they...

I think that's the idea. They club together and they achieve things. Yeah. Was the milk carton half full or half empty, or was it a full of milk? It depends how you look at it, Anna. It depends what kind of person you are. No, it was just... You couldn't look inside the milk carton, because it was just a depiction of one.

And actually this happens, like I said, quite a lot around the world. In India, the Election Commission, a lot symbols to you. And so there's a big long list of 164 available symbols, and you provide them three of them that you would like, and then they choose one of the three if it's available. Yeah, that's so cool. And they have bizarre ones, don't they? Like, they have... I was reading an article that was saying, I think they've modernized their symbols lately,

because they've recently added a sewing machine, so I don't know how modern they've got, but they have scissors as one of the symbols you can choose, a stethoscope. Do they have rock and paper? It's a three-way marginal. An ice cream going for the youth vote? Yeah. They have... They do it in Egypt as well.

I saw the actual symbols, I've got the picture here. They used everything from a tractor to a ballistic missile to a tap to... This is my favorite one, a mobile phone. But the mobile phone symbol has a picture in the mobile phone, like a background, and I'm pretty sure it's the politician who was running. But do you know the thing with Egypt is it's not just that you choose three and they choose for you, it's actually completely random that they choose the symbol for you. No way.

So you say, I'm going to run in Egypt, and they just randomly pick you a symbol. And so you'll have some politicians who think they're really kind of serious, and you'll see their poster, and then it's got all of their picture and all of their stuff on there, and then there's like a picture of a banana next to their head. It just looks ridiculous. Oh my God. And like, for instance, it can be quite bad because there was a female MP who had a rocket as her symbol, just allocated randomly.

But rocket means hotty in Egyptian slang, apparently. So she was like, well, I can't do this. I'm a serious MP. You can't call me a hotty, but that's the rules. That wasn't random. I bet it was an all-male panel that randomly selected those symbols at some point. It's one of the symbols of penis. No, I think bananas as close as you get.

One of the ones I'm looking at here is a Canon camera. Like, it's actually got the Canon logo on it. That's cool. Well, I looked through the Kenyan list, and there are really random ones. There's an electrical socket. There's some broken handcuffs. There's a steering wheel. Broken handcuffs does not say to me, tough on crime.

That says major cuts in crime. So the Kenyan election is between Ahuru and Nasa. Nasa? What, the American Space Agency? No, the National Super Alliance Party. So it's President Ahuru Kenyatta, and everyone else has kind of ganged together with a coalition to go against him. They've called themselves the National Super Alliance Party, known as the abbreviation Nasa, and they're hoping that their coalition will unseat him. I think the election's in August.

I'm glad I don't live in a place as unstable as Kenya, where there's one party which has got just about half the seats of one, which is definitely trying to club together. This is going to go out of date so quickly. I don't know why I'm even saying it. Won't go on a date before tonight, will it? Might do, actually. So, you mentioned brands and logos. There are some places where companies get a vote.

So I was looking at how Hong Kong elections work, actually. You might know this. So the way Hong Kong constituencies are divided up is that five of their seats are geographical seats, and then all the rest are for companies. And so they get an industry seat, and they get an agricultural seat, and they get a tourism seat. And it's really weird because that means that people like Canada Air get a vote in the Hong Kong elections. So that is insane. Yeah, they do.

So all these airlines from all around the world get votes in the Hong Kong elections. Does a company vote equal the same as a single person's vote? I think it does, yeah. Or it might be more, in fact. Wow. Yeah, it's really weird. That's amazing. They just sit as MPs.

Because corporations, by law, are individuals, aren't they? Right. I mean, that's just a technical legal thing, but I think they are. So they should be able to vote in this country. But they're not standing up for themselves. They used to have, I think we've said this before, that universities used to get a vote. Did they? So as well as the city of Oxford having an MP, or maybe it was two MPs, actually at the time it was each constituency had two MPs,

Oxford and Cambridge each got to send an MP or two to the House of Commons. And that meant that students used to get two votes. So it was until 1950, I think, or 1948. And so it was Oxford got an MP, Cambridge got an MP, all the London ones got an MP, and then just all the other Unis got an MP. Sounds like university challenges. It morphed into that. Wow, that's amazing.

And then students didn't vote again until last night. So did you hear the thing recently about Donald Trump's logo? Speaking of logos. No, it's his logo. It's a crest, and it has the word Trump on it. But it turns out that he just nicked it from somebody else, and it was an old English crest. And he just nicked the word integrity and put on the word Trump,

which is the most amazing metaphor. It's so funny. Yeah. It was the husband of the woman who built Mar-a-Lago got given this crest in 1939. Mar-a-Lago is, you know, sort of second-wide now. His golf club. And the Trump Organization just took that coat of arms, changed the word, never asked permission from anyone.

And then when he came back to the UK to open his horrible golf course, I'm sure it's a very nice golf course if anyone wants to give me free round of golf. Sorry, when his fantastic golf course opened, he got in trouble because he hadn't registered the emblem according to the 1672 Lion King of Arms Act in Scotland. And then he tried to trademark and they said, no, that's already a thing here. You can't do that.

Wow. So he had to invent a new crest solely to use in his Scottish golf courses. But in America, he's still using the one he's nicked. I think a lot of it is Americans listening to this would probably be quite amused by how uptight we are about our crests, I should think. Yes. Well, the New York Times wrote in its cover, they said the British are known for taking heraldry very seriously.

OK, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy. My fact is that in the 19th century, one of England's constituencies had no people living in it. And another one was underwater. Wow. These are so called rotten burrows, which are constituencies where there used to be a load of people living there

and it made sense for them to have two MPs. And then over time, the population changes, or the place goes derelict, but the rules haven't been updated so they still get MPs. And then it's really easy for someone, normally the landowner who owns the land, to just take over the place, pick his own MPs and send them to the house.

That's amazing. Yeah, there's a Blackadder episode, which is all about this, basically. And one of the constituency that was underwater, Dunwich, is the inspiration for the thing in the episode, which is called Dunny on the World. Oh, really? Do you know that Dunwich was the capital of the kingdom of the East Angles? Was it?

Yeah, it was. So it used to be a really important place, and it was a port similar in size to 14th century London, according to Wikipedia. So it was a massive, massive place, and that's why they had this photo thing. Yeah, exactly. Rivaled the capital.

And it's called, Dan, you're like this, the British Atlantis. Oh, yeah. What do you mean it is called that? I'm calling it that now. Who calls it that? This guy. But Atlantis isn't the thing with Atlantis that we don't know where it is. We know where Dunwich is.

It's just not there anymore. It fell into the sea. Like how Atlantis might have done. I forgot it fell into the sea. I thought it was just a place we couldn't find. Yeah, and it's the British Atlantis. It's not claiming to be the Atlantis. Anyway, guys.

I got that. You got that. It's still there. Okay. And it's underwater. And supposedly at midnight or at night, you can hear church bells dangling around in the water. And that's just someone voting with their penis.

And it had eight churches. It had two hospitals. And there's one man. And this was a piece in the India about 10 years ago. He's called Stuart Bacon. And he's done about a thousand dives down there. And he has a map which was printed 500 years ago. And he can make his way around by touch.

Wow. The city underwater. Wow. That is extremely cool. It's so cool. Yeah, that's amazing. So what's left of it? Are there like buildings there?

There was almost nothing left. Most of it was swept away in these huge stalls. There's like a church, a few houses, a pratt. So there are... Soggy sandwiches. So that actually had about 200 people living there, which is much larger than a load of other constituencies. Before they were reformed,

there were 50 seats in the country, which each had fewer than 50 voters living in them. So funny. So great. It was the 1832 reform act. Yeah. A bit of process for you there, Emma. Yeah.

And it was that act which got rid of these boroughs, but it was also the act that excluded women from voting. Because until then, it wasn't explicitly against the rules for women to vote. If they were landowners, they could, in theory. Yeah. And one did, actually. I think the first woman to vote was in the late 1500s

because she was a widow of a big landowner who'd been the person who would nominate the person to go to Parliament. So she got to nominate. So women got the vote in the 16th century. But did you know that Charles James Fox, who's a famous British Prime Minister, when he became leader, he was too young to vote.

So he was 19 when he became leader. Yeah, 1768 and the voting age was 21. How does that work, then? I guess just other people voted for. Oh, yeah. I got that. I know his father bought the constituency for him. There we go.

It was sheer nepotism. Wow. So Aaron from the Green Party doing his A-level history exam, back then might not have been able to vote either. Yeah, exactly. 18 would have been too young. Yeah. Wow.

So one of the features of rotten burrows, which were a massive problem, obviously, in the country, was this thing called pot walloping. And I had never heard of this. Yeah, yeah. It's so cool. So before the Reform Act, then you could vote in certain areas if you were a pot walloper.

And what it meant was, is that you had a pot or a cauldron. And if you had a pot that was big enough, if you had a pot, a proper big cooking pot, it showed that you had a hearth that was big enough to put the pot in. And if you had a hearth that was big enough to put the pot in, then you obviously had the freehold of a house, and therefore you were considered responsible enough to vote.

But could you not just get a knockoff pot off eBay also? You would have thought so. Yeah. Did you have to bring your pot with you to the voting booth? That's why nobody voted, because people are dragging these enormous heavy cauldrons around the streets. They actually had one guy called Lord Cauldronhead. Isn't it the case that if you were voting,

it was done in public one by one? Yes, it was done in public, and it took ages. Right. But did you have to declare it to everyone, or was it a secret ballot? No, no, you did. The secret ballot wasn't introduced until the 1870. Wow. That meant that you could obviously, people could bribe you.

It was called treating your constituents. You gave them free food and drink, basically. And sometimes that would cost so much money that only one person could afford to stand in the seat anyway. People used to sign their ballot papers, actually, because the person who'd been elected would go through the ballot papers afterwards and look at who'd voted for them and be like, Oh, Johnny, I'll give him a little present.

Mr. Penis has voted for me. And if you were super rich, presumably you could gift people pots to allow them to vote for you. To give them the franchise. To gain votes. Yeah. Okay, get this. The 1784 election, voting opened in the Westminster constituency

on the 1st of April, and it closed on the 17th of May. What? It took nearly two months just to gather the votes. Why? Because they didn't have this thing, because obviously they didn't have mass communication, and they didn't need to do the election all on the same day, basically. Did Sondland still turn in all their votes by 10 p.m. that day?

Sondland's like the swatty kid in the class, isn't it? Hey, not this year, though. I know. They got this. So, quickly explain that for overseas people. Sondland, usually. So, the polls closed at 10 o'clock, and Sondland for the last 20 years has always been the first constituency

to give their result, and they usually do it by about 11 or something like that. They're really fast. Really, really quick. But this was the first year in ages. In my lifetime, I think that Newcastle has beaten them. And as a Newcastle fan, I was thrilled with the result of that derby between them, finally. It's been a bad year for Sondland altogether, isn't it?

Because they got relegated from the Premier League, and now this. And Newcastle got promoted from the championship. I know. So, in your face, Sondland. Wow. We're not doing a tar date in Sondland, are we? Not anymore. Should we wrap up?

Sure. Yeah, let's go to bed. Yeah. Oh, wait, can I tell you... Oh, no, actually, no. Yeah, go on, go on. Bit of process. Just a bit more process to finish off.

This is... I was just really surprised about this. Supermarkets, people who shop in certain supermarkets, vote for certain people. And where would you guess Aldi and Liddle have their loyalties these days? The budget shop, so I would imagine it's people on a tighter budget, so I'd say Labour.

You would have thought so, wouldn't you? It's the Tories, the Tory voters. So, actually, the Tories have all supermarket shoppers. I don't know where Labour voters are shopping. People who shop in Tescos, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Aldi and Liddle are now all Conservative. And it's just Morrison's and Astor that have got the Labour vote. But you do hear about Little Britain, don't you?

True Labour voters grow all their employees on their allotments. OK, that's it. That's all we can do. We need to go to sleep now. We are knackered. I need to close my working eye. And we will be back again next week with another episode. Until then, you can reach us and chat more to us

about the British elections if you want on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland, James. At Skip Liquor. At Egg Shaped. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. And Chazinsky. You can email podcast at qi.com.

Yep. And you can also go to our group account at qipodcast. You can go to our website, nosuchthingasafish.com, where you can find all of our previous episodes. There's also our tour dates for the UK. And there's also a link to our book, which is coming out in November.

We'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.